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What Nihilism Is Not

100 points by anarbadalov 7y ago

zdragnar 7y ago
It has been posted on here before, but since it is relevant and I enjoyed it think it is worth mentioning: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/ https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/
lacker 7y ago
An interesting article. I feel like, especially in the era of social media, nihilism is underrated at the margin. Perhaps we should all believe in fewer beliefs.
newfangle 7y ago
I think this article is a waste of time. Rather than using actual sources the author uses scenes from mtv highschool sitcoms to prove their point. Also the author injects their personal bias into everything.
- danans 7y ago
  What's wrong with MTV highschool sitcoms? There's a lot to be learned from the artifacts of pop culture.
- annamargot 7y ago
  I think there’s a difference between illustrating an idea and proving a point. When illustrating an idea, It might be sensible to use relatable examples that make the concept easier to grasp. I don’t see that an attempt to prove a point or persuade in and of itself. I do however believe that if you disagree with the greater piece, it could be easy to pick on this kind of example to create the appearance of childishness / lack of seriousness. An easy win but not necessarily with merit.
evdev 7y ago
I think if your concept of nihilism holds that Socrates believing that justice is inherently good is nihilistic, it's not a very useful take on nihilism.
- Barrin92 7y ago
  I think it's actually a great take. In my opinion there always has been something downright creepy about justice. The way some people talk about justice and the good society is eerily similar to Norman Bates in American Psycho or corporate modernity which the movie mocks. There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying people actually pacifies them. I think the author is right that there is something liberating about pessimism and cynicism because they refuse to play, actually challening and mocking whoever claims to know what is just or correct.
  - yepguy 7y ago
    You just took Socrates out of the conversation, though. I think the point is that you can only call Socrates a nihilist by refusing to treat him seriously. From the article: > Thrasymachus’s cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the “Republic” trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachus’s cynicism that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism. The logic seems to be that such an invisible world is obviously false - so obviously false that not even Socrates himself could believe it. But the absurdity of calling Socrates a nihilist is easy to see as soon as you give that invisible world a little credibility, even if only to say that Socrates could have found the idea plausible.
    - skolskoly 7y ago
      Yeah I was a bit taken aback when reading that part and became increasingly concerned that the author didn't know what he was talking about. Imagine your friend asks you to count the windows on a building, so you count the rows and columns and multiply them. When he asks you how you did it so fast, you tell him, and he responds with something like: "Oh, I didn't realize you were a Nihilist." He then explains that mathematics is immaterial, and therefore non-existent. You believing in such a thing apparently makes YOU the Nihilist? No. Nihilism is not about holding supposedly "empty" beliefs. If anything, it's the opposite; Nihilism would hold that these beliefs in the immaterial are themselves empty. Your friend might be a Nihilist, but you certainly aren't.
__s 7y ago
Nihilist: the payoff matrix is zero, people have been brainwashed to perceive a non-zero payoff matrix Pessimist: the payoff matrix is negative Cynic: players refuse to cooperate, so we're stuck playing with a net negative result Apathetic: this game is boring
- mirimir 7y ago
  Maybe nihilist also says "let's play a different game".
- defertoreptar 7y ago
  Nihilist: the expected value is 0. I'll play just for the hell of it. Pessimist: the expected value less than or equal to 0. It's a meaningless game of chance, and it doesn't matter what you do. Existentialist: the expected value is 0, but if you score 10 points, we'll call it a win. Cynic: you think that the expected value is positive. You idiots only act like you're not playing to win.
amitport 7y ago
"Nihilism: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless;" Oxford. Concise and seems pretty clear to me. While the article is well written, it doesn't really adds much IMO.
- mirimir 7y ago
  "Life is empty and meaningless, and it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything."
- kawakoliz 7y ago
  Citing an entire university system (or the press I can’t tell)? Why not the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy? It’s very high quality and trivially citable with a url.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    It probably refers to the Oxford Dictionary.
