nihilism

u can check out any time u like

but u can never leave…

fuck off you chomo…where the fuck did that cunt kook SATIRE get this forum from??? LMAO!!!one forum full of virgin autistic Yank neo-nazis liars sitting around playing video games at 40 and waiting for the world to end this forum a pedo tolerating fucking kooks wtf!!!I am out of here this is too much!!!a perv known to be a chomo is tolerated and spoken to like a good old friend…WTF!!!

Hmm well I think most healthy adult males have a natural erotic attraction to well developed adolescent females, but would never violate the particular laws pertaining to such things in their society… observing age of consent laws and so forth. This leaves two other types left; the healthy adult males who have this natural attraction but lie to others about it, and the unhealthy (somehow impotent or maybe with very low libidinal energies) adult males who don’t experience sexual arousal here.

The former type I laugh at, the latter type I feel pity for.

Which 1 r u, young pole?

Remember: it’s okay to admit this attraction, but not okay to act on it (normal folks I mean. I’m exempt from normality and technically stopped observing the laws in 2010. Incidentally, that was the last time I flashed anyone. I got the whole thing ass backwards).

Here let me explain. If my reason for justifying my exhibitionistic behavior is because I have become an anarchist who observes no laws after being betrayed by the state in a wrongful conviction, given a life sentence, and in losing all my property to the police (they stole it), then I would not be able to justify until after 2010, since that was the year of the wrongful conviction and everything that followed. And yet I’ve been arrested several times for misdemeanor indecent exposure long before any of this happened. Lol that’s funny shit.

The irony here is: when I am technically able to justify my lawlessness and enjoy a bit if exhibitionism, I have no more desire to do it. So that’s how I got it assbackwards.

Naw, p-youf… don’t get quiet now!

I’m bout to change ur whole shit up, son. You ain’t even gonna be able to sleep tonight u goofy ass lookin mufucka.

Goddamn if u gonna take this long then fuck it I surrender

I dont talk to chomo pervs.

Ur not even gonna try and help me through this terrible, evil affliction?

That’s just crazy. After all we’ve been through 2gether.

I swear to god if u don’t help me I’ll cut the goddamn thing off!!

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

Actually, in my view, this all gets entangled in means and ends. Then it can become particularly murky. For example, when the word nihilism pops up in the news it is almost always in regard to means…to the “terrorist” tactics deployed by the “nihilists” involved. Blowing up the World Trade center is the epitome of nihilism for some.

Again, the irony being that they do things like this precisely because they are anything but nihilist in regard to the ends behind the means. Whether they be theocrats, Communists or Nazis, it is precisely the sacred “kingdom of ends” they embrace that allow them to justify the use of “any means necessary”.

In other words, whatever that means. Ever and always going back to the elusive understanding of where genes end and memes begin. Abandoning the notion of the objectivists among us that they and only they know precisely where that is. In, among other things, one or another “ism”. Or TOE.

Here you would have to follow those who call themselves nihilists around and then when they do something that you wouldn’t do you can ask them why they did it. How they themselves make the distinction between doing it because it seems like the reasonable thing to do in order to benefit them or because on a more visceral level they just went for it “in the moment”. Like, say, the sociopaths among us.

In defense of Nihilism in the modern day
Ayush

Here, nihilism isn’t all that different from all the other “isms”. There is what you believe about your place in the world around you and there is the actual set of circumstances you find yourself in. Life might have no essential meaning for you but there is plenty of existential meaning around. So, sure, you might think your life is ultimately without purpose…but that doesn’t necessarily make the food you eat less delicious, or the music that you listen to less sublime, or the friendships you accumulate less fulfilling, or the sex you have less satisfying.

This is a point I often come back to. Once you are locked into moral and political objectivism – in either a God or No God world – your options are either/or. You either do the right thing or the wrong thing. It’s just a matter of what the reward is. It could be pats on the back from all the rest to our own “one of us” clique…or it could be Heaven itself. Though, sure, the psychological comfort and consolation here is no small thing. Still, that won’t increase your options any. Your freedom still revolves around one of another dogmatic agenda.

This sort of assessment is always going to be rooted subjectively in dasen. As though when you capitalize Nihilism you are configuring it into the Real Thing. Existentialism starts with the assumption that existence is prior to essence. But that will always mean different things to different people in different sets of circumstances.

