Extinction

by Thomas Bernhard

What we have now is the artificial human being, and we’re alarmed when we come across a natural human being again, because it’s something we’re not prepared for, because for so long we’ve been confronted only with artificial human beings, who’ve been ruling the world for ages, a world that long ago ceased to be a natural world and is now thoroughly artificial, Gambetti, an artificial world. The artificial world produced the artificial human being, and conversely the artificial human being produced the artificial world. Nothing is natural any longer, I said. We start from the premise that everything is natural, but that’s a fallacy. Everything is artificial, everything is artifice. Nature no longer exists. We always start from the contemplation of nature, when for ages we should have been starting from the contemplation of artifice. That’s why everything’s so chaotic. So false. So desperately confused. Where there’s no nature there can be no contemplation of nature, Gambetti—that must be obvious. The photo of my brother getting into his sailboat on the Wolfgangsee shows him posing as a happy person, but in the photo he is the unhappiest person imaginable.