- Aperocky 7y ago
  > life is meaningless This is actually objectively true, our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars. Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however.
  - jariel 7y ago
    "> life is meaningless This is actually objectively true" Definitely not 'objectively true'. It's only 'objectively true' from a narrow materialist perspective, and there are other ways to look at it. "our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars. Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however." This is really quite some contradiction. First - the materialist assumption (which I would say is a fallacy, or rather it's only partly true) which postulates that the universe is merely energy/matter bouncing around according to laws ... ... and second - then the acceptance that 'it's meaningful to ourselves'. Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or 'conscious'). Contemplate for half a second that the expression of life is the meaningful, real thing, and that materiality is just the measure of the matter it's expressed in, and that science is just a tool for that. Or at least that's another, pretty reasonable way to consider it. And there are definitely other ways.
mirimir 7y ago
Huh. I did maybe a couple decades of applied nihilism, as presented by Landmark Education. It helped me a lot, given that I'm bipolar and prone to pessimism and depression. So this makes sense to me: > If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism. But not this: > Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it. As Landmark taught it, it's not so much hiding from despair as cultivating the awareness that despair is an illusion. That is, despair isn't about what happened. It's about our story about what happened. And our stories by default just reflect our programming. This does, however, but it's too ambiguous: > But the nihilist has feelings. It’s just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing. It's not that it's "nothing", exactly. It's that it's indeterminate. By default, it's however we've been programmed. But it can be whatever we choose freely.
- fernly 7y ago
  That would be https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/ https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/ ? I'd never heard of it/them. It asserts "designed to bring about positive, permanent shifts in the quality of your life—in just three days", but you mention "couple decades". Comment?
  - mirimir 7y ago
    Yes, that's them. And yes, the Forum lasts three days. But there are many other courses. Most lasted just one weekend. Some were one weekend a month for maybe six months. One lasted almost a week (Six Day). And for much of that time, I was taking seminars that met more or less weekly. Those are often focused on enrolling everyone you know in Landmark. But leaders have considerable discretion, and some of them focus far more on content. The prices are all reasonable. The Wisdom Courses are considerably more expensive, but also more fun.[0] 0) https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/advanced-programs/wisdom-courses https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/advanced-programs/wisdom-c...
- oarabbus_ 7y ago
  What is "applied nihilism"? I've not heard this term before.
pc2g4d 7y ago
Nihilism is a complicated subject. Like feminism, it's a word that means a wide range of things to different people. One person's take on nihilism obviously is their operating definition more than a single decisive statement on the subject.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  Nihilism has been a fad in the last 5 years. (I blame Rick and Morty) A lot of these "nihilists" that I've met use it as an excuse to be apathetic or even low-level belligerent, or to not put a mental filter on their disjointed thoughts. But it's not that they never gave a damn about anything; it's that they're either bored or were let down in some way by the establishment. I discovered nihilism before I even understood that it was a thing. I came to a realization that, until I had some clear evidence to the contrary(even then I'm not sure I could let go of my skepticism), there is effectively an exception to every rule that we conceive of and that our view of existence is almost completely tainted by the way in which we perceive it. Thus, I have to accept that people in my reality are also perceiving reality in an entirely unique way, in which case I can't truly begrudge them when they act out. Essentially, I became a moral nihilist because there's no way I can reconcile my view of the world with idea that morals are objective and not contingent on circumstance. (which isn't to say that I'm a moral relativist) I doubt that most people who call themselves nihilists are truly nihilists or even have the kinds of views on nihilism that I do. It's an identity that most people arrive at not through their own inward exploration but as a response to the world acting upon them. I would argue that's true of most belief systems, though it's probably more transparent with nihilism since it's the rejection of something, so it's not as if there's a coherent doctrine that so-called nihilists can use to bullshit others.
