Then we need to explore the extent to which your own subjective rendition of sunny nihilism is or is not compatible with that aspect of nihilism – the darker side – which has resulted [for me] in a fractured and fragmented “self” convinced that his own existence is essentially meaningless and getting ever so closer to oblivion.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
Nihilism has existed in one form or another for hundreds of years, but is usually associated with Friedrich Nietzsche, the 19th century German philosopher (and pessimist of choice for high school kids with undercuts) who proposed that existence is meaningless, moral codes worthless, and God is dead.
That’s one rendition of Nietzsche. Another revolves around the Übermensch. The Übermensch sets “as a goal” the “overcoming” of nihilism. How? By separating himself out from the flocks of sheep [God or No God] and, through the sheer “will to power”, rising above the herds.
Then some [like Satyr] link this to the one and the only correct understanding of human behaviors that can be described as “natural”. In other words, in sync with the one and only rational manner in which to grasp human nature itself. As they do. This can then be made applicable to race and ethnicity and gender and sexual orientation and religion and many political dogmas.
Similarly, for the Übermensch, there are any number of interpretations regarding the makeup of the Last Man.
And who really knows the extent to which it may or may not be, well, more or less true? Genes and memes become intertwined in any particular “I” out in any particular world understood in any particular way that, down through the ages, there have been hundreds and hundreds of “schools of thought” to explain the “human condition”. And, sure, there is no way for all of the others to demonstrate conclusively that it’s not yours.
This decade it’s had a cultural comeback. Visiting the central tenets it’s easy to see why. Nietzsche’s argument that “Every belief, every considering something true, is necessarily false because there is simply no true world” feels chillingly relevant as we stumble through a “post-truth” reality.
Actually, given the Blue State/Red State mentality that suffuses the current election year, there are still plenty of folks able to see the world as divided between those who are “one of us” [the true moral majority] and “one of them” [the true deceivers].
Again, in many crucial respects, there is no actual “post-truth” reality. The objective reality of the either/or world is still around. It’s just the extent to which one is able to demonstrate it.
Here is Satyr’s latest defense of objectivism embedded in genes [natural behaviors] as opposed to subjectivism embedded in memes [social behaviors]
This guy goes on and on up in the clouds of intellectual abstraction coming down to earth only in regard to trees and trunks and branches and apples. Then delving into particularly dense, abstruse reflections on “psychobabble”. Then equally obscure references to religion.
He starts out by saying that…
“Relativism reduces every element of absoluteness to relativity while making a completely illogical exception in favor of this reduction itself. Fundamentally it consists in propounding the claim that there is no truth as if this were truth or in declaring it to be absolutely true that there is nothing but the relatively true; one might just as well say that there is no language or write that there is no writing. In short, every idea is reduced to a relativity of some sort, whether psychological, historical, or social; but the assertion nullifies itself by the fact that it too presents itself as a psychological, historical, or social relativity. The assertion nullifies itself if it is true and by nullifying itself logically proves thereby that it is false; its initial absurdity lies in the implicit claim to be unique in escaping, as if by enchantment, from a relativity that is declared to be the only possibility.”
Well, not my own relativism. The laws of matter, mathematics, the empirical world, the rules of language. My own nihilism would never suggest that knowledge communicated in regard to them…in regard to material and human interactions in the either/or world…is relative to the subjective interpretation of the individual.
Then preposterous assumptions like this:
“In the existentialist universe there is no room for objective and unwavering intellection.”
Huh? Do the laws of matter, mathematics etc., not apply to existentialists? To nihilists?
And the irony is that minds of Satyr’s ilk are ever and always intent on insisting that only their own arrogant “intellections” regarding race and ethnicity and gender and sexual orientation and every other example of a “conflicting good” counts as “natural” behavior.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
While Nietzsche (and the goths you grew up with) make it all sound like a bummer, Generation Y’s and Z’s take on things is more upbeat and absurd. Modern nihilism has been honed through memes and Twitter jokes. It manifests as teenagers eating Tide pods, fans begging celebrities to run them down with their cars, and a lot of weird TV shows. Turns out the descent into nothingness can be pretty funny.
