nihilism

Sunny nihilism: ‘Since discovering I’m worthless my life has felt precious’
Wendy Syfret at The Guardian

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.

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.

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

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.

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

youtu.be/5iLk42uOUhg

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.

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 .

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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”?

Tell me about it! Mine too!! You know, here!!!

Well, okay, maybe not in a dozen different ways: :sunglasses:

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.

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:

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:

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:

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.

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.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

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.

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.

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:

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?

Once and for all: is this intellectual gibberish of yours just an act you perform here, a “condition”, or do you truly imagine that your points are relevant to a discussion of nihilism that needs no contexts at all…other than the “text”?

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

And all one need do is to note the manner in which “agents” construe the world around them from very different historical, cultural and circumstantial perspectives. If there really was a “universal” morality able to be either discovered or invented don’t you suppose philosophers, ethicists and political scientists would have announced it to the world by now.

Ah, but they have. Over and over and over and over and over again. Given one or another God, political ideology, deontological philosophical contraption, assessment of nature. Human history is bursting at the seams with universal moralities. Even Nietzsche, the moral nihilist, put his reputation on the line by inventing a No God teleology of sorts that revolved around the Übermensch. And isn’t this just another rendition of “right makes might”?

That’s the thing about a world that ever and always combines an ineffably complex intertwining of genes and memes in a “human condition” that never stops evolving amidst an avalanche of contingency, chance and change. As with God, if a universal morality didn’t exist it would have to be invented.

After all, look at all the renditions of it here!!

See how it works? Human interactions cannot be allowed to sink down into the “nasty brutish and short” mentality of might makes right. The fittest will survive but only because they deserve to. The masters are the masters not merely because that have the raw power to impose their will on the weak, but because they are inherently superior to the weak. It’s not for nothing that folks like Ayn Rand brought elements of Nietzsche’s thinking into their own intellectual models.

On paper, Nietzsche can be shaped and molded to fit all manner individual requirements. Again, look at all of the renditions of him here. Some by way of Satyr, others by way of Fixed Jacob and his “intellectual contraption” brood.

Therefore, we can focus in on a particular context and the Übermensch among us can inform us as to what is required of us if we wish to be included among their own own “one of us” clique/claque.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

So, it never occurred to him that individuals come in all shapes and sizes morally? That historical and cultural and experiential factors don’t play critical roles when it comes down to how all of us are indoctrinated as children to view, among other things, everything under the sun? That the “search for meaning” is deeply embedded in the profoundly problematic confluence of social, political and economic variables that any particular one of us might be immersed in? Even an understanding of nihilism itself shifts over time as new factors come into play.

I can only try to imagine Nietzsche around today reacting to the manner in which I would deconstruct this sort of thinking. Gain an understanding of what particular conflicting good? And from what particular perspective – liberal, conservative? Though, yes, reflect on our experiences. But what about the experiences of those who live lives very, very different from ours? Which set of experiences [often beyond our full understanding or control] matter most? In a sense, Nietzsche’s frame of mind mirrors the attitude of those later existentialists who spoke of living “authentically”. And, sure, up in an intellectual clouds where the “serious philosophers” live in a “world of words”, an authentic life is always so much more readily encompassed…academically.

But what of the points I raise as a moral nihilist?

Perhaps someone here who is familiar with and a proponent of Nietzsche’s own moral nihilism would be willing to discuss that with me.

Have We Regressed into Nietzsche’s “Moral Nihilism”?
Steven Mintz, aka Ethics Sage

This is the part where things get tricky. The part where “might makes right” and “right makes might” are intertwined into a moral perspective that no one is is really certain about in regard to the part where “me, myself and I” end and everyone else begins.

Unless, as a serious philosopher who really does get Nietzsche, you invent your own intellectual contraption to rip them apart.

In other words, you take your own particular leap to Übermensch status. But this is predicated on “principle”. You rise above the herd but only because you deserve to and not just because you can.

Thus we have those like Satyr and what’s left of his clique/claque at Know Thyself [and his kowtowers here] basically insisting that Übermensch status revolves entirely around their own authoritarian assessment of race and nature, gender and nature, sexual orientation and nature.

And all else they insist that, genetically, truly rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to pursue. This set of behaviors and not that set. This they then insist revolves around being a “rugged individualist”. Ah, but one who is absolutely obligated to think exactly like they do about…everything.

The irony then being completely lost on them.

Whereas, from the perspective of nihilism as “I” understand it, Richard Rorty’s “ironism” is smack dab in the middle of my own value judgments:

The antidote? Objectivism of course!

Just to update you…

I continue to follow Satyr’s posts on the nihilism thread over at KT.

As you’ll recall, I noted that I would only respond to a post of his that actually brings his “general description intellectual contraption” arguments about nihilism down to earth. In regard to gender roles and sexual orientation for example.

Nothing even remotely close so far.

In fact, here is his latest post:

So, if anyone here can reconfigure what you believe his point is here into an account of nihilism that is applicable to the life that you live and the behaviors that you choose giving a particular context please, by all means, do so.