nihilism

[iambiguous]

From PN:

Joker
Ștefan Bolea meditates on madness at the movies.

Joaquin Phoenix portrays Arthur Fleck, a failing stand-up comedian with a psychological disorder that causes him to laugh at inappropriate moments. The film provides a backstory for the character of the Joker in the Batman stories. Under the pressure of successive disasters and injustices, Fleck descends into madness and goes on a killing spree.

Well, here, of course, if Joker in both films is derived from the Batman films, comparisons will be made between Joaquin Phoenix’s Joker and Heath Ledger’s Joker. The Christian Bale Batman movie is the only Marvel/DC Comic Book film I have ever seen. And that was some years ago. So admittedly it’s all rather fuzzy to me now. As I recall, the Heath Ledger character was something akin to a Hannibal Lector. He had layers of depth that set him apart from your typical thug sociopath. Closer to, say, the sociopath who might have majored in philosophy at college.

For instance…

“Joker has a unique character and he is different from other villains in movies. While they committed crime based on personal revenge, economic fulfillment, Joker does it his own way. He does not obey rules, laws, or even morals. Based on those ideas, the writer includes Joker as a nihilist.” Satrio Jagaf from Moral nihilism as Reflected by Joker in the Dark Knight Movie

So, sure, a lot of our reactions to films of this sort will revolve around what we first bring to them: ourselves.

But then back to this author’s assumption that the key to understanding Joker’s behavior is madness. Which would diminish the film’s interest for someone like me. Like the manner in which the fascinating character Nathan Landau in Sophie’s Choice turned out to have a mental disorder propelling him one breakdown to the next.

In the process, though, he adopts the persona of Joker and becomes the symbol of a revolution against privilege in Gotham City, and a hero to rioters who fail to grasp the depth of his disorders. Madness is notoriously difficult to perform, because, on one hand, the actor must keep his emotions in check while acting as if they are out of balance, and, on the other, his exaggerations must be credible, otherwise the movie becomes a melodrama or caricature. But watch, for instance, arguably the most disturbing scene of the movie, in which Arthur smothers his mother with a pillow as he delivers the crucial line: “I used to think that my life was a tragedy, but now I realize it’s a comedy.”

So, does that clinch it for you? Does that make him a madman more so than a sociopath more so than the more sophisticated moral nihilist?

Arthur’s tone is neutral, as if his actions are completely severed from any emotion. The scene is a cold description of gestures with no reference to sentiment. The apathy of the murder is chilling. The brilliance of Phoenix’s performance of madness makes me think of other great deranged villains from past decades: Jack Torrance from The Shining; Bobby Peru from Wild at Heart; John Doe from Se7en.

Same thing though: were these characters construed by you to be propelled by madness? Jack Torrance clearly was. But I’m more ambivalent regarding Bobby Peru and John Doe. Bobby Peru struck me as just basically the out and out sociopath, while John Doe is summed up more accurately here:

“Even though the subjects of Greed, Sloth, and Pride were not ethically good people, John’s method of dealing with them was demonic to say the least. Despite being insane, John was far from unintelligent and was capable of working everyone involved in his scheme, victims and law enforcement, with no trouble.” Fandom.

[iambiguous]

From PN:

Joker
Ștefan Bolea meditates on madness at the movies.

Closely linked to the central theme of madness in Joker is the idea of the ineffectiveness of psychotherapy. “You never listen,” complains Arthur to his therapist, “All I have are negative thoughts.” Dialogue is seen as fake, and because access to the awareness of others is blocked, one enters the realm of solipsism, where pain is incommunicable. The other person may be falling apart, yet I cannot see through his mask.

Human psychology. Once that is introduced all bets are off. Our psychological reactions are always going to be an extremely complex and convoluted intertwining of nature and nurture, of intellect and emotions, of libidos and drives, of conscious and subconscious and unconscious reactions to the world around us.

Couple this with the Benjamin Button Syndrome – all the interacting variables in our life that we are only so much able to grasp and control – and it is virtually impossible not only to grasp why others do what they do but why we do what we do as well. There are “trained professionals” like psychiatrists and psychologists who are educated to come closer to understanding human psychology in general as a “discipline” but even then, in not having actually lived a patient’s life, they can really only go in so far.

And, of course, with Joker we are dealing with an entirely fictional character. A comic book villain. His “backstory” having been created by Bill Finger, Bob Kane, and Jerry Robinson.

And with all the usual twists and turns…

So Joker is also a meditation on ‘ontological insecurity’, as R.D. Laing put it, and on a sort of existential paranoia. If I lack empathy, the other may seem to me like a robot, a computer program, or a ghost. I may even doubt the existence of the other person. I may even come to doubt my own existence: the other never sees me, therefore I fail to see myself, therefore I fail to exist.

