Nihilism is a form of valuation for the naive, a way of organizing the world into relatable components and relations to oneself; a morality. Unlike religion nihilism produces a morality, but like religion nihilism also produces distortion and delusion, although less distortion and delusion than religion produces.
Nihilism is an early science of self, a pre-philosophy. It is thought grasping its own conditions and growing weary of itself, for to apprehend the void of meaning gives rise to negative pathos and to apathy. One will either remain in nihilism or use nihilism as a fuel toward creating other things, new modes of consciousness, new kinds of emotional and cognitive possibilities. Self-control. Rather or not the nihilist overcomes his nihilism or sinks into it depends on the inherent strength of the individual, his impulse to self-honesty and his ability to endure pain, to not pathologize pain and loss but to understand it. The nihilist is above the other 95% of humanity, but will remain nothing but a mere depressive and hedonist type until he discovers philosophy, which is to say, until he creates himself.
Nihilism cannot arise from mere depression or weakness, nihilism is a sign of inherent strength; the only question is, is that strength enough to overcome even the limit of itself?
Nihilism is the ability to see the world for what it really is and to overcome the manifested delusions of the idealists who rather shroud the world with deceptive fantasy. Where the idealist constructs a fake artificially objective philosophy on everything with a ridiculous belief in “god” or a false belief in a moral imperative the nihilist knows far better.
The nihilist also has a respect for chaos and understands the lack of permanency in everything. Where the idealist tries to idolize order into reason and understanding the nihilist knows those are just religious fetishes of power where unmasked power is merely competition of force.
Absurdity will prevail over nihilism people always want entertainment. The world will become a theatrical farce, a negation of everything will become a production of reversals: the subjective will morph into the objective, widespread nihilism can only have control of the content, not the form of meaninglessness. It will be a total reduction into absurdity, turning everything totally inside out. Negation of everything will become forced by virtue of the mechanics of thought.
Absurdity and nihilism are both side effects of weakness relative to its own specter of strength.
This is what it means when I wrote, “Nihilism cannot arise from mere depression or weakness, nihilism is a sign of inherent strength; the only question is, is that strength enough to overcome even the limit of itself?”
This setup breeds a certain kind of psyche, one with particular isomorphisms of motive and desire-paranoia, mechanisms for managing encounters with reality.
The consistencies of this psychological type are such that it can be counted on to produce the same kinds of delusions from one individual to another.
Nihilism is the dismemberment of illusion, facade, pretension, and the inherent fakeness of the world of idealists. The absurdity of this world stems from the chaos that is the reality that this deep fake dream like state of an artificial world tries to mask and keep at bay.
You cannot remove absurdity. It is inherent in this world and the human condition itself. It is a intricate part of this world and the greater universe for it is a symptom of chaos. This is a chaotic universe. We create order, but it is temporary and never lasts because the universe has a way of knocking down long term projects or endeavors of human beings. That’s why I live for this life and this one life alone.
The dismembering of illusion, facade, etc. is called philosophy. Nihilism is one result that occurs in the progression toward greater philosophic purview.
The nihilist has blinded himself to inconvenient truths in order to preserve a mechanism of thought and sentiment, a “conscience” by which the spheres of conception and emotion may be interpreted with respect to each other. A mode of consciousness, one out of many. The insights of nihilism are by no means restricted to nihilism.
Nihilism is stronger than 95% of other common human conscious modes. But settling for the top 5% is only vanity, not a real will to truth or power. The only way to keep moving forward is to never arrest your development at any particular stage. The real thinker had no actual “personality” or belief system, he contains myriad contradictions within him, he gives life to everything and denies nothing. He lives risk and contradiction and sees everything without needing anything.
More than anything, nihilism is a psychological confusion with philosophy-- a pathology, like religion.
I disagree with your solution to nihilism. I believe nihilism to stem from an idle mind - the devil makes work for idle hands - so to speak. Not idle in the sense of inactivity, but idle in the sense of…mis-activity. Therefore the route out of it, the solution, is not further mental speculation, but activity. However, I am assuming here that when you say “philosophy” you are referring to the thinking, the contemplating, and thus, this “creates himself” is also a kind of conceptualised fantasy of oneself, how one would like to be as opposed to how one is, or is capable of being, which I only believe can be found at as a result of action. Of course, action can be part of one’s philosophy too, and then I would agree with you if that were the case, then your “philosophy” would refer to consciousness, or intention, but if there’s no acting upon these intentions, no doing, then it is all just hot-air. All is nought.
If the illusion was all it destroyed, it would have been used thousands of years ago and you wouldn’t be here to complain. But it doesn’t merely destroy “the bad” any more than a nuclear bomb would merely destroy the bad people in the city.