nihilism

What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz

Yes, depending on how you differentiate them, that can be the case. As, for example, I do above. If your pessimism revolves around personal experiences – circumstances – that have left you in the proverbial toilet, you may well be far beyond the reach of optimism. But, given that a philosophical nihilist can still live a rich and rewarding life, he or she can sustain their optimism as long as “for all practical purposes” it makes sense to.

Also, some nihilists embrace “moderation, negotiation and compromise” as, politically, the best of all possible worlds. And that almost always revolves in turn around democracy and the rule of law. Which means a nation that does not practice might makes right or right makes might as its governing principle. And that certainly strikes many as a more optimistic reality.

Here again, given what context? For those who embrace might makes right [the autocrats in Russia or China or North Korea] or right makes might [the theocrats in Iran or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan] the glass is always filled right to the top. But only they get to say what the glass is filled with. And others are optimistic or pessimistic depending on how they think and feel about what is in the glass. But a nihilist of my own ilk rejects both autocracy and theocracy. If he or she is optimistic it all revolves around circumstances and in being fortunate enough to live in a democratic nation. Though, again, given dasein, each of us as individuals might react to the world around us in very different ways…living very different lives with very different options.

And that is of fundamental importance in my view. There’s a lot more you can endure if you genuinely believe that on Judgment Day you will earn your just reward…immortality and salvation. And even without that for many political ideologues, the fact that you are on the side of Truth and Justice “here and now” can make any trials and tribulation all the of more bearable.

no one cares.

in case you didnt notice.

huh

What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz

Of course: the Holden Caulfield Syndrome.

On the other hand, how is being cynical really any different from being pessimistic? It is one thing to be cynical about the world around you when that is derived from personal experiences such that, time and time again, circumstances and the people in them have let you down. But it’s another thing altogether to root your cynicism philosophically in the assumption that the circumstances themselves are by and large existential contraptions and that people act out lives rooted in ever evolving and ever changing historical and cultural and personal interactions. There is no one way in which to assess, evaluate and judge people and things so as to actually root doubt and distrust out.

People are “fake” because they are basically indoctrinated from the earliest of age to act out behaviors that are in accord with “society”. Then those who embrace one or another moral, political or religious dogma so fiercely they become all but caricatures…cartoon characters…utterly predictable.

“Cynicism is a pessimistic outlook on a human beings capacity to make decisions that are moral, or ethical. Cynicism has overall doubt about peoples nobility, and social values. Nihilism on the other hand, may argue that there is no morality at all; in other words, no action is inherently good or bad.” quora

Again, however, in what way is this applicable to each of us as individuals? Are you cynical because you note how many people are basically just hypocrites? You do believe in objective morality, but others merely pay lip service to it?

After all, in the capitalist political economy so much human interaction revolves around “what’s in it for me?”. Competitive and selfish behavior is rewarded. How to reconcile that with “the common good”?

Nihilists on the other hand, more or less expect that sort of thing. There is no “one size fits all” ethical narrative or political agenda. So, yes, of course people are going to be all up and down the idealistic or the ideological spectrum. And, in fact, when the idealists and the ideologues are not being hypocritical, they can instead become dangerous once in power.

What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz

In regard to this, I am inclined to agree. The cynics I’ve met over the years [and I am one of them] could in fact be rather optimistic about their own life. You simply keep your life revolving around things that bring you pleasure and fulfillment and satisfaction. You don’t anchor your life to any particular philosophy. And, yes, you can become rather disdainful of those who not only anchor their own life to one or another objectivist dogma – philosophy of life – but seem determined as well to bring everyone else into the fold.

Yes, if you are willing to anchor Pessimism and Cynicism and Nihilism to your very own existential assumptions regarding what they mean, then you get to make distinctions like this. I am more inclined myself towards pointing out how complex and convoluted such things can be when it pertains to one or another individual living what can be one or another very different life. Nihilism from my own subjective vantage point revolves more around what in a No God world seems to be a lack of any essential meaning and purpose in human interactions.

On the other hand…

As a philosophical cynic myself, this makes sense up to a point. But since philosophies of life and sets of circumstances can get all tangled up here going from individual to individual, each of us will end up being cynical in their own way. For me, my own cynicism tends to take aim at the objectivists among us. They become dangerous when, once in power, they go after those who don’t or won’t share their own beliefs.

