7 ms·

“Nihilism is OK” is not OK

32 points by feross 5y ago

jhanschoo 5y ago
I see a lot of declamation in this article and a lack of argument and reasoning behind those claims.
- nimvlaj30 5y ago
  I know right, lots of opinionated statements and very little to back it up. Here is just one paragraph in the intro: > Nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective. Why? > That is not OK. Why? > It also erodes our cultures’ and societies’ ability to improve lives and tackle urgent problems. Why? > That is also not OK. Why? ---- None of this is answered in the rest of the blog post.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    It reads almost like cult literature, though without any strong call to action.
  - awb 5y ago
    Probably says more about the author than about nihilism. From Google, nihilism is: > the rejection of all religious and moral principles I wonder if the author is religious and if nihilism is so contrary to the author’s core beliefs that it doesn’t even occur to them that these statements need further explanation and justification in order to be complete as a rational argument.
    - nimvlaj30 5y ago
      This was my feeling too
  - skybrian 5y ago
    It's not a blog post. It's part of an (incomplete) book. See navigation at the end.
  - jm__87 5y ago
    I am not an expert in philosophy by any stretch so feel free to poke holes in what I'm about to say, but I somewhat agree with the author's points here, assuming we take nihilism to mean "to both believe and feel nothing has meaning". I think the author may have the causation in the first point backwards though. To truly feel like nothing has any meaning, I think you must first be quite miserable - I doubt anyone first chooses nihilism and then becomes miserable because of that choice. Imagine all of your relationships, your career and all of the other things people usually care about feel meaningless - you would probably be miserable and depressed. It is one thing to believe that life is objectively devoid of meaning. It is a different thing to subjectively feel that nothing in life has meaning. If you accept that a true nihilist has to be depressed, I would agree that the third point follows. Acknowledging a depressed individual's viewpoint that it is okay to feel everything is meaningless - that this viewpoint is not indicative of a mental health issue that should be addressed - would probably erode societies ability to improve the lives of depressed individuals (assuming improvement means they suffer less). As to whether other people's suffering matters to you or not, I suppose that depends on the individual. The author seems to think it is not ok for people to suffer, but obviously not everyone would agree with them here.
    - nimvlaj30 5y ago
      I define a nihilist as someone who believes that nothing has objective meaning. The universe, relationships, and suffering have no objective meaning; in a few years anyone who remembered any of it will be dead, and its cause-and-effect consequences will be recursively finite. I wrestled with this in my undergrad, which plunged me into a depression that I had never known before. This was doubly troublesome for me because I had previously believed that God existed and had a plan for my life– some kind of universal determinism, destiny, or fate. Going from that mental model of the universe, to one in which the universe is random, cold, uncaring, and devoid of meaning is quite a shock to the mental health. My happiness came back significantly once I discovered Existentialism, which the author seems to dislike. Existentialism is the belief that while there is no objective meaning to the universe, there is a subjective meaning. I can love my wife, enjoy my job, and enjoy a few brews with my buddies. All of those matter to me, and they don't have to have universal significance. They don't have to have objective meaning. Hell, people might not even be truly conscious or free anyway. It's not going to stop me from having a good time and loving life. The author makes broad assertions with very little explanation and few references to back them up. I'm still not convinced nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective. I'm still not convinced that that wouldn't be ok from an objective standpoint (although I'd have a problem with it, subjectively). I'm not convinced that it erodes our culture's ability to tackle problems or change people for the better (in fact, maybe it's the first step). And even if it did, who is to say that isn't okay? Obviously those who lose out will not like it (subjective meaning). But there is no objective meaning to any of this. It's random, inconsequential, cause-and-effect bullshit from top to bottom. Who says it means anything at all? But if it means something to you, then that's great.
- WatchDog 5y ago
