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> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. Then a negative answer comes. It has none. Having no answer is not negative. You dee

by sph 2y ago

> What is the meaning of life? The question always makes my mind go blank. Then a negative answer comes. It has none. Having no answer is not negative. You deem it negative because you have decided it should have a meaning. People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. Even the idea of leaving your mark to the world is short-sighted selfcentredness, because in a long enough timescale people will even forget about Einstein. No, what is pessimistic and aberrant is this very human notion that life must have meaning. Just embrace the reality of it. There is none. No one really cares or judge you at the end. It is such a happy and freeing platform to build your life around, rather than going through life silently cursing a God that by not existing, forgot to give you meaning. Go through your own spiritual ego death. Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles.

scubbo 2y ago
I suspect you have misinterpreted the meaning (a-ha :P ) of the word "negative", here. It was not (I claim) used to imply "pessimistic, depressing, upsetting", but rather - literally - to mean "an answer which is 'no, null, empty, not-a-thing'". I'll freely admit that I didn't read to the _end_ of the article - but I got about halfway through, and I didn't detect any sense of disappointment from the author regarding their "negative" answer (nor, conversely, a yearning for a "positive" answer).
photonthug 2y ago
> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies Well they are, and embracing them rather than entertaining them is probably a good way to get the soul-sickness. What you're describing sounds closer to Existentialism. It gets put into this group sometimes too, but I don't think that's correct. My interpretation is that it's a more optimistic alternative where meaning exists, but it is fundamentally subjective & completely personal. Embracing existentialism may feel like a heavy burden for some, but others will find it liberating since the emphasis is on personal responsibility. Like nihilism and absurdism, it requires no special faith in external things. But like Stoic or Zen traditions, it's actually pretty empowering. Responsibility for your life and its philosophy is a gift and a curse though, because there's so much work to do and that can feel overwhelming. No one is coming for us, we have to save ourselves.
- fellowniusmonk 2y ago
  Actually I find this to be exactly the opposite (absurdism is pessimistic) because of the way our(my?) brains are wired to have existential thoughts, I think existential thoughts are fundamental in a way that formalized existentialism is not. When I was a theist I would sometimes lay awake at night wondering if maybe I was wrong and everything was meaningless! Once I was NOT a theist I would sometimes lay awake at night wondering if maybe I was wrong and everything has meaning! Believe that everything is meaningless, truly believe it and you realize how little is known. Oh, sure I still believe everything is absurd... but late at night... what if everything is full of meaning? My knowledge is unfortunately not exhaustive. I think no matter how deeply you investigate reality, and how many hypothesis and traditions self select out as untenable or plain false, intellectual humility is the real basis for happiness. I also now suppose that increasing knowledge and "unknown reduction" is basically the foundational basis for morality as a species as well. And I think this may actually be a decent and grounded basis for moral reasoning and moral realism. I don't know a single religion that actually says we should pursue real ignorance, that uplifts ignorance as a state to pursue and increase. Unlearning "false" knowledge, sure, unlearning "habits", sure, but stupidity and ignorance, Pignorance if you will, are never viewed as the state we should pursue. So I think the basis of morality and moral reasoning is a system that maximizes the number of avenues of pursuing knowledge. The greater the number of free (not in the deterministic/freewill sense) moral agents we can have running in our universe over time the more likely we are to find something if it is out there (over time.), and if not? Well, that's for a future generation to worry about if they ever manage to square the circle.
  - sph 2y ago
    > I don't know a single religion that actually says we should pursue real ignorance The closest thing to this is Taoism, and it's the least religious of religion. It's the most encompassing of philosophies. There is the Tao. It's everywhere and in everything. You won't ever be able to understand, define, touch, taste it, but you and everything else is part of it. Now go do whatever. As Alan Watts said, Taoism is the purest of religions, all other religions are for people that don't get it so need to be taught verbosely and in details what is fundamentally unexplainable. I'm a bonafide atheist, and I believe the Tao Te Ching to be one of the greatest cultural works every created.
gspencley 2y ago
> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. My working definition of nihilism is not "life without meaning". Rather, it is "life without values." Values, here, means personal values. That which we seek to acquire and keep. While some may have their own definitions that are at odds with mine, my view of nihilism is that it is a philosophy of self-sacrifice, because a nihilist (at least a logically consistent nihilist) does not value life, let alone anything else. We have many examples of nihilist philosophies that are prevalent today. To give one: a particular variant of "envrionmentalism." Don't get me wrong, not all variants are nihilistic. But there is a specific variant that views humans as inherently destructive and at odds with "nature", and genuinely believes that humans ought to go extinct for the sake "nature", which is everything non-human. This is nihilistic because human life is what makes value possible in the first place, therefore without life you can't value anything, let alone "the planet." > Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. This is not nihilism, it is hedonism. There is a value there, albeit irrational ones (what if I feel like robbing a bank, or doing heroin? How will that work out for me?) But it is not without values, it values whims and pleasure without context. Anyway I'm sure this is going to open up a big can of worms in the form of replies. I look forward to reading some of them but will probably opt to just do this single "drive by" comment since philosophical discussions are almost necessarily verbose and time consuming.