What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz

Same thing.

Given a set of circumstances, what in particular are you apathetic about? Do you consider this apathy philosophically? Are you convinced it is reasonable to feel apathetic about it? Are you convinced further that if others thought it through, they too would feel apathetic about it?

It could be anything. Apathetic about sports? about sex? about a job? about politics? about philosophy?

Circumstances experienced differently by different people yields more or less apathy. Whereas from a nihilistic frame of mind as some construe it, i.e. human existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless, what is the point of committing yourself to anything?

But, again, who really thinks that way? Sure, someone might. And, yes, they might conclude that the only appropriate reaction to living in such a world is suicide. Or, as with Camus, to “revolt” against the absurdity of life itself.

But this is no less embedded existentially in dasein.

In other words…

Okay, but, going from individual to individual, when does any of this become nihilism? How is nihilism itself not a personal feeling rooted in a personal frame of mind rooted existentially in dasein. That’s why some nihilists might opt for suicide while others opt for living life to the fullest. As sociopaths, for example.

On the other hand, how is apathy itself not a feeling? Someone either feels apathetic about this or that or about everything or they don’t. Caring is, in turn, a feeling. For me, nihilism – “the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless” – revolves around the extent to which meaning here is construed existentially or essentially.

And, either way, there are no less any number of options open to the nihilists. That’s all embodied in dasein.

In a free will world, of course.

What Are the Five Theories of Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

Yes, conversationally, nihilism is often construe by many to be a particularly gloomy, pessimistic, cynical frame of mind. After all, in the absence of God [or His secular equivalent], what could possibly be gloomier than living in a world where all things [however horrifically construed by most] have already been rationalized by, among others, sociopaths.

Or, ironically enough, by the moral objectivists. Though here, of course, the Kingdom of Ends is used to rationalize “any means necessary”. That’s why the Nazis were deemed to be Good by some and Evil by others. The Final Solution is actually embraced by the True Believers as a moral crusade, but perhaps the death camps themselves went too far? Or fascism is rational, but it has nothing to do with the Jews?

On the other hand, conversationally, nihilism can also be embraced in a positive and constructive manner. One can argue that it frees us from the tyranny embedded in the One True Path mentality. A nihilist is not anchored to one or another religious or ideological or deontological set of prescriptions and proscriptions. He or she can instead champion “moderation, negotiation and compromise” as a more appealing political agenda.

Here the crucial focus often revolves around different interpretations of “authenticity”. For the existentialist, this often pertains to the belief that “existence is prior to essence”. You are thrown out into a particular world at birth and for years those around you are intent on indoctrinating you…brainwashing you [with the best of intentions] to embrace one or another set of moral and political and spiritual dictums. Whereas true authenticity comes about only in living your own individual life and choosing for yourself that which seems more or less authentic.

Okay, note some nihilists, but since there is no God or Plato or Kant around to guide you to the most rational and virtuous of behaviors, how does that not come to be embodied instead in the particular parameters of a particular life? You come to believe what you are predisposed to believe existentially and others come to completely conflicting assessments.

Then what?

What Are the Five Theories of Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

And it is best explored theoretically because sans sim worlds/dream worlds and the like, there appears to be no getting around the fact that there is a world around us. And one way or another we have to make sense of it. And then all the parts in the world that are clearly either this or that. Not only can we attach meaning to them, but the meaning itself is applicable to all of us.

Okay, but does that make our day to day interactions here on planet Earth any less substantive and substantial? Yes, it seems to be the case that if we mere mortals are not able to attach our life [and the meaning we give it] to one or another God or to one or another “spiritual path”, what does anything at all ultimately mean given the truly staggering vastness of “all there is”? And even here that includes the assumption that we have the capacity to freely opt for the meaning we do ascribe to our lives “out in the world” with others.

Same thing, of course. The universe may be completely indifferent to us, but our families and our neighbors and our communities and our employers and our governments, etc., certainly are not. Yeah, “theoretically” or “philosophically” human existence may be essentially meaningless ontologically and purposeless teleologically…but our obligations don’t just go away. And the bills still have be paid.

So, sure, technically, this…

…may all be true [and I believe that it is] but “so what?” For whatever personal reasons in a free will world, we choose to continue to do what we can from day to day to day to get the most pleasure and the least pain out of our “human existence”.