  Perhaps it's building on arguments made in the earlier 30+ parts of the series.
- glangdale 5y ago
  Seriously. I couldn't stop hearing The Dude from The Big Lebowski ("Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man") while I was reading this. An astonishing amount of the heavy lifting in this article comes from assertions that we're just mean to accept, even when they aren't even explained, much less proved: "Unfortunately, existentialism is difficult to maintain, because mostly we can’t choose meanings. Some meanings are nearly impossible to either alter or overlook, and so are some meaninglessnesses." WUT
stale2002 5y ago
Its not really clear what the author is arguing. I am not sure why if someone simply believes that they cannot prove, with the fundamental aspects of reality, that there is provable "meaning", that this automatically means that such a person will slide into some sort of existential "Catatonia". Whats wrong with just accepting that we could have unprovable axioms, that we simply take for granted? For example, I think that killing is wrong. But that is an unjustified axiom. If someone comes up to me and says "Well, technically, you don't believe that you can prove that killing is wrong", my response is simply "I don't care". People can simply be OK with having values that they care about, and accept that they will never be able to fully "prove" them in the way that hardcore philosophers might want them to be provable.
- jhbadger 5y ago
  A lot of "moral" codes can simply be justified by practicality. I think killing should be illegal, not because of some lofty ideas of the sacredness of human life, but because I don't want to be killed by somebody else. Same argument against theft -- I don't want my stuff robbed.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    Most commonly accepted morals come down to one thing: they contribute to the survival of that moral. Societies with a moral against killing thrive and spread compared to those without.
    - rramadass 5y ago
      What? Patently Wrong!
      - Talanes 5y ago
        The societies that dominate others through violence need an even more advanced moral system around killing than those that don't. "Killing is wrong" is enough to get some basic internal stability around, but to start pillaging your neighbors you need a moral code with loopholes.
croes 5y ago
"In popular use, the term commonly refers to forms of existential nihilism, according to which life is without intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose." So the whole post argues against something that most probably isn't even meant.
- rramadass 5y ago
  Exactly! The word "Nihilism" has so many aspects to its meaning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) that the author's choice of one, just smacks of intellectual laziness. He/She has a preconceived notion against which they trot out the same old untenable arguments (for deriving "Meaning") which have been effectively demolished with the rise of the "Scientific Age".
- Akronymus 5y ago
  For me, nihilism is that nothing matters, so, suffering isn't part of some grand design either. So, why not try to do your best anyways?
platz 5y ago
> But there is a better alternative. In some cases, self-described nihilists point toward "the complete stance", as this book does also. That is neither nihilist, nor eternalist or existentialist "the complete stance"? just, wow
platz 5y ago
> “Pop pomo” is partly to blame. So you're saying Jordan Peterson was right
causasui 5y ago
I generally consider myself a nihilist, but only because it's the very last stop on the bus ride of my failed attempts at religion and other philosophies. I grew up very religious and when I lost my faith in my 20s, I tried to replace it w/ absurdism and existentialism, but couldn't shake the notion that lives deep in me that ultimately, even if humanity spreads across the cosmos and we're able to find meaning in our own individual existences, the universe will inevitably suffer heat death, from which there is no eternalistic escape. These days, my morality entirely stems from the reduction and prevention of suffering, which is ultimately the only moral currency we have. This led me to veganism and anti-natalism, as the best way to prevent individual suffering is for the individual to never exist in the first place (see: David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been; or Ecclesiastes 4:2-3). Needless to say, these are wildly unpopular philosophies. In light of this, I began to come to the realization that we're all nihilists at our core. We embrace religion or other philosophies to ward it off, because it's a truly uncomfortable sate of mind, as the author notes in this post, and the only alternative is total misery until we die. And then, depending on your philosophy, perhaps a true eternal bliss awaits you in paradise! How convenient! The happy people among us are the best at this practice - lying to ourselves successfully about the true nature of reality. We don't care what gets us there, as long as we get there. All this to say: I was much happier when I believed in God.
