Modern day Nihilism

Philosophy Forums Philosophy
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I have defined Nihilism, as the negation, devaluing
of human beings and their values…
and what are modern signs of nihilism?

I have listed, as isms that are nihilistic in nature,
several isms… among them are religions, Christianity
and Buddhism for example, and other values that are nihilistic
in their values are conservatism, dictatorships, monarchies,
oligarchy, capitalism, communism, and of course, MAGA values
are nihilistic… as those isms deny human beings and their
values… capitalism for example is nihilism because it makes
profits the primary value or reason for existence…
if you put profits before people, that is by definition, nihilism
because it negates human beings and their values for profits…

So, I ask you, are your values/beliefs positive or are they
negative? For example, MR. A, values are clearly negative,
as he never says anything positive about existence…
it is an unrelenting listing of negative actions, values and
beliefs… has he ever praised anything? or said anything
is positive? Nah, doom and gloom, 24/7…
This follows a conservative mind set… which is really
the topic at hand… are you like the Buddha, in which
life is all about suffering, and how to escape that suffering…
this is probably why Buddhism is MR. A favorite religion…
it is unrelentingly negative… what positive? Nah,
we have suffering of disease, and old age and death…
where is the positive within Buddhism? Given the entire
goal of Buddhism is to escape this lifetime of suffering…
and what about the other death religion, Christianity…
the entire goal of being Christian is to get to heaven…
or said another way, the entire point in Christianity
is to die and go to heaven… I have heard Christians
say, Jesus died for your sins… another death reference…
someone died for me… and I am supposed to be ‘‘grateful’’
or glad that someone died for me? That is nothing more than
a guilt trip… he died for you, so one should be grateful?

As I have no interest in death, unlike Christians or Buddhist
or even conservatives, with their unrelenting focus on
the negatives of life… unlike those groups, where their
focus is on the negative, nihilism… I find my focus on the
positive, what is the meaning of life? ''What am I to do?"
''What can I know?" ''What beliefs or values should I hold?"
The Kantian questions that suggests that we should engage
in the positive… what is the positive within life, not what
is negative about life…

If there were a motto for the liberal, for those who see
the positive, it would be ‘‘Ad Meliora’’, toward the better things, or
to make better… and that is the point, not to focus on death,
but to focus on what we can make better…
life sucks… ok, what can we do to make it suck less?
a conservative would only focus on the life sucks part, instead
of seeking out a solution for ‘‘life sucks’’… how do we engage
with ‘‘Ad Meliora’’ in ''life sucks?"

I would suggest that a start might be, try to see the positive instead
of the negative… ‘‘Life sucks’’ maybe, but we are redeemed
of the negative by the many positives within life…
I see, as a positive, music… how can anyone see/say that ‘‘life sucks’’
given we have the music of Mozart, the Beatles, the Who, U2,
or any number of types or musicians we have to listen to…
or we can point to literature also as being positive…
The beauty of Homer, not the Simpsons, the poems of
Tennyson, or Keats, or Blake, or even T.S Eliot to name a few
poets that make life worth being…

but we can also see/find beauty within the natural world,
the beauty of the rain, Sunsets, watching butterflies,
being in the Mountains… having grown up in very flat
states, Minnesota, Illinois, and Florida…
In moving to California and seeing the beauty of the mountains,
I admit they still take my breath away… even after 40 years…
I can’t even imagine living in a flat state again…
and of course, the many nihilists populating ILP,
will find fault and disagree with me…and the real problem lies
with the fact that they can’t even see the negative, the nihilism within
the world they inhabit and see virtually all the time…
and to try to find the better, to find the ‘‘Ad Meliora’’
within life is, well frankly beyond them… they are so
fixated and immersed in negativity and nihilism, they
can’t see anything else…

So, I ask you, do you accept the modern day nihilism
or do you go against the modern day flow in which nihilism
has capture the day…and see the beauty in life…
So, I ask… how do you intend to escape the daily, unrelenting
nihilism that is our modern age? Is there suffering and even
despair within the world today? Yep… there certainly is,
but then the question is not to point out that suffering,
but how does one overcome, seek out the positive,
how does one ask, in seeing the negative, how do I
seek out ‘‘Ad Meliora’’ How do I make it better?