In other words, in our pop culture world, nihilism itself becomes just another adjunct of social media. Reduced to Seinfeld writ large across the entire “reality TV” mentality of each new generation. Certainly not something to be discussed…seriously? Even here I can’t those who choose to become members of a philosophy forum to examine it in terms of the behaviors that they choose in their interactions with others from day to day.
Are we witnessing a new, sunnier, generation of nihilists emerge? If meaning and purpose are overrated illusions, then so is any sense that you are special or destined for greater things. It’s a balm for a group burning out over exceptionalism, economic downturns, performative excellence, housing crises and living your best life on Instagram.
Come on, we’ve just had an election here in America in which one thing is crystal clear. That there are still millions of objectivists on both sides of the political spectrum who are not yet reduced down to the social media rendition of nihilism. On the contrary, they take the “news” very, very seriously. And “meaning and purpose” for most is still divided distinctly into “one of us” vs. “one of them”. Nihilism – especially nihilism in the manner in which I construe it – is the farthest thing from their minds.
As for nihilism as a “philosophical question” examining “I” as an existential contraption rooted in dasein, forget about it. It’s a non-starter not only for the “masses” but even for those who have an active interest in philosophy.
When we last examined Satyr’s take on nihilism I was bitching [yet again] about his refusal to bring those godawful “intellectual craptions” of his out into the world where “for all practical purposes” we could examine his argument given the behaviors that flesh and blood human beings actual choose.
Alas, my bitching has come to naught:
Nihilism is completely dependent upon and defined by words/symbols. It is, literally, nothing, without semiotics.
It’s only potency is by defining existence, out of existence - negating it linguistically - otherwise it remains impotent; giving expression to the very sensation of impotence it declares itself omni-potent.
A self-cotnradition if you remain within the contexts of its linguistic inversions.
Oh, yeah:
blah blah blah
But my challenge is still open. If anyone here does read a post of his in which he takes these “godawful intellectual contraptions” out into the real world, please bring it to my attention.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
In her collection of essays Trick Mirror: reflections on self-delusion, New Yorker writer Jia Tolentino grapples with the culture and conditions of a post-global financial crisis America. In particular, how cults of self-optimisation and identity have left us lost and apathetic. Several reviews used the term nihilistic when discussing the book, referring to both the content and how it made them feel.
Let’s be really, really clear here. When these folks speak of nihilism it bears almost no resemblance whatsoever to the manner in which I explore it on this thread. Philosophically, for example. But starting with the premise that in a No God world meaning and morality are rooted in “existential contraptions rooted in dasein in an essentially meaningless existence that ends for each of us one by one in oblivion”, is not exactly where Jia will be taking us in reacting to the “post-global financial crisis” in America. Or for that matter the extreme global turbulence brought on by the coronavirus today.
As for feeling “lost and apathetic”, it’s one thing to attach these reactions to one individual’s life that has been flushed down the toilet and another thing altogether to dismiss that life ontologically and teleologically as ultimately valueless and completely futile.
But when speaking to her earlier this year, Tolentino offered a warmer take. She admitted she found feelings of insignificance “really galvanising” for her writing, adding: “If we’re here for just a blink of the eye, and in general if nothing matters, it feels like [it’s] carte blanche to wild the fuck out. To try a lot of things, try your best to do something because the odds are so good that none of it means anything that perversely it makes me feel free to try.”
Yes. This is clearly one way in which to deal with a nihilistic frame of mind. To actually take advantage of it. Only in order to “wild the fuck out” you have to have access to both options and a willingness to accept the consequences of those the “wilding” might do harm to.