- corpo_punisho 5y ago
  The only alternative to religious thinking is misery? That sounds very much like religion insisting upon itself, like when they claim that without the fear of god we would all be savage and immoral. It's nonsense, really. But there were a few absurd reductions in what you said, including the idea that the prevention of suffering is tenable yet somehow nihilistic. Would it not be more sustainable to focus on spreading joy instead of preventing suffering? That way you won't drive yourself crazy focusing on the negative aspects of humanity.
  - causasui 5y ago
    Or any other philosophy, where nihilism is the absence of either. In other words, religion is wonderful for those for whom it works; the same goes for existentialism (our meaning comes from within) or really literally anything else that gets you through the day. Every morning we wake up and the vast majority of us decide to not jump off a tall building. Why?
Barrin92 5y ago
the article is purely didactic and pedagogical. Nihilism is bad for society, therefore it's not okay, without nihilism there's no morality, therefore it's not okay, and so on. It's a sort of finger-wagging attitude of a parent. This purely instrumental stance of viewing the world is basically just cope. A more mature and real approach is what you could call having an honest stance towards the world. If you come to the conclusion that nihilism, of whatever form, is what describes the world best, is the correct stance to take, and so on, you ought to do it. Not because it's 'good' or 'bad', but because it's intellectually and personally honest. In the Will to Power one of the first things Nietzsche says is that we'll have to pay for 2000 years of Christianity. That is to say, the loss of absolute values and meaning is painful. Nonetheless it is necessary, because it has the benefit of being true. The widespread nihilism that the author thinks is a form of malaise is just a disorientation, having shed old values after recognizing that they're not fundamentally real.
- WatchDog 5y ago
  I think a lot of people would rather have a functioning society, built on a lie, than the alternative. I don't think Nietzsche was ever really able to come up with a great alternative to religion, and he certainly didn't seem happy about its end. > God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
  - rramadass 5y ago
    Reminds me of this passage from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. [Wolf Larsen] “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.” He shook his head slowly, pondering. “I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.” He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added: “It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.” “Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed. “Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.” “Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution. “More freely, because it costs you nothing.” “And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted. “Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”
unixhero 5y ago
Trigger warning
- rramadass 5y ago
  It took all my self-control to not throw Many Books at the Author :-)
gremloni 5y ago
Of course nihilism is bad for society but it’s the undeniable truth. Meaning is a made up word. It’s a random cocktail of hormones as a reaction to a story you tell yourself. I don’t even know why people need a “meaning” or purpose to life. Just waking up and existing is incredibly fun.
- lucky1759 5y ago
  Most people suffer everyday. Poverty, illness, war.. etc are more common than decadent Western lifestyles. The reason why religiosty is so common among poor countries is because, without religion, the logical conclusion would be to stop existing... Which is exactly the position the West was in pre-renaissance. Without religion society would never have succeeded through ages of negative utility.
  - me_me_me 5y ago
    I am not sure I can agree to this as an answer. It feels to reductionistic, humans are complex system and often none rational. Certainly religions provide utility to the followers, but I wouldn't equate wealth of a country as direct correlation to religiosity. There are wealthy countries (US, gulf counties) that are largely religious, and smaller poorer (czech rep) countries predominately atheistic. I think religion is more of an entertainment then meaning of life. in poorer counties there is less things to be occupied with. Thats where you have the festivals and celebrations. Contrast catholics in EU vs South America. Also religion can be seen as a stop gap solution to education. It provides answers to questions - knowledge (though of varying quality). The higher education the lower interest in religion, for one the science + critical thinking exposes errors and fallacies in religious texts. So religion as a source of knowledge looses appeal in educated populations.