Everything here comes down you how radical you insist on being in regard to what is said to be meaningful. Here the sociopath can scoff at the existentialists with their alleged “authenticity” bullshit and insist that absolutely nothing is beyond justifying if morality itself is said to revolve around me, myself and I in a No God world.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Bingo. With me it was Walt Fuchs. Chair of the philosophy department at Towson State University. Along with his then wife Joann Fuchs. Only it was probably me that framed our discussions more along the lines of nihilism. Active or otherwise. That being the case because back then they were more committed to Marxism than I was. I was beginning to stumble head over heels into the implications of the “rival goods” that William Barrett had introduced me to.

Yes! Back again to that. The manner in which the assumptions embedded in nihilism regarding the existence or lack thereof of essential meaning, can have a profound impact on the manner in which you approach options in your life. The more convinced you are that one or another “ism” – fascism, socialism, paganism – is the one True Path the more you are obligated to act accordingly. You sustain the comfort and consolation of believing in the one True Path but in any number of contexts you can find yourself “stuck” on it.

As for “fulfillment”, that get’s trickier. At least for me. Yes, if you can think yourself into embracing a purpose in your life through nihilism then you need go no further. On the other hand, any number of nihilists [like me] find themselves “fractured and fragmented” in regard to that crucial meaning and purpose revolving around moral and political value judgments. And then those who rationalize a sociopathic frame of mind. You choose to pursue things based solely on the assumption that in a No God world, if it brings you pleasure and fulfilment then do it. Others be damned.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Then immediately the irony that revolves around how a nihilist might attempt to explain the meaning of that. Not that there actually is a one-size-fits-all nihilism here that all nihilists can concur with.

As definitions go, sure, this gets closer to my own rooted-existentially-in-dasein understanding of nihilism. Revolving around meaning and purpose as they pertain to “how ought one to live?” Then opposed to the dogmas of the objectivists: the perspectives of religious or political or ideological or deontological or materialist/naturalist agendas.

As for the laws of physics, well, we know how far that can be taken, don’t we?

Here though nihilism gets entangled in political economy. Hundreds and thousands of “Harvard men and women” who have no doubt gone on to become thoroughly enmeshed in a global economy owned and operated by those that I construe to be nihilists.

Nihilism in the sense that what motivates them by and large are two things:

1] show me the money
2] what’s in it for me

When it comes to that, you won’t find many fractured and fragmented personalities in, among organizations, the Bilderberg Group.

Though, sure, in regard to to any number of “social issues” or “value voter issues” they might embrace a more or less idealist/objectivist frame of mind. The part, in other words, rooted in dasein.

As for what we should fear, is it not still the fulminating fanatics at either end of the political spectrum. Here for example those who rally around things like “The Coalition of Truth”, or who spout one or another TOE in which you are either “one of them”…or else.

“Else” depending only on how much power they have to enforce their own authoritarian/totalitarian dogmas.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

It is certainly the nihilism that I have avoided. On the other hand, come on, once you do manage to convince yourself that in a No God world, your very existence itself is essentially – essentially – meaningless and purposeless, it is likely that you will come at least in the vicinity of depression. And I am no exception here either. How can it not be depressing at times to contemplate the supposed “brute facticity” of everything. You squash a bug and think of all the billions of years that had to pass in order that it existed at all. And then just like, it’s flattened. And you know that one way or another nature will flatten you too. Back to the oblivion from whence you came.

Okay, but, once again, this is always dependent on the actual situation that you find yourself in. Do you have the option to embody this freedom? Will others allow you to embody it as you would like to? Are you someone just months or weeks or days away from oblivion itself? Are you able to reconcile yourself [as I must] with accepting a fractured and fragmented “self” in confronting conflicting goods?

In other words, ever and always the gap between discussing “active nihilism” philosophically as the author does here and actually having to live with it in the particular world you find yourself in.

And, again, those either indoctrinated into believing in objective morality or who have come on their own to accept it – religious or secular – still have a measure of comfort and consolation that “active nihilism” can never provide.

Yes, there is that side of the coin. But, on the other side of it, are those “active nihilists” who tend more toward the ominous and destructive lives rooted in, among other things, the sociopathic mentality. Or rooted in the mentality of those who own and operate the global economy…lives more or less dedicated to the credo “show me the the money” and “what’s in it more me?”

And to hell with all those who get in their way.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

How is all of this not profoundly embedded in the manner in which I construe the meaning of moral nihilism in my signature threads? How does it not pertain to the meaning you ascribe to your life? Just look at how many millions of men and women are thoroughly indoctrinated as children to see the world around them given particular historical, cultural and community standards…and then more or less take that all the way to the grave.