  - jariel 7y ago
    Morals don't need to be objective to be valid.
    - ravenstine 7y ago
      I don't disagree with that.
incompatible 7y ago
Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved through natural selection; morality and expectations originate with peoples attempts to control how other people behave as mediated by power structures in society.
- anongraddebt 7y ago
  I've not infrequently found nihilism intellectually attractive. Usually, something like political nihilism. One problem that I think has long been overlooked is the foundation of human rights. Only in the past roughly five years has there been much scholarly contribution on the matter. What could possibly ground human rights? And if they have no ground, then aren't they simply the same as the preference for, say, peeing standing up vs peeing sitting down?
  - incompatible 7y ago
    Human rights are just a concept that humans have come up after thousands of years experience with systems of laws. The fact that some societies manage to do without them shows that they aren't really essential. Edit: Or to put it another way, ideas about legal systems can evolve over time, by analogy to how biological systems can evolve. Ideally, we'd be looking at what works and what doesn't and adopting best practices.
  - analbumcover 7y ago
    Human rights are just an exercise by Western Society in self-aggrandizing entitlement.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  There would be nothing stopping a "divine being" from creating a meaningless world, but they approach things from the other direction. The world as they can see it has no meaning, so there would be no reason to believe there is a designer.
charleskinbote 7y ago
> In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept... I found the irony here rather amusing.
- MacsHeadroom 7y ago
  There's no irony in that quote. Nihilism is predicated on the existence of meaningfulness. It merely holds that meaning is a subjective experience. That's not to say that meaning is relative or that it isn't real. This may be difficult to grasp at first. But consider this analogy which grasps the objective nature of a more concrete subjective experience: When you gaze up at the sky and see two birds it is objectively true that you are having a subjective experience of two birds in the sky above you (whether you're hallucinating or not) and not one bird or two elephants. There's nothing relative about it and it's very much a real experience. Cogito ergo sum, after all. Likewise, under nihilism meaning itself is a subjective experience with quantifiable objective properties. Specifically, meaning is a quantitative (something objective) measure of experiences which are the most highly connected (ie. significant) to other experiences from a subjective perspective. For example, if you experience prayer as meaningful to you, whether you're delusional or not about it's meaningfulness to you or in general, then it is objectively true that you are having said real non-relative experience of meaning. For more insight, see A Nihilists Guide to Meaning: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/ https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/
himaraya 7y ago
Rather tautological article.
airesearcher 7y ago
Nihilism is a logical fallacy and to believe in it is utterly delusional. To assert “nothing” is to contradict the assertion. To assert “nothingness“ or that “everything is nothing” or that “nothing exists” is actually just a form of materialism in which the concept of a void is reified as just another kind of thing. If someone was truly a nihilist they would have to refute nihilism, for nihilism could not possibly exist, nor could nothing or any nothingness be established. Nihilism is logically impossible.
- boomboomsubban 7y ago
  This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article, and the concept of "nihilism" has more to it than a literal translation of the Latin base word.
blamestross 7y ago
The author doesn't actually seem to demonstrate an understanding of nihilism or of pessimism. Most of classical philosophy is predicated on _something_ in the universe having an intrinsic purpose or value. They require an "uncaused-cause" of moral values. Nihilism is simply the rejection of inherent value or purpose to the universe or anything in it. It means the only values or purposes in the universe are non-inherent and they are things we made up. It doesn't discourage you from making up values, it just discourages you from claiming they are inherently right for some reason. For a nihilist, hearing somebody ask how things are "good" or "bad" in a nihilist viewpoint is like an atheist being asked why they act morally without a god to act as judge. It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance.