Psychobabble let’s call it. Unless, of course, in considering your own life it seems rather prescient. In any event there are any number of aspects that encompass our lives which are for all practical purposes clearly visible. And of those that are not perhaps better words might be ambiguous or ambivalent or uncertain or confused.

I just happen to prefer “fractured and fragmented”. But even then, only in regard to my value judgments.

Invisibility is a socio-political problem: many may feel that they don’t have a place, that they are worthless, that they don’t mean nothing, that their lives make no ‘cents’, as Arthur writes in his journal.

On the other hand, some take invisibility down into the philosophical depths…layers that are rarely explored by others. Black or white: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invisible_Man

As for Joker, what did he mean by a life that makes no “cents”? Is that in reference to the essential meaningless of human existence…or does it also include the manner in which capitalism, in reducing so much down to dollars and cents, creates a systemic alienation like no other political economy before it.

[iambiguous]

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

Understanding nihilism as life-denying in this first sense allows us to recognise one of Nietzsche’s most striking insights: if life-denial involves the negative judgment of this life and world as they actually are, then even beliefs and values that we typically understand as bestowing meaning and value upon life can function as covertly nihilistic.

Of course! All we have to do is to pin down what human existence out in the world that we live in actually is!! You tell me what you deny about it and I’ll tell you what I deny about it. Then after agreeing on that we move on to the things who don’t deny about it.

And then if that seems to come down to distinguishing between the either/or world and the is/ought world, I won’t deny that I told you so.

On the other hand, the objectivists among us will have little or nothing to do with indicating covertly all of the things in the world around us that they deem to be nihilistic attributes. And not just in regard to my own frame of mind. You can refuse to agree with what they believe about things like race and gender and homosexuality and Jews and be a nihilist too. Or the despicable liberal/globalist rendition of that.

Though, unlike me, any number of those on the other end of the political spectrum are in fact not in the least “fractured and fragmented” in setting the record straight.

Let us return to the individual who believes that life is worth living only if there is some higher purpose to it, in which all human beings participate. For such an individual, it is not only nihilistic to disavow her belief in a higher purpose; it is also nihilistic for her to believe in a higher purpose.

That’s confusing. How is it nihilistic to believe in a higher purpose? Other than by way of being so obsessed with embracing one’s own Kingdom of Ends that any and all behaviors are then justified in going after those who do not or will not share it. It’s like those who argue that fascism can be rationalized given a certain set of assumptions about the human condition, but the Nazis were nihilists when they took it too far and endorsed and participated in the Holocaust.

Or, perhaps…

After all, Nietzsche argues, if we think life is worth living only if there is a higher purpose in which we participate – and it turns out that there is no higher purpose in which we participate (something that Nietzsche insists we must accept) – then one’s belief in a higher purpose is life-denying because it implicitly devalues life as it actually is (that is, as devoid of higher purposes). In other words, given that there is no higher purpose, belief in a higher purpose as that which is required to make life worth living covertly devalues life: it indicates that life, as it actually is, is not worth living.

Uh, maybe? For most though the emphasis is placed on their own belief that there is in fact a higher purpose. Otherwise, how to explain the fact that they already embody it. Besides, who is to say what life “as it actually is” is?

[iambiguous]

Joker
Ștefan Bolea meditates on madness at the movies.

Which brings us to the idea of the ‘damnation of the poor’. A society for which money is god always ultimately equates failure with death. There are many ways in which the poor are put to death by such a society, and one is the denial of healthcare. Arthur’s access to therapy and medication becomes hindered on account of welfare cuts, precipitating his insane behaviour. I might even infer that the motif of rats, which occurs a few times in the movie, is a symbol of the great mass of the poor, which Karl Marx called the lumpenproletariat, resistant to the systemic extermination machine.

Ah, of course.

Sooner or later the reality of capitalism is going to be introduced here. Alienation, exploitation and the growing disparity between the working class and the ruling class. What that can precipitate in the way of truly ominous characters.

Indeed, right now, the “debt limit deal” unfolding in Washington will no doubt result in further cuts to the “welfare state”…to folks who rely on any number of government programs just to, in some case, merely subsist. Watch the Democrats and the Republicans – cohorts sustaining my own rendition of the “deep state” here: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.p … s#p2187045 – do the bidding of Wall Street. And of course the “sacrosanct” military industrial complex. Though the defense budget in America is greater than the next 10 nations combined, no cuts there.

Thus to the extent that Joker falls between the cracks here there can be little doubt that his plight will be exacerbated. Though I doubt there were many Marxists in the film suppling him with a “class analysis” of the “lumpenproletariat”…those who along the way may well become moral nihilists or sociopaths or psychopaths. Or, in fact, do indeed go mad from all the stress and anxiety of barely scraping by. Capitalism and mental illness are never going to be that far removed.

Then…religion?