We just happen to be the only species around able to explore the meaning of that in places like this.

nihilism = beta

No, seriously.

What Are the Five Theories of Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

In fact, I call myself a moral nihilist. Why? Because what can possibly be more important in our lives than in pinning down a meaning and a purpose such that we come to anchor our self in a foundation that permits us to differentiate good from bad, right from wrong behavior? No such foundation – God or No God – and those who embrace might makes right can prevail. Or the sociopaths who anchor morality in “me, myself and I” and can make life a living hell for others. And it is in rejecting objective moral absolutes that the best of all possible worlds can revolve instead around democracy and the rule of law.

Or, sure, differentiate it another way:

Either way and, from my own frame of mind, each of us as individuals will come to prefer one rather than another direction based largely on the manner in which I construe the nature of dasein out in a particular world understood in a particular way. The crucial point being that given nihilism as the starting point there does not appear to be a way [philosophically or otherwise] to concoct the most rational direction. And depending on the ever-shifting contexts in our actual lived lives, we will all slide in and out of them in various complex and convoluted ways.

What Are the Five Theories of Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

The bottom line here would seem to revolve first and foremost around the gap between what we think we know in what is presumed to be a free will world, and all that we clearly do not know about human knowledge itself going back all the way back to what we do not know about the existence of existence itself. Then the truly speculative parts where some posit sim worlds and dream worlds and solipsism and the like.

Me? It’s straight back to the distinction I make between objective knowledge in the either/or world – knowledge able to be demonstrated empirically and communicated among ourselves with little or no contention – and knowledge in the form of “personal opinions” regarding conflicting moral and political and spiritual issues.

To argue that everything we know can only be deconstructed into personal opinions rather than objective truths still seems ridiculous to me. It’s only when we grapple to connect the dots between the either/or world and the imponderables embedded in the truly mind-boggling Big Questions that, sure, none of us really have anything approaching a TOE. Let alone the capacity to demonstrate it “for all practical purposes”.

Again: We can’t know what?

There are clearly things that we do know whereby we can sustain interactions from day to day to day in such a manner that we don’t get into heated disputes regarding literally everything that we do.

I think the most intriguing question here pertains to whether or not the human brain itself has the capacity to finally grasp an understanding of existence itself.

Though one thing seems certain: that all of us here will be long dead and gone before, if we can, we do.

Not counting those able to think themselves into accepting that what they now believe “in their head” is true need be as far as they go to in order to make it true.

For me, what’s most crucial is not what might be deemed meaningful to any particular individuals but the times when what has become meaningful to them generates conflicts with others who find different meanings in them. Particularly in regard to moral and political and spiritual value judgments.

That’s why, for me, nihilism revolves largely around conflicting goods.

Then the part where something is meaningful to us and by and large is meaningful in the same way to others. Or if precipitating a different meaning, this is derived by and large from the manner in which I construe the self as rooted existentially in dasein.

Given a particular context.

What Are the Five Theories of Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

And, therefore, in my view, it is by far the most important component of a nihilistic perspective. Why? Because the government [might makes right, right make might or democracy and the rule of law] encompasses that aspect of our lives where behaviors can actually be prescribed or proscribed…by law or by edict. And most governments have at their disposal police power and military power in order to enforce their own political agenda.

Thus in nations like Russia and China, where state capitalism prevails, “show me the money”, a profoundly amoral political agenda, can basically be the overall aim of those political nihilists in power. And in America, where crony capitalism prevails, it is a powerful impetus behind both economic and foreign policy.

In other words, the advent of mercantilism and international trade, configuring historically into full-blown capitalism into the industrial revolution.

BUT:

There is also another way in which political nihilism is often construed: by the anarchists…

These guys: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russian_nihilist_movement

[b]“He’s a nihilist,” repeated Arkady.

“A nihilist,” said Nikolai Petrovitch. “That’s from the Latin, nihil, nothing, as far as I can judge; the word must mean a man who… who accepts nothing?”

“Say, who respects nothing,” put in Pavel Petrovitch, and he set to work on the butter again.

“Who regards everything from the critical point of view,” observed Arkady.

“Isn’t that just the same thing?” inquired Pavel Petrovitch.