But: what makes the “modern age” different is the extent to which so much gets sucked up into the global economy that intertwines so many in embodying the mantra “show me the money”. It’s all about “what’s in it for me”. Moral nihilism on a [now] epic scale. That and the fact that through such things as modern communication and the internet many, many more people have access so many different lifestyles and points of view. You can talk about a global village but who is kidding whom that it resembles villages of old, where there was always a place for everyone and everyone was always in it…year in and year out. Not many of them left around.

Then there are those of my ilk who speculate not only about subjective and subjunctive points of view, but frames of mind that can become fractured and fragmented. So, for me, it can often come down to one of two paths. Finding those who might convince me to reject moral nihilism [active or otherwise] or finding those who might empathize with me in accepting that their own life is construed to be essentially purposeless and meaningless.

My very own experience with some here. And the results have been, well, rather bleak.

Finding Purpose Through Nihilism
By Daniel L. Leonard at the Harvard Crimson

Conclusion:

Let’s go back again to the distinction:

“Passive nihilism is more the traditional ‘belief that all is meaningless’, while active nihilism goes beyond judgement to deed, and destroys values where they seem apparent. Passive nihilism signifies the end of an era, while active nihilism ushers in something new.” Vered Arnon

Now, please, don’t tell me we can avoid the need to explore this given particular sets of circumstances.

First, the distinction has to be made between 1] existential meaning that comes about [of necessity] whenever two or more people are interacting and moral and political conflicts come about as a result of conflicting goods, and 2] essential meaning in which through the tools of philosophy or science or theology human beings are able to establish the obligatory behaviors of all who wish to be thought of as rational and virtuous human beings.

The point isn’t whether you stay in the old era or start a new one, but what actually unfolds between flesh and blood human beings given this “new” agenda that precipitates consequences that some will embrace and others will deplore. It’s not for nothing that many insist that Hitler and the Nazis were “active nihilists” in introducing their own “brave new world”.

Whereas for me, Hitler and the Nazis were just the opposite of nihilists. They were very, very dangerous fulminating fanatic objectivists. At least for those unable to demonstrate that they were “one of us”.

Sure, maybe. Given the nature of dasein not much can be completely ruled out for any particular “active nihilist”. But I suspect that for those not willing to fit right in to his or her “new” meaning, things might become rather problematic. Especially if someone fancies himself or herself to be an Übermensch.

“What if you started out instead by concluding that, in the absence of God, all things really are permitted?”

The first thing you’d have to do is to answer the question, “permitted by whom?” You have to make sense before you can philosophize. Maybe this question makes sense, and I don’t. I just don’t see how it does.

God seems to permit everything. Never heard of God stopping anything from happening. Are you saying that everything is permitted, with or without God?

No offense meant to any incoherent nihilists out there.

F

Prompting me [of course] to note…

“Permitted by whom?” given what particular historical, cultural and experiential context? And given who has the actual power to enforce one rather than another set of behavioral proscriptions?

Philosophers here are like the Pope, right? No actual army to back up their own deontological assessments.

And whether it makes sense to someone or not is only interesting to me given an assessment of a particular context in which there are in fact conflicting moral and political value judgments.

I’m saying that with an omniscient God [as most denominations describe Him] He knows everything. So, if He deems particular behaviors to be Sins that will be confronted on Judgment Day, there is no getting away with committing them; as can be the case for mere mortals in a No God world. And with an omnipotent God [as most denominations describe Him] He is there to assure us that those who commit Sins will be punished.

More to the point, He becomes the transcending font able to make that crucial distinction between moral and immoral behavior.

Where is the mere mortal equivalent of that? Where is the definitive philosophical argument that establishes once and for all that anything from the Holocaust to abortion is necessarily immoral?

Which behaviors do you believe are beyond rationalizing? Given a human history to date where not much hasn’t been. And what of the sociopaths who start with the assumption that in a No God world, morality revolves around self-gratification? Or the nihilists that own and operate a global economy that surely revolves around the amoral dictum “show me the money”?

Any incoherent nihilists among us?

Come forward and Faust and I can explore given a particular context what it means to be an incoherent nihilist.

“Permitted by whom?” given what particular historical, cultural and experiential context?

Now, in the U. S., in your own experiential context will suffice.

Again, we will still need a context. One in which I argue that a behavior I choose is permitted given the components of my moral philosophy, while another argues that it is not permitted given the components of their moral philosophy.

My own experiential context “here and now” revolves entirely around an imploded world. I have no experiences with others pertaining to conflicting goods in a No God world.

Instead, my aim is to explore the behaviors chosen by those who do not believe that “in the absence of God all things are permitted”. Those who are not a moral nihilist as “here and now” “I” am.

And, in particular, the moral objectivists.