Two religious ideas come to mind. First, I think of the Hindu principle of tat tvam asi (‘thou art that’), which states that we should try to recognize the same essence in the other, since we are essentially the other. Failure to recognise ourselves in the other means that ‘man is wolf to man’; that exploitation never ends; that ‘the boot stamping on a human face’ (to quote Orwell’s 1984) forever remains the symbol of our never-ending civil war. This lack of empathy is another motif throughout the movie, and it leads to mass destruction.

You tell me. I never watched Joker. And if any of this is applicable to the Heath Ledger Joker, I missed it. A “lack of empathy” in human interactions is usually associated with the sociopath. That’s why they are so scary. They’re not like most people in that there is no reasoning with them at all. They want what they want [for whatever reason rooted in how they became this way] and your job is always the same: don’t get between them and that.

With Heath Ledger, “The Joker” seemed far removed from the Cesar Romero cartoon character in the old Batman series I watched as a kid.

Again, however, it’s been awhile since I watched The Dark Knight. But as I recall, the Ledger Joker seemed to remind me more of the Anthony Hopkins Hannibal Lector [anything but] cartoon character. I could imagine someone’s life unfolding such that in embracing a moral nihilist perspective they moved beyond just being a criminal or a sociopath. There were deeper layers that made them more intriguing.

Second, I think of the Christian idea that greatest are those who serve; “they and not the strong being pointed out as having the first place in God’s regard” (in John Stuart Mill’s words). So contempt towards the lowly in the movie is not merely a symptom of fascistic indifference but of satanic arrogance. Like Hamlet’s play-within-a-play, the Joker scene where the wealthy are seen amusing themselves while watching Chaplin’s Modern Times, a film about the hardship of life during the Great Depression, discloses the sadistic sense of superiority of the ruling class, who observe the drama of the disadvantaged from the heights of their contempt.

Again, you tell me. Perhaps there was a more overt “class analysis”. An analysis that was somehow intertwined with elements of religion. Me, what I’m always looking for in characters is the extent to which as a moral nihilist myself I can identify with what I perceive to be a “philosophy of life” similar to my own. That and [of course[ the part rooted in dasein and in the Benjamin Button Syndrome.

Then this part…

When the most advanced societies treat their most disadvantaged members as ‘rats’, one may say that pessimism becomes a valid interpretation of life and that optimism is wicked, as Arthur Schopenhauer argued. In the movie, many respond to Joker as people respond to Schopenhauer or to the nihilist philosopher Emil Cioran: they are so sick of being lied to that accepting even an inconvenient or toxic truth is better than believing the lie.

The Great Pessimist and the man who wrote The Trouble With Being Born? To the extent that Todd Phillips, Scott Silver and Joaquin Phoenix went in that direction is intriguing.

On the other hand, for many being lied to is the equivalent of believing that there is a One True Path – their own – and “the system” refuses to go down it with them. Whereas for me in being “fractured and fragmented” in regard to moral and political value judgments, will there ever be a Joker more in sync with that?

Anyway, I just ordered the DVD from amazon, so I’ll finally watch it myself in a few days.

[HumAnIze]

black and charred mahimahi
works so well with some dumb shit israi
other words idc about times
something seomthing in rhymes
soy black beige stuff wine
cant ruin calvin or whatever fine
nihilism is the johnson or
stick with classic garson for
a crime since im with prada and gucci
when you go shopping take care
like you knew me cause
some of us know
when you go shopping take care
A nihilist knows
you are what you wear

[iambiguous]

From PN:

Joker
Ștefan Bolea meditates on madness at the movies.

We come to a central problem of humor. We are trained to laugh only when it is appropriate. “We enjoy ourselves and have fun the way they enjoy themselves” is how Martin Heidegger puts it in Being and Time.

As is often pointed out, much of humor does revolve around the punch line being at the expense of someone else. Sometimes this becomes the whole point when, say, a celebrity is “roasted”. They are poked fun of but in a “good naturedly” manner. Other times though the humor is nothing short of scathing…vicious.

Now, with Joker – the sociopath? the nihilist? – there is so much resentment building up inside him, who can tell where his own attempts at humor might go. With those like him the joke is on…everyone?

Joker has his own particular humor, and laughs when things aren’t funny, so harassing the dictatorship of conformism. Generally, he can be seen as an educator of the sense of humor. One might distinguish between fake laughter – the appropriate laughter of the ‘they’ – and Joker’s super-fake laughter that becomes authentic because it is his own original expression, uninfluenced by social imperatives.

Here again, rooted existentially in dasein, one person’s assessment of a super-fake laughter may be entirely at odds with another person’s assessment. And that’s because once someone goes way, way off the beaten path in trampling a particular society’s “imperatives”, their own reaction to them will clearly reflect the embodiment of their own subjective sense of reality. There’s Joker’s reaction to them and then, say, Rupert Pupkin’s?