- d0100 7y ago
  > It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance. Not behaving according to your made-up reasonableness? If there is no absolute line, then the only thing that matters is being the current top-dog
  - blamestross 7y ago
    I'm ok with them deciding on different morals that me. It's the inability to decide morals for themselves I find unsettling.
skolskoly 7y ago
I wasn't satisfied with the essay, so I thought I'd share my understanding of Nihilism. This is coming from someone who has never read Nietzsche so take it with a grain of salt, I'm curious to know where I might be off. First, I think we've all most commonly seen the "colloquial" form of Nihilism, which is a sort of despair over a lack of meaning in life. I'm pretty sure most people are aware that this is oversimplified, but it is partially grounded in actual Nihilism. The emphasis is put on despair, but the despair isn't the philosophy, just a product of it. To sum up Nihilism in a sentence: reality lacks inherent meaning, and any meaning we attempt to fulfill is ultimately chosen, not given to us. Importantly, most of the sense of purpose we see as being "real" comes from our desire to continue existing, (hence Existentialism.) But, existence is a choice. You simply choose to continue to exist, or you don't. (In which case you die.) This is the main insight which makes Nihilism disturbing. Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand.
- brazzy 7y ago
  >Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand. Only if you assume that only "inherent" or externally supplied meaning or purpose is valid. Why make that assumption, though?
  - skolskoly 7y ago
    Well, that is what Nihilism explores. Under Nihilism we can still have a sort of right and wrong, but only with respect to goals. The goals you pick, are of course arbitrary. However, reality sort of strong-arms us into continuing our existence as a precondition to choosing any other goal (aside from death), and in that sense all other goals become subordinate to that one. I guess there are some other ways to interpret it, but regardless, the implications of this vary from somewhat Utopian (Transhumanism) to very Dystopian (The Borg.) I'm not a Nihilist but if I were I wouldn't be too happy about it.
- IggleSniggle 7y ago
  I won't speak to what "colloquial Nihilism" is because I think this will be highly dependent on your personal experiences. I think you're basically right about what nihilism is, but I don't find the main insight to be disturbing at all. I never truly felt free, liberated, until I had that insight. Prior to that insight, in young adulthood, I explored Hedonism and Existentialism, but it turned out that the secret is to just stop caring about it all so much and just live/die/whatever. Let it be. It brings me joy to not care if I live or die, though my instincts will tend towards keeping me alive. It brings me joy to not care if I succeed or fail, although it's fun to Try sometimes. I enjoy trying to do right by others, raise good kids, but I don't worry about it when I fail. It's just a ride; people get on, people get off.
alexashka 7y ago
I'm not sure what the author is trying to achieve by defining words that already have perfectly acceptable definitions.
rhyzom 7y ago
ok, i finally understand exactly what nihilism concretely refers to now. a state of being similar to the one of the hollow human replicas in "the invasion of the body snatchers"... so, that's what i've been referring to all this time lately when i use the phrase "delirium and drift"... it's not stupidity i've been referring to, but nihilism it seems. explains a lot. dostoevsky's use of the term now suddenly becomes rather disturbing in its 19th century russian context. either way, thank you. that was maybe somehow useful and somewhat insightful in helping me diagnose the surrounding world going clinically/criminally insane..
stanfordkid 7y ago
I used to be really into philosophy, until the revelation hit me that philosophy is ultimately ontological: it names ways of thinking -- suppose living life is like painting a painting. Philosophy, then, is a theory of aesthetics. Sure it can be handy, but at the end of the day you need to create a painting. How much time you spend reading about aesthetics deducts from your time actually painting and experimenting. I think the author doesn't look at the drawbacks of nihilism completely -- nihilism is a blank canvas as opposed to something like paint-by-numbers. Ultimately the choice of nihilism is still personal. We are all given a blank canvas to start. What kind of painting do you want to hang up? Nihilism is basically saying that no theory of aesthetics is better than any other. Is this really true? Would you paint random dots on the canvas? Surely circles are more meaningful than scribbles?
HelloSunday 7y ago
Landmark was never banned in France or anywhere else.