Kropotkin

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To be honest @Peter_Kropotkin, I usually just ignore it. I’m not nihilistic, never have been, and I’ve never really heard any good arguments for being that way.

If I’m confronted by it directly, via argument or attitude, I usually find it straightforward to deal with.

Unfortunately, the nihilists, will upon anything bad happening, tend to turn around and say “see, I was right!”. Right now is like a goldmine for them because everything looks on the brink of collapse. It’s like the fortune teller that says “Jim? Do you know a Jim?”, even a stopped clock tells the right time twice a day.

Nihilism is resignation. Optimism is action. One has nothing to offer, the other everything. For me it’s simple.

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and we have a winner…

Kropotkin

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Open your eyes… this is the real present problem

(https://www.instagram.com/reel/DS8IRvRgCAz/)

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DSiCv2aAmE6/

You live in Disney Land Kropotkin

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cp2XKo3sVzE

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Genesis of Religions
I'm really starting to doubt if empathy by itself is a good way to guide morals and settle disputes
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reason4emotion:
Open your eyes… this is the real present problem

[https://www.instagram.com/reel/DS8IRvRgCAz/]

You live in Disney Land Kropotkin

K: I am sure this has something to do with something,
but I can’t quite tell what? Please explain…

Kropotkin

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Well if you actually take the time to read other people’s posts and comments you would see I have already posted the video you chose to duplicate and actually watch until the finish.

Maybe in your retirement you will venture outside and see past your tunnel vision the real problem that exists in your country today and France, Germany, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and watch where the shit has already hit the fan.

Maybe this vid will open those eyes of yours. Maybe not.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year Kropotin

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because i used to listen to the beatles and was a beatles fan, and i heard the same songs over and over and got bored of it. I explained this to you already, everything becomes boring eventually. Nonexistence is better than existence.

Transhumanism is positive, you want to be positive the positivity is transhumanism. They will make a way to delete memories so that you can listen to the same music as if its brand new.

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Seems like a bunch of Abrahamic apes causing problems for no reason. Moving on…

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“I’m not nihilistic, never have been, and I’ve never really heard any good arguments for being that way.”

You can’t choose to not really think there’s a purpose and a god and all that if, in fact, you do. This would prevent you from being a nihilist, obviously. Anyway, sans some horrible, mindless, prolonged suffering that causes you to abandon belief in an intelligent benevolent creator, there’s nothing in philosophy that can get you out of the grip of that belief. Philosophy won’t ever tell you if god exists or not. As Zizek put it, philosophy asks, “What do you mean when you say ‘this is god’”, not “is there god or not”.

What we believe is a product of the veracity of the ideas that find us, and we don’t really get to decide whether or not an idea convinces us.

Contrarily, it couldn’t ever be said that an atheist like myself simply hasn’t experienced whatever it is that other’s have experienced that led them to belief in god. Why not. Because I’d never not have an explanation for whatever i experienced that wasn’t ‘better’ than the god explanation. And i don’t get to choose to do this or pretend to believe in a god. There’s just far too many reasons not to believe than there are reasons to believe. The veracity of certain atheistic ideas have me in their grip.

Nihilism, for me, is natural and effortless. BUT it doesn’t necessarily interfer with doing philosophy and politics. That’s to say you can still have a thriving society of happy but ultimately meaningless ephemeral creatures.

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Even if I didn’t believe in God, I still wouldn’t be a nihilist.

How can existence be meaningless? The very act of existing, especially living, gives everything meaning..

Here’s what I know, I’m sure the semantics could be argued amongst famous philosophers, perhaps for all eternity..

  1. We’re here.
  2. We have agency.
  3. We have the ability to define purpose.

That’s good enough for me.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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I have nothing at all against atheists, never have, never will.

But, it seems to me that atheists often use “God” as a platform to express their ideals? Isn’t that a bit paradoxical? Can’t you do without Him?