His vision of life as a comedy which is darker than a tragedy reminds us of the absurdist playwright Eugène Ionesco’s reflection regarding the hopelessness of the comic. When we enjoy watching a performance of Ionesco’s Exit the King, we are laughing at the tragic aspect of existence – we laugh at our lives and our deaths.

Which brings me back to the extent Joker becomes the subject of philosophy. Thus the very existence of this article in Philosophy Now magazine. We are prompted to probe him as, perhaps, far, far more than just a comic book character. Instead, some can see themselves in him and speculate as to what his behaviors “mean” in a larger more “erudite” manner. How can we relate him to the world that we live in today? How are our own moral and political and philosophical prejudices played out up on the silver screen. Thus, my own existential reaction to the Heath Ledger Joker as more or less a reflection of moral nihilism.

[similar in part to the reaction I often have in regard to the characters created by Woody Allen]

Joker’s vision of life as comedy is also connected to his mental illness, and so raises the question from Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose: is laughing demonic or divine? According to some theologians, the devil – the first parodist – is simia Dei (‘God’s ape’). People are sadder than they declare, sadder even than they think they are. “I’ve never been happy,” declares Fleck ironically, upon explaining that his childhood nickname was ‘Happy’.

Back again to that: mental illness.

If Joker was afflicted with a brain tumor or schizophrenia or some other serious mental illness, well, wouldn’t that change everything? Scrape the philosophical analysis? Why? Because he does what he does, by and large, in a manner that is “beyond his control”. Same if he was possessed by some demon.

Nope, for me, Joker has to be basically a sane human being who because of his own unique trajectory of experiences, took the particular path that he did in a free will world. That way, I can imagine how, if my own life had been different, I might have ended up something akin to him myself.

And then the part where, in a No God world, there are no philosophical, sociological, psychological, etc., assessments able to result in a deontological moral assessment of him. Instead, all we can do is to contain him somehow.

Lock him up and throw away the key? Acknowledging that given the way he is there is almost no possibility of “reasoning” with him and bringing him over to “society” and its own rendition of rational and virtuous human interactions. And in acknowledging that, had our own life been different, we might have ended up just like him.

[iambiguous]

From PN:

Joker
Ștefan Bolea meditates on madness at the movies.

Finally, one of Joker’s central ideas is reminiscent of Fight Club or Mr Robot: a schizoid character sparks the flame of insurrection. One question we might ask here is, do I have to fight myself, or the world?

To ask that question seems to suggest one might possibly come up with an answer that would justify an insurrection. Whereas for a moral nihilist of my ilk, in being “fractured and fragmented”, all insurrections are equally, ultimately futile. At best I can choose not to go in the direction that a sociopath might come to embody: me, myself and I. And fuck anyone and everyone who attempts to come between me and what I happen to want at any given point in time. It’s just better for everyone if I stick to the distractions that provide me with at least some measure of fulfillment in the comfort of my own home.

In other words, should I attempt to master myself, as the Stoics urged, or should I attempt to conquer the world? And is the loss of myself acceptable if I gain the world in return?

It’s impossible for me “here and now” to put into words just how ludicrous either of those options are. In fact, basically, the only viable recourse open to me now is to sustain my own rendition of waiting for godot. Recognizing how fruitless any attempt on my part to explain that to others would be. They haven’t lived my life after all. And even though I have, I’m still far removed from understanding it myself.

When he becomes Joker, Arthur becomes the worst possible version of himself; but he gains the world, or at least the acceptance of some part of it, turning into a symbol of the revolution.

Here though you would have to run this by Todd Phillips and Scott Silver. They wrote the screenplay so what did they intend Joker’s motivations and intentions to be? Did he have a “philosophy of life”? Was he intent on reconfiguring the world into a facsimile of what unfolded inside his head?

As for this…

If I’m fighting evil, I cannot be good, because then I would surely lose. Sadly, I must become more evil than evil. Paraphrasing Nietzsche, we might say that whoever fights monsters will surely become a monster.

That may actually mean something important to some here. They may have concocted a more clearcut distinction between good and evil in their own head. I’m about as far beyond good and evil as one can be.

So, was that the case with Joker too?

You tell me.

[iambiguous]

Joker: How Joaquin Phoenix’s Film Makes Nihilism Look Beautiful and Arthur Fleck’s Anarchist Views Far Too Believable
Surabhi R

Joker may be one of the nastiest villains in comic book history but DC’s latest film starring the incredibly brilliant, Joaquin Phoenix goes way beyond this world. To simply place this film in the DC universe would be an underservice to it. Todd Phillip’s film is a telling tale of our time. It’s not just Gotham that is descending into chaos. Look around and you will realise the urgency and relevance of it.

