Michel Houellebecq’s Sexual Apocalypse

Facing man’s guilt for killing God, Nietzsche asked: “How shall we, murderers of all murderers, console ourselves?” Houellebecq’s answer is that individuals in the throes of deterministic, rationalist materialism become pleasure-maximising objects by dissolving all human bonds. The most desirable reward themselves with orgies while the rest seek consolation in whatever kinds of sex they can get until those dry up, at which point there’s no more reason to live. In the name of freedom and self-realisation, mothers abandon their children (according to legend, this is the very tragedy that spawned the writing career of Houellebecq).