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.