So, is that the “message” being conveyed by Joker? And then the part where millions of Americans seem intent on pushing America all the way back to the 1950s again. A white Christian heterosexual utopia where men were men and women were…June Cleaver?

Or perhaps your Joker may be more in sync with how you see the world around us today. The point being that something has to be done to bring us all back to sanity. And while Joker’s methods may be too extreme for some at least he’s out there fomenting “the people” to do something about the anarchy we have descended down into?

In the past, we have seen a string of Hollywood films based on Joker and who can forget Heath Ledger’s brilliant adaptation of this character in the Dark Knight but Phillip’s film sets itself apart by taking us back to the time when Joker was not Joker. A struggling-to-make-ends-meet-clown Arthur Fleck, taking care of his ill mother and more importantly spiraling down into an unhealthy mental state is what we see.

Back to that again. Back to the part where he is not really a nihilist at all. Or, rather, not as philosophers grapple with it. Instead, he is afflicted with a mental illness such that even though a bona fide nihilist might choose the same behaviors, Fleck’s behaviors are more or less “beyond his control”? Assuming of course that, as with all the rest of us, he lives in a free will world.

Joker’s backstory. And what is this but the part I root existentially in dasein. Arthur Fleck is born and raised in “a particular world” historically, culturally. He accumulates a particular set of “personal experiences” that predispose him to embody particular moral and political prejudices.

Just like all the rest of us.

He just happens to be entirely fictional.

[iambiguous]

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

So far, nihilism has been presented as a cognitive phenomenon involving various belief-states and the absence of certain value commitments. In order to understand a second sense of nihilistic life-denial in Nietzsche’s thought – and, in turn, to understand why Nietzsche presents nihilism as a terrible problem – we must look to his analysis of nihilism as a psychological phenomenon. Any belief or judgment involving a negative evaluation of existence as a whole – whether overt or covert – will be designated life-denying, and thus nihilistic, by Nietzsche. But he also thinks that such beliefs and judgments are life-denying in a much deeper sense: they either originate in or provoke various forms of psychological life-denial.

Well, for me, of course, the psychological angle revolves around what I call the “psychology of objectivism” in this thread: ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop … 5&t=185296

Then back to this:

@Kaitlyn Creasy

Let us return to the individual who believes that life is worth living only if there is some higher purpose to it, in which all human beings participate. For such an individual, it is not only nihilistic to disavow her belief in a higher purpose; it is also nihilistic for her to believe in a higher purpose.

That’s confusing. How is it nihilistic to believe in a higher purpose? Other than by way of being so obsessed with embracing one’s own Kingdom of Ends that any and all behaviors are then justified in going after those who do not or will not share it. It’s like those who argue that fascism can be rationalized given a certain set of assumptions about the human condition, but the Nazis were nihilists when they took it too far and endorsed and participated in the Holocaust.

I simply do not construe nihilism in this manner. Either that or I am not understanding her point. Everything ultimately revolves around what you deem to be the source of meaning in your life. And if you do manage to “think yourself” into believing in a higher purpose, that is the opposite of nihilism for me. Unless “life denying” itself is understood to be based on the assumption that there is no essential meaning and purpose to human existence. Something akin perhaps to the existentialists who argue that in predicating one’s values on the assumption that essence is prior to existence is to live one’s live inauthentically?

First, on Nietzsche’s view, life-denying beliefs and judgments tend to originate in individuals who are alienated from or averse to life and existence.

Gasp!

Of course that is likely to be true. If [philosophically or otherwise] you are in the asshole of life your beliefs and judgments will be all about either ending your own life or fomenting the next revolution to configure the world around you more to your liking. But from my frame of mind denying life or afforming life is still no less rooted existentially in dasein. And thus beyond the reach of philosophers in a No God world. And what some insist is life-denying others will insist in life-affirming.

This is what he intends to capture when he insists in The Twilight of the Idols that the same judgment of life that the ‘wisest sages of all times’ have reached – that ‘it’s worthless’ – originates in these individuals’ ‘fatigue with life’ and ‘hostility to life’. To judge that life, as it actually is, is not worth living is a symptom of a dangerous weariness with life, an inability to effectively engage with one’s world, grow in one’s form of life, and flourish.

So, what do some do? They conjure up the Übermensch and make them the new masters of the universe. A life-affirming narrative for the very. very few who are “one of us”.

Here, for example: knowthyself.forumotion.net/f6-agora

Then back to this:

This holds regardless of whether such a judgment is covert (for example, if one believes in a higher purpose, and takes that as a reason to affirm life) or overt (for example, if one disavows a higher purpose, and takes that as a reason to reject life).

Again, for those who either do or do not affirm life…how much of that is rooted in philosophy and how much in the actually circumstances of their lives themselves?