- hathawsh 2y ago
  That's an interesting distinction that clarifies the terms for me. Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? One is a removal of values, the other is adding values. It seems to me that, in most cultures, some degree of nihilism is a prerequisite for hedonism.
  - gspencley 2y ago
    > Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? I'm going to answer your question and, in doing so, answer another comment that argued with me about the definition of nihilism. The short answer to your question is "no." According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism): > Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning. > There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities does not exist or is meaningless or pointless. If existence doesn't exist, then there no values because nothing exists. If morality does not exist (or is baseless), this is a rejection of values since morality is a code of values. If knowledge doesn't exist or is impossible, this is a rejection of values since values are that which we seek to acquire and keep, and so if you can't know anything then values become meaningless because you don't know what you value or what you ought to value. If nihilism is a rejection of meaning qua meaning, then you are rejecting values since nothing can mean anything, and therefore values have no bearing on your life or existence since life and existence itself is meaningless (no matter how you define "meaning"). Therefore, nihilism is the rejection of ALL values regardless of whether they are personally chosen values or "imposed" values. There may be degrees of nihilism. Some nihilists may reject certain values while choosing to retain others. But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. Now, slight digression: my personal opinion is that on a fundamental level, all values must be chosen by the individual since only individuals are capable of forming value judgements. Groups can agree upon values, or say "if you want to belong to this group then you must accept certain values ('our' values)", but at the end of the day the individual must ultimately decide what values to adopt. Hedonism broadly refers to a philosophy of "whim worship" or "pleasure seeking." It values pleasure for pleasure's sake and considers anything that brings pleasure to be "good" and anything that does not to be either "bad" or "neutral." While hedonism may very well assert the "right" to "arbitrary pleasure", I disagree that that is its defining characteristic, since you can assert that right while also acknowledging that pleasure seeking for pleasure sake can be self-destructive and therefore morally wrong (ex: bank robbing and heroin abuse). [Edit: upon re-reading the above paragraph, I think a better example here is to focus on drug abuse. I personally think that you have a "right" to put whatever you want into your body. And abusing hard drugs might feel good and bring you lots of immediate pleasure. That doesn't mean that it is "good for you" and therefore, under my code of ethics, self-destruction via drug abuse or other is immoral. But I'm also trying to steer clear of discussing the definition of morality, and why human beings need morality, because that would quickly get off topic]. I would say that pleasure is a positive value (vs the negation of values), whether you are a hedonist or not, and therefore hedonism and nihilism are mutually exclusive by definition. Though I would also argue that both are destructive since one dispenses with values all together while the other uses pleasure as a SOLE determiner of what to value and therefore values that which can be destructive.
asimpletune 2y ago
In this use the negative means answering in the negation. E.g Q: "Would you like some tea?" A: "I wouldn't mind!". You are answering 'yes', negatively, i.e. in the negation, by responding that you would _not_ mind to have some tea. It does not mean anything about the nature of the answer itself.
golly_ned 2y ago
He's using the words "negative" and "positive" in a different sense than a value judgment "good/bad" -- negative meaning "no", "negaton", "nothing", and positive meaning "something". In philosophy this is the standard usage of the word "negative/positive", in contrast to common language.
runjake 2y ago
I think of this as "optimistic nihilism". I used to consider myself an "optimistic nihilist". But now, I understand the meaning of my life (by way of my biological programming) is producing offspring and ensuring they get to the point where they can produce offspring. They bring me great joy (AKA the right combination of bio-chemicals + electrical signals, ego death be damned). So now, my meaning of life is my children. Any other "meaning" is something I make up and pretend (Eg. do a startup). And I'm at complete peace with all of that. And I'm still a very optimistic person.
hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago
>People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. Actually, I think this because a suspicious number of people who ID as open nihilists/absurdists when the Discord turns philosophical feel the need to say things like "but it's not like I'm depressed because life has no absolute meaning". Maybe, but they often do turn out to be depressed. And claiming the arrow of causality does not exist actually isn't a proof that it doesn't exist. Plenty of obese people claim their daily caloric surplus has no relationship to their health problems, and they are just incorrect. On the other hand, when I consider the moral realists I know, most of them seem to be quite happy people. I almost never hear someone say "But I'm not depressed because good is objective". Sometimes they might get sad or frustrated because they feel they suck at chasing it, but that's a level up. In the most interesting case, I know of someone who started as a depressed non realist, read a bunch of middlebrow philosophy books, realized the moral realists actually had much stronger arguments than r/nihilism led them to believe, became a moral realist, and actually stopped being depressed. That would be me, myself. So that suggests a pretty strong arrow of causality to me.
cryptonector 2y ago
> rather than going through life silently cursing a God that by not existing, forgot to give you meaning. That's not what people do you know. > Go through your own spiritual ego death. Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. Free from any shackles, even those of our innate empathy? No thanks. And please don't either.