rramadass 5y ago
The Author is basically arguing against a "Straw-man" of his own making. So the entire post/book premise is pointless. "Nihilism"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) is the one backdrop "True Reality" against which we paint our chosen "Schools of Philosophy". This is quite independent of the problems of "Consciousness" and "Free Will".
tomlockwood 5y ago
I did read the whole article but had already come to my conclusions when I read this passage: > Unfortunately, existentialism is difficult to maintain, because mostly we can’t choose meanings. Some meanings are nearly impossible to either alter or overlook, and so are some meaninglessnesses. Then there was this passage which further put the nail in the coffin: > Where existentialism said meaning must be an arbitrary individual choice, pomo makes it an arbitrary social choice. When social groups make different choices, there is no basis for negotiation, because both are equally arbitrary. Then all conflicts reduce to raw power struggles. > This “banal nihilism” is the ideological basis for much current populist authoritarianism.3 These movements are simultaneously dogmatically eternalistic and chaotically nihilistic. The tribal ”values” are absolute, and must not be questioned or disrespected; but truth, morality, and justice have no meaning beyond what we want this week. These interpretations of Existentialism and Postmodernism are so catastrophically wrong that they invalidate the entire article. A cursory reading of Existentialist discussion of "bad faith" should cover the first. For Postmodernism - first off, Postmodernism is such a loose coalition of thinkers that any totalizing statement about them, is likely, wrong (at least in part). Secondly, Postmodernism generally encourages a skepticism about all hierarchies of knowledge, including what the author describes as 'tribal "values"'. Under Postmodernism, these values are questioned and, for example, "deconstructed". My suggestion is that the author ought to stop thoughtlessly regurgitating what Mr. Jordan Peterson has to say about Existentialism and Postmodernism and expand his reading to cover the texts themselves.
Borrible 5y ago
Well, at least it makes sense. And I'm quite happy to have a sense in life.
HeyZuess 5y ago
> Nihilism includes moral nihilism, the claim that there are no morally good or bad actions. If people believed and acted on that, we’d have the nihilist apocalypse. I think this is true, morally good or bad has been a moving target for some time, they are not concrete. Rather they are derived from inner definitions, and outside definitions at a point in time, and even then questionable. While my knowledge of Nihilism is very small, but I would gather that Moral Nihilist are not rampaging through the street killing people, as while there is no concrete version of morals, there is no need to act in a manner which harms people, after all why would it matter. And now I am going back to my solipsism.
aogaili 5y ago
My personal take on this, is that life is not only meaningless, it is in fact absurd. That is to say, it is beyond reason or logic, not in a supernatural or spiritual way, no, it fails to compute or make any sense when subjected to intense hardcore reasoning. Yet, given that, what options do you really have if any? Why do we wake up in the morning and do something instead of doing nothing? By the time you grow to be able to comprehend the incomprehensible, the absurdity and meaninglessness of human conscious existence and subjective experience, then it is too late, you are already tangled in a web of relations and responsibilities, surely you are paying some bills to enable you to read this, or you believed in some simplistic story about life and death, or you have narrowed your scope of thinking, or busy yourself with the hedonistic pursue of pleasure. And if you conclude against living and your brain is still functioning, you'll sense hanger, fear, anxiety, etc, your hardwired survival instincts will kick-in and override your thinking, it would push you out of bed. In other words, if you are not severely depressed, you won't have enough pain threshold to commit suicide. Thus, you don't really have a choice but to wake up and do something until you fail to do so or it gets too painful to continue. You can tell yourself a nice story to make sense of it all, or you can just accept the absurdity and lack of control and leave hacker news to enjoy the outdoors and hangout with someone, and try to do some good (minimize suffering) while you can.