[iambiguous]

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

…Nietzsche thinks that the adoption of life-denying beliefs is an unconsciously deployed coping strategy, utilised by individuals weary of life and unable to engage effectively with the world.

Well, if one believed this, what does that tell us about the limitations placed on philosophers in attempting to explore any beliefs about life? To the extent that our subconscious and unconscious minds play an important role in how we interact with the world around us, how much of those interactions are then “beyond our control”? Especially when coupled with the parts of our brain related to instinct and drives…all of the primordial “id” stuff.

And taking a leap of faith to autonomy?

And to some extent, this strategy works. If the disengaged, world-weary individual adopts the belief that there is a higher purpose to life around which she might meaningfully orient her life and action, she will likely experience an alleviation of her weariness with life and re-engagement with her world.

She and millions more…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies

…like her. Objectivists I call them. Those able to anchor their Self morally, politically and/or spiritually to one or another religion or ideology or Ism. And, in having been one myself for the bulk of my life, I know what it’s like to have it all crumble away. And here I am hoping to find someone able to restore it all again.

Yet by adopting the belief in a higher purpose, Nietzsche argues that such a person is merely coping. While her investment in this belief secures her survival, it secures little else. Though she staves off that psychological form of life-denial Nietzsche deems ‘suicidal nihilism’, she is not thereby able to grow and flourish.

Or, as I put it, nihilism can be used by some to “liberate” them from one or another rendition of “What would Jesus do?”. It’s a trade-off. If you are able to convince yourself that there is a higher meaning and a higher purpose to living your life, that can be enormously comforting and consoling. Especially if it includes immortality and salvation. But it also anchors – chains? – you to a set of options ever and always in sync with the One True Path. Nihilism expands your existential options considerably. But there is nothing that you can attach those options to in order to bring back the comfort and the consolation you once sustained as an essentialist.

[HumAnIze]

@iambiguous

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

…Nietzsche thinks that the adoption of life-denying beliefs is an unconsciously deployed coping strategy, utilised by individuals weary of life and unable to engage effectively with the world.

Well, if one believed this, what does that tell us about the limitations placed on philosophers in attempting to explore any beliefs about life? To the extent that our subconscious and unconscious minds play an important role in how we interact with the world around us, how much of those interactions are then “beyond our control”? Especially when coupled with the parts of our brain related to instinct and drives…all of the primordial “id” stuff.

And taking a leap of faith to autonomy?

And to some extent, this strategy works. If the disengaged, world-weary individual adopts the belief that there is a higher purpose to life around which she might meaningfully orient her life and action, she will likely experience an alleviation of her weariness with life and re-engagement with her world.

She and millions more…

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r … traditions
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p … ideologies

…like her. Objectivists I call them. Those able to anchor their Self morally, politically and/or spiritually to one or another religion or ideology or Ism. And, in having been one myself for the bulk of my life, I know what it’s like to have it all crumble away. And here I am hoping to find someone able to restore it all again.

Yet by adopting the belief in a higher purpose, Nietzsche argues that such a person is merely coping. While her investment in this belief secures her survival, it secures little else. Though she staves off that psychological form of life-denial Nietzsche deems ‘suicidal nihilism’, she is not thereby able to grow and flourish.

Or, as I put it, nihilism can be used by some to “liberate” them from one or another rendition of “What would Jesus do?”. It’s a trade-off. If you are able to convince yourself that there is a higher meaning and a higher purpose to living your life, that can be enormously comforting and consoling. Especially if it includes immortality and salvation. But it also anchors – chains? – you to a set of options ever and always in sync with the One True Path. Nihilism expands your existential options considerably. But there is nothing that you can attach those options to in order to bring back the comfort and the consolation you once sustained as an essentialist.

The irony of seeing Nietzsche act like he’s fighting nihilism.

[iambiguous]

The Dark Knight
Todd Walters reports on justice, rebellion and random acts of violence in Gotham City.

The Joker is an unconventional villain waging an asymmetric war, and in confronting him Batman feels compelled to push the boundaries of law and morality farther than he ever thought would be necessary. For example, in addition to engaging in torture, he builds a phone surveillance system to locate the Joker, despite the glaring violation of civil liberties that comes from listening in on the telephone calls of everyone in the city.

What does this remind you of? Dick Cheney and the “terrorists”, right? To waterboard or not to waterboard? Did they go too far at Abu Ghraib…or not go far enough?

Nihilism construed in regard to ends more or less than means? Only many still deem those as nihilists who, in regard to ends, are anything but nihilists to those like me. The Nazis and the Communists become nihilists even though they base their behaviors entirely on a political ideology. The terrorists become nihilists even though many of them are religious fanatics.

It’s just that with comic book characters the contexts can become all that much more extreme.