Also, the author doesn’t focus at all on the points I raise in regard to moral nihilism. The feeling of being “fractured and fragmented”. And the way in which some who “wild the fuck out” become sociopaths, making life hell for all those who come between what they want and how they choose to get it.
She didn’t see purposelessness as a poison seeping into our lives to turn us into the nihilistic baddies from the Big Lebowski. Rather she argued it had the potential to define and soothe a pained generation: “I think it’s the millennial condition. It’s this kind of ecstatic, fundamentally ironic but also incredibly sincere, unhinged quality.”
Sure, when you turn the “nihilistic baddies” into cartoon characters in a movie, the only ones to feel their wrath are cartoon characters themselves. But out in the real world don’t expect much in the way of a “ecstatic, fundamentally ironic but also incredibly sincere, unhinged quality” to prevail.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
Last year, on opposite sides of the world, two high schoolers presented TEDx talks about nihilism. Elias Skjoldborg, a junior at Hanwood Union high school in Vermont, took the stage to deliver his case for optimistic nihilism. It was aptly subtitled “Or how to be a happy emo”.
During his presentation he reminded the audience of fellow adolescents that: “If you died right now it wouldn’t make a difference, big picture. If you’d never been born no one would care.”
Okay, he starts out with the same nihilistic assumption that I do: that human existence in general and your own existence in particular is essentially meaningless. That ultimately nothing in life really matters.
And, as well, he makes another point that I do: So what? You can still find any number of activities that bring you satisfaction and fulfilment. Or what he calls happiness.
That’s the good news. “That life has no meaning is not a reason … to be sad,” he said. If our lives are needless then the only directive we have is to figure out how to find happiness in our momentary blip of consciousness. For instance, he helpfully suggested his audience get hobbies, help others, solve problems rather than creating them, and just try their best.
What he does not examine however is moral nihilism. Okay, you set out to be happy in an essentially meaningless universe. You can even use that to your advantage. How? Well, if your existence is ontologically and teleologically anchored only to that which makes you happy, then you are not anchored instead to one or another dogmatic moral and political and spiritual agenda which ever and always requires you to do the right thing.
In other words, this part…
If I am always of the opinion that 1] my own values are rooted in dasein and 2] that there are no objective values “I” can reach, then every time I make one particular moral/political leap, I am admitting that I might have gone in the other direction…or that I might just as well have gone in the other direction. Then “I” begins to fracture and fragment to the point there is nothing able to actually keep it all together. At least not with respect to choosing sides morally and politically.
…just never comes up. It’s all about being happy. And if what you choose to do in order to be happy comes into conflict with what others choose instead?
Next up: Siddharth Gupta…Confessions of an Existential Nihilist.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
Subverting the stereotype of a teen nihilist, Siddharth Gupta presented his talk “Confessions of an existential nihilist” while wearing a pink button-down shirt. The senior at Kodiakanal International school in India confessed that his belief life was worthless gave him the “opportunity to find meaning in all that I do”.
How hard is it to find meaning in life? There are countless paths you can take. In business. In the arts. In sports. In relationships. In families. In hobbies. In education. In social and political interactions. Things become meaningful here because from day to day they are attached to the satisfaction and the fulfillment that participating in all these different things can provide.
Instead, what some find hard is in anchoring existential meaning to one or another overarching essential meaning of life. An ontological and teleological font that enables you to tie all the things you do to some all encompassing meaning. Whether anchored to God or to any number of secular Humanisms. And, in failing to accomplish this, some can become quite disturbed.
And, as well, rooted in dasein, some never go searching for this at all. They are either content to feed off the gratification that their day to day commitments provide, or they choose instead to make it all about accumulating experiences that simply bring them pleasure. Hedonists for example.
Unburdened by a larger mission, he was free to seek out his own: “I still believe there is no inherent meaning in life, but I now believe that because of this, there is no reason not to give everything I have and try to create my own meaning in this most likely hollow existence.”