32 points by feross 5y ago

jhanschoo 5y ago

I see a lot of declamation in this article and a lack of argument and reasoning behind those claims.

nimvlaj30 5y ago
I know right, lots of opinionated statements and very little to back it up. Here is just one paragraph in the intro: > Nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective. Why? > That is not OK. Why? > It also erodes our cultures’ and societies’ ability to improve lives and tackle urgent problems. Why? > That is also not OK. Why? ---- None of this is answered in the rest of the blog post.
- Talanes 5y ago
  It reads almost like cult literature, though without any strong call to action.
- awb 5y ago
  Probably says more about the author than about nihilism. From Google, nihilism is: > the rejection of all religious and moral principles I wonder if the author is religious and if nihilism is so contrary to the author’s core beliefs that it doesn’t even occur to them that these statements need further explanation and justification in order to be complete as a rational argument.
  - nimvlaj30 5y ago
    This was my feeling too
- skybrian 5y ago
  It's not a blog post. It's part of an (incomplete) book. See navigation at the end.
- jm__87 5y ago
  I am not an expert in philosophy by any stretch so feel free to poke holes in what I'm about to say, but I somewhat agree with the author's points here, assuming we take nihilism to mean "to both believe and feel nothing has meaning". I think the author may have the causation in the first point backwards though. To truly feel like nothing has any meaning, I think you must first be quite miserable - I doubt anyone first chooses nihilism and then becomes miserable because of that choice. Imagine all of your relationships, your career and all of the other things people usually care about feel meaningless - you would probably be miserable and depressed. It is one thing to believe that life is objectively devoid of meaning. It is a different thing to subjectively feel that nothing in life has meaning. If you accept that a true nihilist has to be depressed, I would agree that the third point follows. Acknowledging a depressed individual's viewpoint that it is okay to feel everything is meaningless - that this viewpoint is not indicative of a mental health issue that should be addressed - would probably erode societies ability to improve the lives of depressed individuals (assuming improvement means they suffer less). As to whether other people's suffering matters to you or not, I suppose that depends on the individual. The author seems to think it is not ok for people to suffer, but obviously not everyone would agree with them here.
  - nimvlaj30 5y ago
    I define a nihilist as someone who believes that nothing has objective meaning. The universe, relationships, and suffering have no objective meaning; in a few years anyone who remembered any of it will be dead, and its cause-and-effect consequences will be recursively finite. I wrestled with this in my undergrad, which plunged me into a depression that I had never known before. This was doubly troublesome for me because I had previously believed that God existed and had a plan for my life– some kind of universal determinism, destiny, or fate. Going from that mental model of the universe, to one in which the universe is random, cold, uncaring, and devoid of meaning is quite a shock to the mental health. My happiness came back significantly once I discovered Existentialism, which the author seems to dislike. Existentialism is the belief that while there is no objective meaning to the universe, there is a subjective meaning. I can love my wife, enjoy my job, and enjoy a few brews with my buddies. All of those matter to me, and they don't have to have universal significance. They don't have to have objective meaning. Hell, people might not even be truly conscious or free anyway. It's not going to stop me from having a good time and loving life. The author makes broad assertions with very little explanation and few references to back them up. I'm still not convinced nihilism makes you miserable and ineffective. I'm still not convinced that that wouldn't be ok from an objective standpoint (although I'd have a problem with it, subjectively). I'm not convinced that it erodes our culture's ability to tackle problems or change people for the better (in fact, maybe it's the first step). And even if it did, who is to say that isn't okay? Obviously those who lose out will not like it (subjective meaning). But there is no objective meaning to any of this. It's random, inconsequential, cause-and-effect bullshit from top to bottom. Who says it means anything at all? But if it means something to you, then that's great.
WatchDog 5y ago
Perhaps it's building on arguments made in the earlier 30+ parts of the series.
glangdale 5y ago
Seriously. I couldn't stop hearing The Dude from The Big Lebowski ("Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man") while I was reading this. An astonishing amount of the heavy lifting in this article comes from assertions that we're just mean to accept, even when they aren't even explained, much less proved: "Unfortunately, existentialism is difficult to maintain, because mostly we can’t choose meanings. Some meanings are nearly impossible to either alter or overlook, and so are some meaninglessnesses." WUT

stale2002 5y ago

Its not really clear what the author is arguing. I am not sure why if someone simply believes that they cannot prove, with the fundamental aspects of reality, that there is provable "meaning", that this automatically means that such a person will slide into some sort of existential "Catatonia". Whats wrong with just accepting that we could have unprovable axioms, that we simply take for granted? For example, I think that killing is wrong. But that is an unjustified axiom. If someone comes up to me and says "Well, technically, you don't believe that you can prove that killing is wrong", my response is simply "I don't care". People can simply be OK with having values that they care about, and accept that they will never be able to fully "prove" them in the way that hardcore philosophers might want them to be provable.

jhbadger 5y ago
A lot of "moral" codes can simply be justified by practicality. I think killing should be illegal, not because of some lofty ideas of the sacredness of human life, but because I don't want to be killed by somebody else. Same argument against theft -- I don't want my stuff robbed.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Most commonly accepted morals come down to one thing: they contribute to the survival of that moral. Societies with a moral against killing thrive and spread compared to those without.
  - rramadass 5y ago
    What? Patently Wrong!
    - Talanes 5y ago
      The societies that dominate others through violence need an even more advanced moral system around killing than those that don't. "Killing is wrong" is enough to get some basic internal stability around, but to start pillaging your neighbors you need a moral code with loopholes.

croes 5y ago

"In popular use, the term commonly refers to forms of existential nihilism, according to which life is without intrinsic value, meaning, or purpose." So the whole post argues against something that most probably isn't even meant.

rramadass 5y ago
Exactly! The word "Nihilism" has so many aspects to its meaning (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) that the author's choice of one, just smacks of intellectual laziness. He/She has a preconceived notion against which they trot out the same old untenable arguments (for deriving "Meaning") which have been effectively demolished with the rise of the "Scientific Age".
Akronymus 5y ago
For me, nihilism is that nothing matters, so, suffering isn't part of some grand design either. So, why not try to do your best anyways?