100 points by anarbadalov 7y ago

It has been posted on here before, but since it is relevant and I enjoyed it think it is worth mentioning: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/ https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/

lacker 7y ago

An interesting article. I feel like, especially in the era of social media, nihilism is underrated at the margin. Perhaps we should all believe in fewer beliefs.

newfangle 7y ago

I think this article is a waste of time. Rather than using actual sources the author uses scenes from mtv highschool sitcoms to prove their point. Also the author injects their personal bias into everything.

danans 7y ago
What's wrong with MTV highschool sitcoms? There's a lot to be learned from the artifacts of pop culture.
annamargot 7y ago
I think there’s a difference between illustrating an idea and proving a point. When illustrating an idea, It might be sensible to use relatable examples that make the concept easier to grasp. I don’t see that an attempt to prove a point or persuade in and of itself. I do however believe that if you disagree with the greater piece, it could be easy to pick on this kind of example to create the appearance of childishness / lack of seriousness. An easy win but not necessarily with merit.

evdev 7y ago

I think if your concept of nihilism holds that Socrates believing that justice is inherently good is nihilistic, it's not a very useful take on nihilism.

Barrin92 7y ago
I think it's actually a great take. In my opinion there always has been something downright creepy about justice. The way some people talk about justice and the good society is eerily similar to Norman Bates in American Psycho or corporate modernity which the movie mocks. There is a thin line where justice crosses over into complacency, maintaining order or just being a hollow PR slogan that instead of rallying people actually pacifies them. I think the author is right that there is something liberating about pessimism and cynicism because they refuse to play, actually challening and mocking whoever claims to know what is just or correct.
- yepguy 7y ago
  You just took Socrates out of the conversation, though. I think the point is that you can only call Socrates a nihilist by refusing to treat him seriously. From the article: > Thrasymachus’s cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the “Republic” trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachus’s cynicism that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism. The logic seems to be that such an invisible world is obviously false - so obviously false that not even Socrates himself could believe it. But the absurdity of calling Socrates a nihilist is easy to see as soon as you give that invisible world a little credibility, even if only to say that Socrates could have found the idea plausible.
  - skolskoly 7y ago
    Yeah I was a bit taken aback when reading that part and became increasingly concerned that the author didn't know what he was talking about. Imagine your friend asks you to count the windows on a building, so you count the rows and columns and multiply them. When he asks you how you did it so fast, you tell him, and he responds with something like: "Oh, I didn't realize you were a Nihilist." He then explains that mathematics is immaterial, and therefore non-existent. You believing in such a thing apparently makes YOU the Nihilist? No. Nihilism is not about holding supposedly "empty" beliefs. If anything, it's the opposite; Nihilism would hold that these beliefs in the immaterial are themselves empty. Your friend might be a Nihilist, but you certainly aren't.

__s 7y ago

Nihilist: the payoff matrix is zero, people have been brainwashed to perceive a non-zero payoff matrix Pessimist: the payoff matrix is negative Cynic: players refuse to cooperate, so we're stuck playing with a net negative result Apathetic: this game is boring

mirimir 7y ago
Maybe nihilist also says "let's play a different game".
defertoreptar 7y ago
Nihilist: the expected value is 0. I'll play just for the hell of it. Pessimist: the expected value less than or equal to 0. It's a meaningless game of chance, and it doesn't matter what you do. Existentialist: the expected value is 0, but if you score 10 points, we'll call it a win. Cynic: you think that the expected value is positive. You idiots only act like you're not playing to win.

amitport 7y ago

"Nihilism: the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless;" Oxford. Concise and seems pretty clear to me. While the article is well written, it doesn't really adds much IMO.

mirimir 7y ago
"Life is empty and meaningless, and it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything."
kawakoliz 7y ago
Citing an entire university system (or the press I can’t tell)? Why not the stanford encyclopedia of philosophy? It’s very high quality and trivially citable with a url.
- claudiawerner 7y ago
  It probably refers to the Oxford Dictionary.
Aperocky 7y ago
> life is meaningless This is actually objectively true, our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars. Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however.
- jariel 7y ago
  "> life is meaningless This is actually objectively true" Definitely not 'objectively true'. It's only 'objectively true' from a narrow materialist perspective, and there are other ways to look at it. "our life are not different to the laws of physics then a rock on the surface of Mars. Our life is meaningful to ourselves, however." This is really quite some contradiction. First - the materialist assumption (which I would say is a fallacy, or rather it's only partly true) which postulates that the universe is merely energy/matter bouncing around according to laws ... ... and second - then the acceptance that 'it's meaningful to ourselves'. Consider what 'ourselves' (i.e. life, consciousness) are - something that's by definition not possible to describe with 'physics' because we've ruled it out (energy and matter acting according to rules cannot be 'aware' or 'conscious'). Contemplate for half a second that the expression of life is the meaningful, real thing, and that materiality is just the measure of the matter it's expressed in, and that science is just a tool for that. Or at least that's another, pretty reasonable way to consider it. And there are definitely other ways.