But here again we can still encounter the objectivists. There may be no inherent meaning, but they still manage to convince themselves that “my meaning” reflects the most rational manner in which to understand the world around us. That they come closest to the least hollow perspective on the human condition.
There are or have been any number if them here. Some religious. Some secular. But they all come here with these often elaborated thought out “theories of everything” which they then try to convince all the rest of us to embrace in turn. So, for all practical purposes, there night just as well be an inherent meaning when they comes across those who won’t or don’t accept their own .
Nihilism attracts those who are insecure about themselves, those who secretly hate themselves, and this self-hatred is expressed as narcissistic, hyperbolic displays of self-love, and high self-esteem.
On the other hand, nihilism deeply disturbs those who insist that they and only they can tell you which behaviors you must choose if you want to be thought of as a rational human being.
The ones that they choose, for example.
More to the point though are those who insist as well that only their own “intellectual” assessment of nihilism is ever to be tolerated in discussing it.
That way they never have to bring the words down out of the pedantic clouds…out into the world we interact in…in order pin down nihilism in regard to a set of circumstances where others refuse to just accept their own objectivist font.
Still, I don’t read all of the posts [both here and there] in which nihilism is discussed.
So, sure, if anyone here does come across a reference to it relating to a particular context, please bring it to my attention.
Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian
One of the many criticisms of nihilism is that it opens the door to unchecked selfishness. It’s a logical next step if you think there’s nothing to gain from life except personal happiness and pleasure. Yet for the people who have absorbed this message, the trend isn’t towards greed, but community-mindedness.
And what examples of this trend might that be? What particular communities in regard to what particular situations in which “sunny nihilism” seemed to prevail?
Anyone here familiar with situations of this sort? And: in today’s world, given the events that have been unfolding this year?
No, instead, the word nihilism is still used as a pejorative to tar those whom one is convinced are clearly part of the problem:
washingtonpost.com/opinions … story.html
nytimes.com/2020/12/11/opin … court.html
Both in terms of ends and means.
Skjoldborg urged his audience to solve problems. Gupta sought to build his own meaning. Tolentino’s whole book is an argument against self-serving, neoliberal systems that crush people lower down the economic ladder than you.
So, what can we discern from this such that we might come to grasp the one true understanding of nihilism. And how to differentiate the sunny from the cloudy rendition. Who’s “own meaning” in regard to solving what problems? And what happens when the points that I raise come into play. Not that they ever really do of course.
In the months since discovering I’m worthless, my life has felt more precious. When your existence is pointless, you shift focus to things that have more longevity than your own ego. I’ve become more engaged in environmental issues, my family and the community at large. Once you make peace with just being a lump of meat on a rock, you can stop stressing and appreciate the rock itself.
No, there is still what I construe here to be an important distinction between coming to conclude that you are essentially worthless in an essentially meaningless universe that ends for all of eternity in oblivion, and recognizing all of the many ways in which worth can be embedded in the lives we live existentially. Instead, the difficulties are derived from all of the many, many contexts in which conflicting goods become entangled in those behaviors that are attached to moral and political prejudices that are at odds.
The author went in one direction. But other more cloudy nihilists can go in very different directions indeed.
And that’s before we get to all of the dangers embedded in authoritarian objectivists who are able to secure the political power necessary to make life hell for those who are not “one of us”.
Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage
The events of last week where at least 50 people were killed and 50 wounded in an attack targeting two mosques in the New Zealand city of Christchurch was despicable. The admissions cheating scandal in the U.S. raises serious questions whether the large group of people involved know the difference between right and wrong or even care about it. Where is the moral outrage?
These two events are seen by me in very, very different ways. The Christchurch murders – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchu … _shootings – happened as a result of a a fanatical right wing racist employing “any means neccessary” in pursuit of his own “kingdom of ends”. This end being anything but nihilistic. On the contrary, it was profoundly objectivist. Only the means might be reasonably described by some as nihilistic.