platz 5y ago

> But there is a better alternative. In some cases, self-described nihilists point toward "the complete stance", as this book does also. That is neither nihilist, nor eternalist or existentialist "the complete stance"? just, wow

platz 5y ago

> “Pop pomo” is partly to blame. So you're saying Jordan Peterson was right

causasui 5y ago

I generally consider myself a nihilist, but only because it's the very last stop on the bus ride of my failed attempts at religion and other philosophies. I grew up very religious and when I lost my faith in my 20s, I tried to replace it w/ absurdism and existentialism, but couldn't shake the notion that lives deep in me that ultimately, even if humanity spreads across the cosmos and we're able to find meaning in our own individual existences, the universe will inevitably suffer heat death, from which there is no eternalistic escape. These days, my morality entirely stems from the reduction and prevention of suffering, which is ultimately the only moral currency we have. This led me to veganism and anti-natalism, as the best way to prevent individual suffering is for the individual to never exist in the first place (see: David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been; or Ecclesiastes 4:2-3). Needless to say, these are wildly unpopular philosophies. In light of this, I began to come to the realization that we're all nihilists at our core. We embrace religion or other philosophies to ward it off, because it's a truly uncomfortable sate of mind, as the author notes in this post, and the only alternative is total misery until we die. And then, depending on your philosophy, perhaps a true eternal bliss awaits you in paradise! How convenient! The happy people among us are the best at this practice - lying to ourselves successfully about the true nature of reality. We don't care what gets us there, as long as we get there. All this to say: I was much happier when I believed in God.

corpo_punisho 5y ago
The only alternative to religious thinking is misery? That sounds very much like religion insisting upon itself, like when they claim that without the fear of god we would all be savage and immoral. It's nonsense, really. But there were a few absurd reductions in what you said, including the idea that the prevention of suffering is tenable yet somehow nihilistic. Would it not be more sustainable to focus on spreading joy instead of preventing suffering? That way you won't drive yourself crazy focusing on the negative aspects of humanity.
- causasui 5y ago
  Or any other philosophy, where nihilism is the absence of either. In other words, religion is wonderful for those for whom it works; the same goes for existentialism (our meaning comes from within) or really literally anything else that gets you through the day. Every morning we wake up and the vast majority of us decide to not jump off a tall building. Why?

Barrin92 5y ago

the article is purely didactic and pedagogical. Nihilism is bad for society, therefore it's not okay, without nihilism there's no morality, therefore it's not okay, and so on. It's a sort of finger-wagging attitude of a parent. This purely instrumental stance of viewing the world is basically just cope. A more mature and real approach is what you could call having an honest stance towards the world. If you come to the conclusion that nihilism, of whatever form, is what describes the world best, is the correct stance to take, and so on, you ought to do it. Not because it's 'good' or 'bad', but because it's intellectually and personally honest. In the Will to Power one of the first things Nietzsche says is that we'll have to pay for 2000 years of Christianity. That is to say, the loss of absolute values and meaning is painful. Nonetheless it is necessary, because it has the benefit of being true. The widespread nihilism that the author thinks is a form of malaise is just a disorientation, having shed old values after recognizing that they're not fundamentally real.

WatchDog 5y ago
I think a lot of people would rather have a functioning society, built on a lie, than the alternative. I don't think Nietzsche was ever really able to come up with a great alternative to religion, and he certainly didn't seem happy about its end. > God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
- rramadass 5y ago
  Reminds me of this passage from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London. [Wolf Larsen] “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.” He shook his head slowly, pondering. “I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.” He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added: “It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.” “Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed. “Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.” “Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution. “More freely, because it costs you nothing.” “And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted. “Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”

unixhero 5y ago

Trigger warning

rramadass 5y ago
It took all my self-control to not throw Many Books at the Author :-)

gremloni 5y ago

Of course nihilism is bad for society but it’s the undeniable truth. Meaning is a made up word. It’s a random cocktail of hormones as a reaction to a story you tell yourself. I don’t even know why people need a “meaning” or purpose to life. Just waking up and existing is incredibly fun.