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Well, i suspend subjective judgment because my situation is extreeeeeemly rare… which means one couldn’t count my assessment of the world when trying to determine its goodness. My nihilism is a special blend of very unique circumstances that hardly exist anywhere else, so nobody else could make sense of it even though only through my testimony is the Truth known (like on some Jesus level shit. That’s how rizzed i am, bruh). So, my philosophy doesn’t count. Or rather, it does count… so much so that it’s like a GUT or TOE that remains inaccessible to people.

Instead, i look for objective circumstances that affect majorities in ordinary everyday ways. What I’ve observed is that the vast majority of the world is not happy in addition to my belief that there is no god and that everything is permitted. So this is an unhappy, violent world without redemption. I don’t even need to include those unfortunate fucks like myself to come to this conclusion.

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I’m not sure you are a nihilist.. Maybe a “realist”?

I don’t think the world is particularly cruel and violent. It’s mostly just humans themselves that are..

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If anybody refers to my beliefs as being nihilistic then they don’t really understand my beliefs at all.

Just because I am a skeptic of liberalism, democracy, and Zionism doesn’t make me instantaneously nihilistic. Grave misuse of the word in terms of error.

Yes, I am a Marxist, communist, and a Buddhist where I believe these beliefs of mine compliment each other just fine without any contradiction at all.

Nihilist? Nope, not even.

Moral and ethical authoritarian? Yes, absolutely.

I absolutely believe morality and ethics should be enforced within society for the betterment of people in the collective sense.

:clown_face:

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@Peter_Kropotkin

I am curious how you’ve come to the conclusion that either Buddhism or communism is nihilistic.

You’ll have to tell me how you’ve reached your conclusions for both. I won’t hold my breath on that account.

It’s true in Buddhism much of our beliefs revolves around Samsara or suffering, but if you think that’s what all of our beliefs revolves around you forgot the other ones like compassion, understanding, and charity.

If you knew anything about me at all you would know two of my favorite moral philosophers are Confucius and Marcus Aurelius. But you don’t know much about me where as usual you assume way too much.

:clown_face:

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The world is a brutal darwinian world.

Humans are worse because they are touch deprived because of male homophobia neurosis.

Male chimps are not touch deprived but are still war-like and have gang violence.

In Natural selection predators must eat and murder other animals to survive, if the predators do not eat enough animals then the other animals will overpopulate and starve to death. In my opinion it is all a brutal, dystopian and satanic world.

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Is it brutal though? Most creatures spend most of their lives feeding, exploring, copulating and experiencing things quite peacefully. Sure, death can arrive at practically any time, but is it all bad?

Can’t argue with that. Human society wasn’t always that way though, it just seems to go through periods of the neurosis you describe, it might not be permanent.

Yeah, chimp society is pretty brutal, it does seem to be a nod to our own origins.

Nature constantly seeks balance, and those are the results. Satan never seemed like a particularly balanced individual to me, I doubt he’s involved.

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Yes human life is generally worse than animal life, because humans work all day unnaturally in cubicles and stuff and have lots of drama.

Importantly, animals are more dumb than humans, so that life is more bearable, for example they can live in the dirt and have bugs crawl on them and be stinky and not as bothered by it, but such conditions would be intolerable to a human. Its like how high functioning autists cannot tolerate normie living conditions, because they are less animal than normies.

The homophobia neurosis is from Abrahamism.

Yes humans are closely related to chimps. But chimps arent touch deprived like humans and aren’t as oppressive and restrictive as human societies are.

The Gnostic belief is that Satan crafted this world. And what I meant by satanism is generally how satan is portrayed in mainstream art, like this pagan creature in a world of natural selection. Satanic energy is Darwinian energy.

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Not me ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Animals are dumb? I’d rather be lost in a tropical forest with a friendly chimpanzee than you @futureone, I might have a chance of survival. I’d rather a dog was listening for sounds than I was, or smelling for things. I’d rather follow a pod of dolphins in a boat if I was lost at sea than listen to the most skilled naval navigator.

They’ll get on fine then. Apparently Darwin is already in hell because he offended the Christians. Perhaps him and the devil are now having a nice cup of tea and a chat?

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So you would rather be lost in the jungle with a chimpanzee… instead of a human guide… is that what you’re telling me?

You complain about my strawmans?

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