As for the cheating scandal – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2019_coll … ry_scandal – yes, it might be reasonably described as something a moral nihilist might rationalize. All that mattered to the parents here was getting their kids into the best universities. Conventional morality be damned.
Given the first event, the moral outrage might be shared by those opposed to attacks on Moslem mosques. But for those [religious or otherwise] who share the political convictions of Brenton Harrison Tarrant, there is nothing to be outraged regarding at all.
These events and so many others turned my attention to whether we have, in the words of Friedrich Nietzsche, devolved into a world where moral nihilism is the brand of “ethics,” or no ethics at all exists. If so, we are well on our way down the moral slippery slope and headed for ground zero.
My point of course is that in a No God world, it’s not a question of devolving into nihilism so much as recognizing that ethics itself is merely a manifestation of the assumptions rooted in fonts such as God. Or reason. Or philosophy. Or [for some] even science itself. Human interactions require rules of behavior. Some behaviors will be rewarded, others punished. And this is rooted in historical and cultural contexts predicated in large part on the evolution of political economy.
One person’s “slippery slope” and “ground zero” is not going to be the same as another’s. Thus for some communities the slippery slope in regard to, say, gun ownership can go back and forth politically resulting in a ground zero that either prohibits private citizens from owning guns or allows them to own shotguns, machine guns, high-powered rifles, semi-automated weapons, etc.
When does all of this result in “nihilism”?
Some people still do not understand my positions even when I’ve repeated them a thousand times in a dozen different ways.
Tell me about it! Mine too!! You know, here!!!
Well, okay, maybe not in a dozen different ways:
Nihilism is a defensive reaction TO the emergence of self-cosnciuosness.
Memetics evolution proceeds from genetic evolution…and then exceeds it so as to guarantee and reinforce the sheltering effects with double and triple levels of contingency.
Allow me to translate this for you:
Nihilism is an intellectual contraption that has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to actual human interactions.
On the other hand, sure, if anyone here speaks “serious philosophy” fluently and would like to make an attempt to note its relevance to their own interactions with others, by all means, give it a shot.
blah blah blah
You know how this works.
1] He posts something at KT
2] I ridicule it as an intellectual contraption
3] he reads that and then posts yet another intellectual contraption
As though to mock me. Or, sure, to mock himself.
Here’s the latest:
Nihilism is the memetic shroud that conceals genetics.
It infects all levels of human interaction with an ideological framework that negated, i.e., denies the relevance of biology and inheritance.
Nihilism is a school of thought, a pool of memes, that dismisses genetics either completely or arbitrarily.
It is at the foundation of Abrahamic morality and postmodernism.Attitudes toward race and gender and homosexuality are by-products of nihilism.
The fact that the majority now regurgitate the lie that race and sex are social constructs is its defensive ideological response to the indifference and brutality of natural selection, and the rejection of traditional methods attempting to reinvent family and sexual relationship to accord with postmodern morality.
Now, again, for those here who speak his “serious philosophy” fluently, what on earth is he telling us here about nihilism in regard to, say, that which he and I discussed when, according to Wendy, he makes his annual “Christmas visit” to ILP.
The subjects being gender roles and sexual preference.
Here are the arguments that I made:
Now, what are we able to establish here in terms of “Objectivity bad…subjectivity good.” Insofar as rational arguments might be made in regard to behaviors deemed good/moral and behaviors deemed bad/immoral.
If, in regard to gender roles and sexual preference, something can be established as objectively true for all of us, that is something that those on both sides can agree on.
And then it would come down to our reactions [morally and politically] to that which can be demonstrated to in fact be true for all of us objectively.
And my point here is not that subjectivity is bad, but that for each of us as individuals, our value judgments in regard to gender roles and sexual preference seem to involve a complex intertwining of genes and memes as they interact over time historically and across space culturally…given any number of unique sets of circumstances that each of us as individuals might find ourselves in.