However, he does acknowledge this violation, and has the system destroyed after it has served its purpose. But the specter of Caesar has begun to descend, and Bruce realizes that the game may almost be up: “I’ve seen what I would have to become to stop men like him,” he says. Batman needs to pass on the mantle of justice, and he wants to pass it to Gotham’s revered District Attorney. But the Joker has other ideas.

The moral erosion of Harvey Dent is the most unnerving plot line in The Dark Knight. His fall from grace goes far beyond the psychological torture described above…but this is better left for the film to reveal.

All that is really revealed here is the at times enormous gap between American democracy as I encountered it in my high school civics text and the reality that is crony capitalism in sustaining the interest of the ruling class. Both in terms of economic policy at home and foreign policy abroad. Wall Street and K Street in cahoots with the politicians who are bought and paid for each election cycle. What pain and suffering can the Jokers of this world cause and then sustain next to the actual “powers that be”?

[iambiguous]

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

This notion to which Nietzsche hopes to bring his reader’s attention – that a change in certain life-orienting beliefs or value commitments can provoke profoundly life-denying changes in one’s emotions and motivational states, and ultimately hinder one’s flourishing – makes good sense.

Yes, but it makes considerably more sense to some when ascribed to one’s circumstances in life rather than one’s philosophy. If enough existential variables in your life go south – health, relationships, finances etc. – not only is your flourishing hindered, but your very “will to live” itself can begin to crumble. Whereas if your objectivist philosophy of life collapses – God or No God – you can still sustain a life filled to the brim with experiences and relationships that fulfil you…that make your life well worth living.

If you were once energised by your belief that you participated in some transcendent purpose beyond yourself – perhaps the Christian God’s divine plan for your life – and you come to believe that there is no such purpose after all – perhaps you no longer believe in God – you lose a life-animating force. If that was the primary animating force of your life – or if you have no other animating force – you will feel unmoored, demotivated, disengaged from the world you thought you knew; your desire and/or ability to go on living as before may be compromised.

Yes, this can be the case. No doubt about it. For some, to lose God or to abandon a cherished political ideology or a philosophy of life can become so overwhelming, there is no coming back from it. This too is rooted existentially in dasein. Each of us come to anchor our Self in these objectivist fonts from different frames of mind and given different sets of experiences. I myself lost God and Marxism and socialism. Even existentialism in terms of imagining that a life could be lived more or less “authentically”. In regard to value judgments “I” am now fractured and fragmented. But I was able to “carry on” given all of the things in my life that do still fulfil and sustain me. Experiences that simply do not need a “transcendent purpose beyond myself.”

As Nietzsche puts it in his On the Genealogy of Morality, in such a case, there is a real risk that your ‘physiological capacity to live’ will decrease. If, furthermore, you continue to value such a purpose despite your disavowal, as scholar Bernard Reginster points out in The Affirmation of Life, feelings of existential despair – which can obstruct an individual’s ability to effectively engage her world, pursue her goals, and grow in her pursuits – are sure to follow.

Yes, from time to time “existential despair” creeps up on me. I think back on the years when I too was able to anchor my Self in some overarching Meaning and Purpose. And, sure, I wish that somehow I could get it back again. But it is still the existential parameters of my life that most rivet my own occasional distress and despondency. The part about oblivion for example.

[iambiguous]

For Friedrich Nietzsche, nihilism is a terrible psychological problem – a coping mechanism with deadly consequences
Kaitlyn Creasy

Teasing out these different senses of nihilistic life-denial is necessary in order to understand just how dire the problem of nihilism is on Nietzsche’s view. What is problematic about nihilism is not the adoption of surprising and controversial new beliefs or the rejection of conventional moral values.

On the contrary, for any number of men and women, it is precisely these controversial No God beliefs…beliefs precipitating the rejection of conventional moral values…that confronts them with all manner of problematic consequences: how ought one to live? And thus the birth of any number of secular dogmas…both political/ideological and philosophical/deontological.

If an individual can hold what looks to our eyes like a nihilistic belief – perhaps that there is no purpose to life – but continue to find life worth living and grow in her form of life, then this is a sign of psychological flourishing.

Exactly. Nihilism as a philosophy need not become a part of one’s life at all. Or even if someone does accept that their own life is essentially meaningless, there are still any number of experiences they can pursue that make their day to day existence fulfilling. Millions go about living lives that are flourishing without ever giving Nietzsche a single thought.

And then on a more ominous note the psychological flourishing of the sociopath. Nihilism taken to the extreme. It’s just that some sociopaths are more familiar with Nietzsche than others. Some are the way they are because of the circumstances in their lives. They don’t spend much time thinking about why they are that way. Others do go down deeper…intellectually, philosophically…and actually rationalize/justify being sociopaths in a No God world.

In such a case, this apparently nihilistic belief poses no problem at all. Instead, whether various beliefs we adopt or intellectual stances we inhabit count as problematically nihilistic has to do with the psychological dynamics that both produce and are produced by those beliefs.