mirimir 7y ago

Huh. I did maybe a couple decades of applied nihilism, as presented by Landmark Education. It helped me a lot, given that I'm bipolar and prone to pessimism and depression. So this makes sense to me: > If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism. But not this: > Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it. As Landmark taught it, it's not so much hiding from despair as cultivating the awareness that despair is an illusion. That is, despair isn't about what happened. It's about our story about what happened. And our stories by default just reflect our programming. This does, however, but it's too ambiguous: > But the nihilist has feelings. It’s just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing. It's not that it's "nothing", exactly. It's that it's indeterminate. By default, it's however we've been programmed. But it can be whatever we choose freely.

fernly 7y ago
That would be https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/ https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/ ? I'd never heard of it/them. It asserts "designed to bring about positive, permanent shifts in the quality of your life—in just three days", but you mention "couple decades". Comment?
- mirimir 7y ago
  Yes, that's them. And yes, the Forum lasts three days. But there are many other courses. Most lasted just one weekend. Some were one weekend a month for maybe six months. One lasted almost a week (Six Day). And for much of that time, I was taking seminars that met more or less weekly. Those are often focused on enrolling everyone you know in Landmark. But leaders have considerable discretion, and some of them focus far more on content. The prices are all reasonable. The Wisdom Courses are considerably more expensive, but also more fun.[0] 0) https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/advanced-programs/wisdom-courses https://www.landmarkworldwide.com/advanced-programs/wisdom-c...
oarabbus_ 7y ago
What is "applied nihilism"? I've not heard this term before.

pc2g4d 7y ago

Nihilism is a complicated subject. Like feminism, it's a word that means a wide range of things to different people. One person's take on nihilism obviously is their operating definition more than a single decisive statement on the subject.

ravenstine 7y ago
Nihilism has been a fad in the last 5 years. (I blame Rick and Morty) A lot of these "nihilists" that I've met use it as an excuse to be apathetic or even low-level belligerent, or to not put a mental filter on their disjointed thoughts. But it's not that they never gave a damn about anything; it's that they're either bored or were let down in some way by the establishment. I discovered nihilism before I even understood that it was a thing. I came to a realization that, until I had some clear evidence to the contrary(even then I'm not sure I could let go of my skepticism), there is effectively an exception to every rule that we conceive of and that our view of existence is almost completely tainted by the way in which we perceive it. Thus, I have to accept that people in my reality are also perceiving reality in an entirely unique way, in which case I can't truly begrudge them when they act out. Essentially, I became a moral nihilist because there's no way I can reconcile my view of the world with idea that morals are objective and not contingent on circumstance. (which isn't to say that I'm a moral relativist) I doubt that most people who call themselves nihilists are truly nihilists or even have the kinds of views on nihilism that I do. It's an identity that most people arrive at not through their own inward exploration but as a response to the world acting upon them. I would argue that's true of most belief systems, though it's probably more transparent with nihilism since it's the rejection of something, so it's not as if there's a coherent doctrine that so-called nihilists can use to bullshit others.
- jariel 7y ago
  Morals don't need to be objective to be valid.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    I don't disagree with that.