lucky1759 5y ago
Most people suffer everyday. Poverty, illness, war.. etc are more common than decadent Western lifestyles. The reason why religiosty is so common among poor countries is because, without religion, the logical conclusion would be to stop existing... Which is exactly the position the West was in pre-renaissance. Without religion society would never have succeeded through ages of negative utility.
- me_me_me 5y ago
  I am not sure I can agree to this as an answer. It feels to reductionistic, humans are complex system and often none rational. Certainly religions provide utility to the followers, but I wouldn't equate wealth of a country as direct correlation to religiosity. There are wealthy countries (US, gulf counties) that are largely religious, and smaller poorer (czech rep) countries predominately atheistic. I think religion is more of an entertainment then meaning of life. in poorer counties there is less things to be occupied with. Thats where you have the festivals and celebrations. Contrast catholics in EU vs South America. Also religion can be seen as a stop gap solution to education. It provides answers to questions - knowledge (though of varying quality). The higher education the lower interest in religion, for one the science + critical thinking exposes errors and fallacies in religious texts. So religion as a source of knowledge looses appeal in educated populations.

rramadass 5y ago

The Author is basically arguing against a "Straw-man" of his own making. So the entire post/book premise is pointless. "Nihilism"(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism) is the one backdrop "True Reality" against which we paint our chosen "Schools of Philosophy". This is quite independent of the problems of "Consciousness" and "Free Will".

tomlockwood 5y ago

I did read the whole article but had already come to my conclusions when I read this passage: > Unfortunately, existentialism is difficult to maintain, because mostly we can’t choose meanings. Some meanings are nearly impossible to either alter or overlook, and so are some meaninglessnesses. Then there was this passage which further put the nail in the coffin: > Where existentialism said meaning must be an arbitrary individual choice, pomo makes it an arbitrary social choice. When social groups make different choices, there is no basis for negotiation, because both are equally arbitrary. Then all conflicts reduce to raw power struggles. > This “banal nihilism” is the ideological basis for much current populist authoritarianism.3 These movements are simultaneously dogmatically eternalistic and chaotically nihilistic. The tribal ”values” are absolute, and must not be questioned or disrespected; but truth, morality, and justice have no meaning beyond what we want this week. These interpretations of Existentialism and Postmodernism are so catastrophically wrong that they invalidate the entire article. A cursory reading of Existentialist discussion of "bad faith" should cover the first. For Postmodernism - first off, Postmodernism is such a loose coalition of thinkers that any totalizing statement about them, is likely, wrong (at least in part). Secondly, Postmodernism generally encourages a skepticism about all hierarchies of knowledge, including what the author describes as 'tribal "values"'. Under Postmodernism, these values are questioned and, for example, "deconstructed". My suggestion is that the author ought to stop thoughtlessly regurgitating what Mr. Jordan Peterson has to say about Existentialism and Postmodernism and expand his reading to cover the texts themselves.

Borrible 5y ago

Well, at least it makes sense. And I'm quite happy to have a sense in life.

HeyZuess 5y ago

> Nihilism includes moral nihilism, the claim that there are no morally good or bad actions. If people believed and acted on that, we’d have the nihilist apocalypse. I think this is true, morally good or bad has been a moving target for some time, they are not concrete. Rather they are derived from inner definitions, and outside definitions at a point in time, and even then questionable. While my knowledge of Nihilism is very small, but I would gather that Moral Nihilist are not rampaging through the street killing people, as while there is no concrete version of morals, there is no need to act in a manner which harms people, after all why would it matter. And now I am going back to my solipsism.

aogaili 5y ago

My personal take on this, is that life is not only meaningless, it is in fact absurd. That is to say, it is beyond reason or logic, not in a supernatural or spiritual way, no, it fails to compute or make any sense when subjected to intense hardcore reasoning. Yet, given that, what options do you really have if any? Why do we wake up in the morning and do something instead of doing nothing? By the time you grow to be able to comprehend the incomprehensible, the absurdity and meaninglessness of human conscious existence and subjective experience, then it is too late, you are already tangled in a web of relations and responsibilities, surely you are paying some bills to enable you to read this, or you believed in some simplistic story about life and death, or you have narrowed your scope of thinking, or busy yourself with the hedonistic pursue of pleasure. And if you conclude against living and your brain is still functioning, you'll sense hanger, fear, anxiety, etc, your hardwired survival instincts will kick-in and override your thinking, it would push you out of bed. In other words, if you are not severely depressed, you won't have enough pain threshold to commit suicide. Thus, you don't really have a choice but to wake up and do something until you fail to do so or it gets too painful to continue. You can tell yourself a nice story to make sense of it all, or you can just accept the absurdity and lack of control and leave hacker news to enjoy the outdoors and hangout with someone, and try to do some good (minimize suffering) while you can.