“No, it’s not the same thing. A nihilist is a man who does not bow down before any authority, who does not take any principle on faith, whatever reverence that principle may be enshrined in.”[/b]

Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

Here, everything generally shifts to the other end of the spectrum. The emphasis is placed on the individual and on communities that dispense with the state – the government – altogether. If anyone is going to dictate how we should live it will be us ourselves.

Yet, in my view, dasein is no less a crucial factor regarding the moral and political agendas embraced subjectively/existentially by the anarchists out in particular worlds understood in particular ways. One can be a political nihilist and yet still be convinced that how one construes conflicting goods reflects the most rational and virtuous assessments.

And the bottom line is that, historically, the anarchists have never really prevailed as a potent political force.

What is Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

Or, quite possibly, the most realistic school of philosophy. And then the part where nihilists can actually use the philosophy to enhance their lives. How? By accumulating many, many more options when everything that you think, feel, say or do is not anchored to one or another set of “moral obligations”.

Complicated because it always comes down to just how far one goes in saying that something means “nothing”. At least given a world where many, many, many things not only mean something but mean exactly the same thing to all of us. Really, imagine human interactions in a world where everyone believed that everything means nothing. Or means only what it does to them.

Over and over again: that crucial distinction between essential and existential meaning.

Why?

Because if we cannot demonstrably establish philosophically/ethically/politically behaviors that are in fact essentially/universally/objectively rational and virtuous in a No God world, then who gets to says what “the best of all possible worlds” is?

And then back to this:

On the other hand, how to respond philosophically to, among others, the sociopaths.

Nihilists still eat food. mic drop

conspicuously drops caramel apples

Apples fall to the ground.
Do they have self-meaning?

-lifts mic back up-

But then our input’s likely derailment…

-sets mic back down-

What is Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

Obviously. After all, from one single individual all the way up to a government, what is an authority but an entity claiming the capacity to know all. An authority on all that is said to be rational and virtuous. That’s why those from Satyr over at Know Thyself to the theocrats in Iran or Afghanistan to Kim Jong Un in North Korea embrace their own rendition of authoritarianism. Not only is there One True Path to enlightenment, but, in fact, there must be because they are already on it!

Not on it yourself?

Go ahead, note how they react to that.

In the modern world however this gets tricky. Why? Because those who own and operate the most powerful nations around the globe are often not in the least interested in objective morality. They basically preside over an amoral hierarchy. Their main interest is accumulating wealth and power. In fact, it is only when you get down to individual authoritarians like Satyr…those who have utterly no impact on the world around us…will you still find folks committed to a “my way or the highway”, “one of us”/“one of them” moral and political dogma.

Again, “in theory” this frame of mind is one thing. In practice, however, it can manifest itself in as many different ways as there are nihilists grappling with the human condition in a No God world. Yes, some nihilists will configure politically into anarchists and go after the authorities around them. But others become sociopaths interested in fulfilling only their own selfish gratifications.

And then those like me “fractured and fragmented” to the point that the whole point itself is to accumulate as many fulfilling distractions as possible…“things to do” to keep what you have thought yourself into believing about your own essentially meaningless and purposeless existence at bay.

What is Nihilism?
Curated by TheCollector

Or, to put it another way, for some: nihilism begins with the death of God. However, for the moral nihilists, only in regard to the is/ought world.

To wit…

God is dead. What then is the secular equivalent of Sin if not another “totalizing system” revolving around philosophy or ideology or one or another equivalent of God. Of course, the faithful still managed to include God in the “human condition” because, after all, what can science tell us about moral truths or the truly Big Questions. Also, what does science have in the way of immortality? As for the complex, nuanced and unpredictable interactions of mere mortals, all of that is simply subsumed in God’s mysterious ways. He is the part that, in the end, seamlessly intertwines the parts into the whole.

And, indeed, the rest is history. No God and there are really only two alternatives:

1] invent the secular equivalent of Him: Objectivism, socialism, Communism, fascism, anarchism. And, historically, on and on. Make that the source of all Commandments for mere mortals. Then make life a living hell on Earth for those who refused to toe the line. Then, well, “die like a man”.
2] embrace the amoral commandments of the “show me the money”, “dog eat dog”, “survival of the fittest” global capitalists. Or the “me, myself and I” mentality of the sociopaths.