Jeff Russell

Replying here to the overall thread, so I'll tag you causticus, in case it doesn't notify you about replies to replies.

I agree that The Cosmic Doctrine as his go-to metaphysical text doesn't exactly square with "the universe doesn't care about you." I also suspect that his "Weird of Hali" novels might have more to say on how he tries to square cosmic indifferentism with more individual and intermediate meaning than some of his explicitly "spiritual" statements/writings. A tentative thought I've had is that he sees "the whole cosmos" as not caring much about what matters to any one social primate, but in between our admittedly small point of view, and the biggest of big pictures, there's a lot of room for Gods, angels, and so forth, who might partake a bit of both the small and big pictures, and maybe reconcile the seeming contradictions. Or perhaps he's just inconsistent! We humans do tend to do that.

As I said above, I haven't given all of this the thought and meditation it deserves, so I don't have much of an answer yet.

Cheers,
Jeff