I assume you mean the former, but the latter came to mind at first for me (lucky me, I guess…). I read the OP and the discussion with aletheia. Our positions seem to match. If you read my post on Kurt you’ll recognize a theme I’m having of not knowing where my positions come from. Nihilism for me is deeper than it ever has been, though I’ve only been one for a year and I’ve only know of the term itself for 6-7 months. I want to believe in things, or to even hold a position, but it is so obvious to me the ephemeral nature of all my postions. I speak on my ‘postions’ here in various threads I’ve made over the last six months, most of them being controversial, but I only take the side I do, that is spew forth those opinions as one may cough up all the dust that they’ve been breathing in throughout the day.
Honestly, those positions were once I ‘beleived in’, with some doubt yes, but they really were my positions. I’m speaking about my threads related to bigotry, equality, religion, morality/ethics, my resent one on gay marriage, etc. Now they are in part something that I need to get out of my system before I can take a completely apathetic stance on them and they are in part an exploration of the issues of nihilism (the latter).
I’m not trying to be dishonest on my serious threads (as opposed to my unserious threads), I bend the discussions away from the ‘concrete issues’ from time to time to the peripheral of nihilism, but I don’t wish to stop the discussions short. People don’t seem to understand my logic most of the time, but as I said it is trully logic that I developed and believed in. I don’t expect anyone to agree with me, afterall all sides are ephemeral. But, I’d like to be understood. Certainly the failure must be on my part. So I don’t manage to show where my ‘unique’ sides to the issues can have as much validity as any, perhaps it would take a complete understanding and ‘faith’ in the nihilistic perspective to understand them. So of course I’d like you input on some of them, not to say I’d like for you to jump in with an opinion of the issues, but just to say if the logic makes sence to you, you having a similar perspective as mine.
Now back to the thought I had earlier, I don’t know where my influences come from, you know I read much of your writing in that one thread, perhaps a third of it altoghether, but it seems I had this perspective before reading that. The only other concrete influence that I can imagine having is Sartre’s Being and Nothingness, which I read a thousand times over. But, the book is so positive, I would say! But, then so many say it is so negative, I can’t see how, Sartre does express a belief in nothing so much as a belief in anything.
So how do I escape nihilism? Would I want to? Can one trully be a sustainable (nontentative) nihilist without a philosophical background (for me Sartre, for you apperantly dasein (by the way is you understanding of dasein from Heidegger’s Being and Time or elsewhere, I’ve read a little oft hat book and I perhaps have a hint of a grasp of dasein))? It seems to be a mood. Not just a ‘depressed’ mood, but perhaps a little more complex type of mood, hardly summarized with the word “depressed”. So what could I believe in, what would I want to? I spoke to obe and Bobgo, and they suggest God, but I’ve been there, and I cannot grasp which direction their God (or respective Gods) are in, if not in the same one mine was (backwards).
Speaking of depressing, it has been suggested in a forum (it could have been a discussion you were in) that our lives are just spent chasing the pleasure chemicals in our brain. Would you say enough of such would release my or your nihilism? I had a strange dream a couple nights ago, I was staring at a high tree branch with leaves on it and to put it depressingly, my pleasure chemicals were in a very high abundance. I mean I’ve been ecstatic on a few occasions; artistically, ‘socially’, with ‘wonderment’, but this is the only preview of ‘heaven’ (cough) that I’ve ever had. A simple tree branch, and still a belief in nothing. Thank you for your time.