This in a world that is ever evolving in a sea of contingency, chance and change. A world in which we can never be entirely certain from day to day which new experiences or relationship or idea might prompt us to change our minds about gender roles and sexual preferences.
Again, this has already been discussed time and again. Yes, the fundamental biological purpose of fucking is to reproduce the species. And if you look at lions and tigers and bears, not much has changed over hundreds of thousands of years. But: has human sexuality been exactly the same since we were living in caves? Do human females only come into “heat” at certain times of the years so that men can battle each other – to the death? – in order to claim the exclusive right to fuck them. And then the part in human sexual relationships that involve complex emotional exchanges, deep friendships and bonding in many, many different ways. Things that gay couples can experience no less so than heterosexual couples.
In other words, is or is not human sexuality infinitely more complex and convoluted?
As I noted on another thread…
…just as a small percentage of the population is born left handed rather than right handed, who is to say that for reasons science has yet to pin down definitively, nature allows for some to be congenitally attracted to those of the same sex. Sexually, emotionally or otherwise.
And if only a relatively small percentage of the population is congenitally attracted to the same sex, how would that stop the larger percentage of heterosexuals from reproducing the species? I’m a father of a daughter myself. And she and the man she lives with have a son.
On the other hand, suppose human sexuality was such that, whenever someone even attempted to have sex with another of the same gender there was not even the possibility of feeling aroused? Nature was adamant about that in such a way that biologically we could only feel sexually aroused by a member of the opposite sex?
Or suppose nature was such that as with other species of animals there were no sexual feelings at all among human beings until the “mating season”? The fact is that sex is extremely pleasurable. And there is nothing inherently “unnatural” about human beings pursuing it for reasons other than precreation.
So, how would he construe my points here as nihilism? And how does he actually go about demonstrating that his own arguments – being just intellectual contraptions – are not lies?
How are the points I make not reasonable?
Let’s focus in on this point:
Nihilism alters the environmental dynamics that shift what mutations are advantageous, disadvantageous and neutral…most often they filter out - they socially deselect - mutations that contradict its underlying ideology/dogma…which is anti-nature.
Now, with nature, the mutations have no teleological font. Unless you believe this is God. They just happen biologically given the brute facticity embedded in the evolution of life and existence. And, depending on the context, for, say, lions as predators and zebras as prey, it’s good news for one or the other.
But it’s not like the lions and the zebras go online and, philosophically, discuss the implications of it.
It’s all basically instinct.
But, in regard to gender roles and sexual preference, how exactly does nihilism work/unfold “for all practical purposes” within our own species.
This because unlike with lions and the zebras, the “mutated” behaviors can also revolve around historical, cultural and circumstantial/experiential memes. Human beings [given free will] have the capacity to weigh in on what is thought to be or not to be “biological imperatives”.
Thus, for those animals wholly lacking in memes, biological imperatives are everything. Just not so for our own species. With human beings, gender roles and sexual preferences encompass a vast, vast panoply of conflicting options.
Naturally, as it were.
Nihilism is the mind acting no behalf of the body’s impulse to survive.
The brain evolved to multiply the probability of survival, and procreation is a form of overcoming mortality, so it becomes an additional factor in the mind’s evaluations.
Nihilism is a defensive reaction to what threatens its survival, and tis well-being. It places survival about all other considerations, above integrity, honesty, clarity etc. It prefers to not see than to see and by seeing perish.
Again, he refuses to actually make this brand new “intellectual contraption” applicable to the subjects that I proposed: gender roles and sexual preferences. Nor does he situate it out in the world of actual flesh and blood human beings interacting in another context where value judgments precipitate behaviors that come to clash precipitating in turn actual consequences that reverberate far beyond merely a world of words precipitating yet another world of words.
He is a “serious philosopher” and that is just not done!
So, all I can do is to ask anyone here who speaks “pedantic intellectual” fluently, to embody his ideas in regard to feminism and homosexuality. What makes them part of the nihilistic “modernism” that is flagrantly opposed to what nature intended.