And how is that not rooted existentially in dasein…in the lives we’ve lived and live now.

The fundamental problem of nihilism consists in the damaging psychological dynamics it involves. The attitudes we typically associate with nihilism – such as those we find in The Big Lebowski or No Country for Old Men – are important to notice or disrupt only when they indicate or produce damaging emotions and motivational states.

Whoa…

Comparing the three buffoons in The Big Lebowski…

“Walter: No, Donny, these men are nihilists, there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

…with Anton Chigurh in No Country For Old Men?!

Chigurh seems in part to be just another sociopathic thug…but every time he flips that coin he is reminding us of something about life that does go deeper: the Benjamin Button Syndrome manifesting itself in a hitman.

You never really know when you meet someone new whether he or she is a sociopath. Someone out to use or abuse you for their own selfish gratification. Someone that, if things become dire for you, you can’t reason with. You can’t explain to them the part about categorical and imperative moral obligations.

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

And of that coin, one side more persuasive than the other as said:

[Meno2 (Meno_)]

Mark 12-14

[iambiguous]

10 Reasons Why “No Country for Old Men” Is A Nihilistic Masterpiece of American Cinema
by Hrvoje Galić

Friedrich Nietzsche, who died in 1900, wrote in his book “Will to Power”: “What I relate is the history of the next two centuries. I describe what is coming, what can no longer come differently: the advent of nihilism. This history can be related even now; for necessity itself is at work here.” Nietzsche defines nihilism as a process in which “the highest values devalue themselves.”

The “the highest values devalue themselves”? Of course, values are something that we create. They don’t create themselves. And just as there are reasons why we value some things and not others, there will be reasons why we choose instead to devalue some things and not others. Which is why an “intellectual contraption” of this sort will only really make sense when it is situated out in a particular community of men and women. What specifically do they value and why. What might happen to prompt them to change their minds and devalue what they once did value?

With Nietzsche of course what changed is that we killed God. Or, rather, some did. And, among other things, killing God requires us to “think up” another possible moral font that we can turn to in order to justify one set of behaviors over another. But: what if there is no secular equivalent? Or [perhaps] worse, what if, in fact, many hopelessly conflicting fonts come along and we can’t be sure which one comes to closes to God.

And, in any event, No God, and no immortality and salvation. And that in and of itself changes everything.

He believed that the advent of nihilism is an unstoppable process; the “preparations” for it had been taking place for decades, in art, philosophy, and history itself. Morality was a great antidote against nihilism, but those values are, according to Nietzsche, put in question; the Enlightenment failed to provide us with a substitute, thus nihilism is a logical conclusion of our realities.

On the contrary, the Enlightenment is the classic example of how, once God is no longer the center of the universe, any number of Humanisms can then scramble to take His place. But alongside the Enlightenment, the capitalist political economy surfaced. And that changed everything as well. With capitalism the moral compass shifted dramatically from the village and the community to the family and the individual. More and more things revolved around the market. And with the advent of the industrial revolution came nothing short of staggering changes for human interactions.

What of morality now in this brave new world?

He also writes: “The philosophical nihilist is convinced that all that happens is meaningless and in vain.” The spirit of a lack of meaning is omnipresent in “No Country for Old Men”, although Javier Bardem’s character Chigurh attempts to overcome nihilism and create meaning in the characters’ squandered lives, as it is suggested in the novel.

In fact, many of the characters here reflect this sea change that has unfolded over the centuries. The obsession with money. And with all of the material things that money can buy. That’s the whole point of creating sheriff Ed Tom Bell. He’s there to remind us of how things once had been. It was still capitalism back in his day but somehow the capitalism embedded in the 1950’s had morphed hideously into “late capitalism”…a postmodern dystopia where almost everything really could be “rationalized”. And a world where more and more the sociopaths were popping up everywhere.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Ha!!!

This will suffice to give her an ego boost that will keep her posting for months.
I want her to never stop.
The internet is impoverished when insanity is prevented from contributing.

Imagine a party of serious thinkers exchanging opinions over dinner and drinks…boooring, especially when one knows intellectuals are a product of conventional thinking and can only repeat - albeit with more sophisticate language and eloquence - what their indoctrinations have instilled in them. they are, in fact, dependent on the very system that educated and cultivated them.
In this pompous soirée, release a few babbling women, raised to be feminists, and a rogue crazy person, suffering from some kind of mental illness, and then sit back and watch how the cocktails turn to cocks and pussies releasing pheromones and signaling their worthiness

[HumAnIze]

I suppose that all hinges on the fact that you really don’t have anything interesting to contribute, and you do not expect anyone else to either.

[Lorikeet (Satyr)]

Ha!!
Ummmm, yeah…