incompatible 7y ago

Nihilism goes hand-in-hand with atheism, doesn't it? If you don't believe that the Universe is operating according to the scheme(s) of some kind of "divine being(s)", it's hard to see where any "meaning" would come from. It's just mindless and possibly deterministic motion. That is unless you can somehow derive "meaning" as an emergent concept and see it as significant. Desires originate in biology that has evolved through natural selection; morality and expectations originate with peoples attempts to control how other people behave as mediated by power structures in society.

anongraddebt 7y ago
I've not infrequently found nihilism intellectually attractive. Usually, something like political nihilism. One problem that I think has long been overlooked is the foundation of human rights. Only in the past roughly five years has there been much scholarly contribution on the matter. What could possibly ground human rights? And if they have no ground, then aren't they simply the same as the preference for, say, peeing standing up vs peeing sitting down?
- incompatible 7y ago
  Human rights are just a concept that humans have come up after thousands of years experience with systems of laws. The fact that some societies manage to do without them shows that they aren't really essential. Edit: Or to put it another way, ideas about legal systems can evolve over time, by analogy to how biological systems can evolve. Ideally, we'd be looking at what works and what doesn't and adopting best practices.
- analbumcover 7y ago
  Human rights are just an exercise by Western Society in self-aggrandizing entitlement.
boomboomsubban 7y ago
There would be nothing stopping a "divine being" from creating a meaningless world, but they approach things from the other direction. The world as they can see it has no meaning, so there would be no reason to believe there is a designer.

charleskinbote 7y ago

> In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept... I found the irony here rather amusing.

MacsHeadroom 7y ago
There's no irony in that quote. Nihilism is predicated on the existence of meaningfulness. It merely holds that meaning is a subjective experience. That's not to say that meaning is relative or that it isn't real. This may be difficult to grasp at first. But consider this analogy which grasps the objective nature of a more concrete subjective experience: When you gaze up at the sky and see two birds it is objectively true that you are having a subjective experience of two birds in the sky above you (whether you're hallucinating or not) and not one bird or two elephants. There's nothing relative about it and it's very much a real experience. Cogito ergo sum, after all. Likewise, under nihilism meaning itself is a subjective experience with quantifiable objective properties. Specifically, meaning is a quantitative (something objective) measure of experiences which are the most highly connected (ie. significant) to other experiences from a subjective perspective. For example, if you experience prayer as meaningful to you, whether you're delusional or not about it's meaningfulness to you or in general, then it is objectively true that you are having said real non-relative experience of meaning. For more insight, see A Nihilists Guide to Meaning: https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/ https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/

himaraya 7y ago

Rather tautological article.

airesearcher 7y ago

Nihilism is a logical fallacy and to believe in it is utterly delusional. To assert “nothing” is to contradict the assertion. To assert “nothingness“ or that “everything is nothing” or that “nothing exists” is actually just a form of materialism in which the concept of a void is reified as just another kind of thing. If someone was truly a nihilist they would have to refute nihilism, for nihilism could not possibly exist, nor could nothing or any nothingness be established. Nihilism is logically impossible.

boomboomsubban 7y ago
This is addressed in the first paragraph of the article, and the concept of "nihilism" has more to it than a literal translation of the Latin base word.

blamestross 7y ago

The author doesn't actually seem to demonstrate an understanding of nihilism or of pessimism. Most of classical philosophy is predicated on _something_ in the universe having an intrinsic purpose or value. They require an "uncaused-cause" of moral values. Nihilism is simply the rejection of inherent value or purpose to the universe or anything in it. It means the only values or purposes in the universe are non-inherent and they are things we made up. It doesn't discourage you from making up values, it just discourages you from claiming they are inherently right for some reason. For a nihilist, hearing somebody ask how things are "good" or "bad" in a nihilist viewpoint is like an atheist being asked why they act morally without a god to act as judge. It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance.

d0100 7y ago
> It is mildly horrifying to see somebody else unable to behave reasonably without made-up guidance. Not behaving according to your made-up reasonableness? If there is no absolute line, then the only thing that matters is being the current top-dog
- blamestross 7y ago
  I'm ok with them deciding on different morals that me. It's the inability to decide morals for themselves I find unsettling.