Given that conflicting assessments of gender roles and sexuality have been around now for thousands of years and the species keeps reproducing new generations just like it always has.
Also, if we can do something – anything – and we are a part of nature, how can it be said to be “unnatural”. It is as though Nature was this actual entity that existed [like God] and you could go to it and ask if same sex fucking and women running a government was inherently and necessarily Unnatural.
Note to Satyr: You’re up at KT. And I double dare you to come down out of the clouds.
blah blah blah
Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage
Nietzsche’s view of morality assigns great intrinsic value to the flourishing of “higher man.” Higher types are solitary and deal with others only instrumentally. Thus, a human being who strives for something great considers everyone he meets along the way as a means to an end, in direct opposition to Kantian ethics. Could this be a good characterization of all the crazies in the U.S. who have shot up schools, places of worship, and in the workplace?
Who really knows if this actually is what Nietzsche meant in regard to morality. Especially when the focus does shift to a particular context. Also, from the perspective of those who do shoot up schools, places of worship or workplaces, their own motivation and intentions might be deemed by them to be anything but the embodiment of crazed behavior. In fact, for some, their behavior can be seen by them to be quite the opposite of nihilism. On the contrary, from their frame of mind their behavior, anchored to one or another “kingdom of ends” is defended as entirely moral.
Nietzsche challenges the idea of a morality as bound up with obligation, with codes and rules. He encourages individuals to think for themselves beyond conventional morality. His brand of ethics has been referred to as moral “nihilism.” Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, or nothing, which means not anything, that which does not exist. By this view, ethical claims are generally false. A moral nihilist would say that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong or right because there are no moral truths. So, murder is not wrong, but neither is it right.
Well, this moral nihilist would say that, sure, there might be an objective morality accessible to mere mortals. But this particular mere mortal here and now does not believe that there is. But: if other mere mortals [here at ILP for example] do believe that there is then let them note both an argument to encompass it and a demonstration, given a particular context, in which an attempt is made to note how “for all practical purposes” they might be able to convince others that if they wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings they are obligated to concur.
You’re up.
There are two kinds of nihilism:
1: Neutrality. Super passive. Silent. Desireless.
2: Anti meaning. Deconstructing and debunking virtually everything.
There are two kinds of nihilism:
1: Neutrality. Super passive. Silent. Desireless.
2: Anti meaning. Deconstructing and debunking virtually everything.
We’ll need a context of course.
Or are those things moot when you can encompass nihilism so succinctly in points like yours?
Context is presupposed by text
Or, aesthetically, the foreground retains focus in spite of the background.
No 'practical way to reduct or induct this pretty down to earth, presently significant conclusion. ignorance of this ‘law’ is not excusable.
Let’s recall that, with respect to nihilism, this exchange between Satyr and myself has come to revolve around his willingness to intertwine the points he raises about it with respect to both gender roles and sexual preference.
Or, sure, a “set of circumstances” all his own.
Instead, he is sticking with his “ponderous and preposterous intellectual contraptions”.
So, if you are wondering if you might be a nihilist yourself in regard to these things and you go to him for advise, here is what he will tell you:
Nihilism is the absolute - no matter how it is named and conceptualized - that is nowhere to be found, except in human minds, and negates man’s experience with the multiplicity of existence.
Nihilism is the one, totalitarian, god of Abraham, and the one all-encopassing State of Globalism.
Exclusion is certain slavery and death, because there’s nowhere to escape to. It is utter surrender to fate, for the sake of evading personal responsivity.Nihilism is the noumenon, taken literally; the absolute idea existing only in the mind, represented by words/symbols, externalizing it.
Got that?
Well, okay, if you do, please convey to us how his description here is entirely in sync with the behaviors that you choose in regard to gender interactions and sexual preference. What specifically makes you a Satyrean nihilist here?
blah blah blah