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”.