skolskoly 7y ago

I wasn't satisfied with the essay, so I thought I'd share my understanding of Nihilism. This is coming from someone who has never read Nietzsche so take it with a grain of salt, I'm curious to know where I might be off. First, I think we've all most commonly seen the "colloquial" form of Nihilism, which is a sort of despair over a lack of meaning in life. I'm pretty sure most people are aware that this is oversimplified, but it is partially grounded in actual Nihilism. The emphasis is put on despair, but the despair isn't the philosophy, just a product of it. To sum up Nihilism in a sentence: reality lacks inherent meaning, and any meaning we attempt to fulfill is ultimately chosen, not given to us. Importantly, most of the sense of purpose we see as being "real" comes from our desire to continue existing, (hence Existentialism.) But, existence is a choice. You simply choose to continue to exist, or you don't. (In which case you die.) This is the main insight which makes Nihilism disturbing. Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand.

brazzy 7y ago
>Philosophically, if our existence has no purpose, then it seems that everything else we believe and value is built on a foundation of sand. Only if you assume that only "inherent" or externally supplied meaning or purpose is valid. Why make that assumption, though?
- skolskoly 7y ago
  Well, that is what Nihilism explores. Under Nihilism we can still have a sort of right and wrong, but only with respect to goals. The goals you pick, are of course arbitrary. However, reality sort of strong-arms us into continuing our existence as a precondition to choosing any other goal (aside from death), and in that sense all other goals become subordinate to that one. I guess there are some other ways to interpret it, but regardless, the implications of this vary from somewhat Utopian (Transhumanism) to very Dystopian (The Borg.) I'm not a Nihilist but if I were I wouldn't be too happy about it.
IggleSniggle 7y ago
I won't speak to what "colloquial Nihilism" is because I think this will be highly dependent on your personal experiences. I think you're basically right about what nihilism is, but I don't find the main insight to be disturbing at all. I never truly felt free, liberated, until I had that insight. Prior to that insight, in young adulthood, I explored Hedonism and Existentialism, but it turned out that the secret is to just stop caring about it all so much and just live/die/whatever. Let it be. It brings me joy to not care if I live or die, though my instincts will tend towards keeping me alive. It brings me joy to not care if I succeed or fail, although it's fun to Try sometimes. I enjoy trying to do right by others, raise good kids, but I don't worry about it when I fail. It's just a ride; people get on, people get off.

alexashka 7y ago

I'm not sure what the author is trying to achieve by defining words that already have perfectly acceptable definitions.

rhyzom 7y ago

ok, i finally understand exactly what nihilism concretely refers to now. a state of being similar to the one of the hollow human replicas in "the invasion of the body snatchers"... so, that's what i've been referring to all this time lately when i use the phrase "delirium and drift"... it's not stupidity i've been referring to, but nihilism it seems. explains a lot. dostoevsky's use of the term now suddenly becomes rather disturbing in its 19th century russian context. either way, thank you. that was maybe somehow useful and somewhat insightful in helping me diagnose the surrounding world going clinically/criminally insane..

stanfordkid 7y ago

I used to be really into philosophy, until the revelation hit me that philosophy is ultimately ontological: it names ways of thinking -- suppose living life is like painting a painting. Philosophy, then, is a theory of aesthetics. Sure it can be handy, but at the end of the day you need to create a painting. How much time you spend reading about aesthetics deducts from your time actually painting and experimenting. I think the author doesn't look at the drawbacks of nihilism completely -- nihilism is a blank canvas as opposed to something like paint-by-numbers. Ultimately the choice of nihilism is still personal. We are all given a blank canvas to start. What kind of painting do you want to hang up? Nihilism is basically saying that no theory of aesthetics is better than any other. Is this really true? Would you paint random dots on the canvas? Surely circles are more meaningful than scribbles?

HelloSunday 7y ago

Landmark was never banned in France or anywhere else.