by sph 2y ago

scubbo 2y ago

I suspect you have misinterpreted the meaning (a-ha :P ) of the word "negative", here. It was not (I claim) used to imply "pessimistic, depressing, upsetting", but rather - literally - to mean "an answer which is 'no, null, empty, not-a-thing'". I'll freely admit that I didn't read to the _end_ of the article - but I got about halfway through, and I didn't detect any sense of disappointment from the author regarding their "negative" answer (nor, conversely, a yearning for a "positive" answer).

photonthug 2y ago

> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies Well they are, and embracing them rather than entertaining them is probably a good way to get the soul-sickness. What you're describing sounds closer to Existentialism. It gets put into this group sometimes too, but I don't think that's correct. My interpretation is that it's a more optimistic alternative where meaning exists, but it is fundamentally subjective & completely personal. Embracing existentialism may feel like a heavy burden for some, but others will find it liberating since the emphasis is on personal responsibility. Like nihilism and absurdism, it requires no special faith in external things. But like Stoic or Zen traditions, it's actually pretty empowering. Responsibility for your life and its philosophy is a gift and a curse though, because there's so much work to do and that can feel overwhelming. No one is coming for us, we have to save ourselves.

fellowniusmonk 2y ago
Actually I find this to be exactly the opposite (absurdism is pessimistic) because of the way our(my?) brains are wired to have existential thoughts, I think existential thoughts are fundamental in a way that formalized existentialism is not. When I was a theist I would sometimes lay awake at night wondering if maybe I was wrong and everything was meaningless! Once I was NOT a theist I would sometimes lay awake at night wondering if maybe I was wrong and everything has meaning! Believe that everything is meaningless, truly believe it and you realize how little is known. Oh, sure I still believe everything is absurd... but late at night... what if everything is full of meaning? My knowledge is unfortunately not exhaustive. I think no matter how deeply you investigate reality, and how many hypothesis and traditions self select out as untenable or plain false, intellectual humility is the real basis for happiness. I also now suppose that increasing knowledge and "unknown reduction" is basically the foundational basis for morality as a species as well. And I think this may actually be a decent and grounded basis for moral reasoning and moral realism. I don't know a single religion that actually says we should pursue real ignorance, that uplifts ignorance as a state to pursue and increase. Unlearning "false" knowledge, sure, unlearning "habits", sure, but stupidity and ignorance, Pignorance if you will, are never viewed as the state we should pursue. So I think the basis of morality and moral reasoning is a system that maximizes the number of avenues of pursuing knowledge. The greater the number of free (not in the deterministic/freewill sense) moral agents we can have running in our universe over time the more likely we are to find something if it is out there (over time.), and if not? Well, that's for a future generation to worry about if they ever manage to square the circle.
- sph 2y ago
  > I don't know a single religion that actually says we should pursue real ignorance The closest thing to this is Taoism, and it's the least religious of religion. It's the most encompassing of philosophies. There is the Tao. It's everywhere and in everything. You won't ever be able to understand, define, touch, taste it, but you and everything else is part of it. Now go do whatever. As Alan Watts said, Taoism is the purest of religions, all other religions are for people that don't get it so need to be taught verbosely and in details what is fundamentally unexplainable. I'm a bonafide atheist, and I believe the Tao Te Ching to be one of the greatest cultural works every created.

gspencley 2y ago

> People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. My working definition of nihilism is not "life without meaning". Rather, it is "life without values." Values, here, means personal values. That which we seek to acquire and keep. While some may have their own definitions that are at odds with mine, my view of nihilism is that it is a philosophy of self-sacrifice, because a nihilist (at least a logically consistent nihilist) does not value life, let alone anything else. We have many examples of nihilist philosophies that are prevalent today. To give one: a particular variant of "envrionmentalism." Don't get me wrong, not all variants are nihilistic. But there is a specific variant that views humans as inherently destructive and at odds with "nature", and genuinely believes that humans ought to go extinct for the sake "nature", which is everything non-human. This is nihilistic because human life is what makes value possible in the first place, therefore without life you can't value anything, let alone "the planet." > Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. This is not nihilism, it is hedonism. There is a value there, albeit irrational ones (what if I feel like robbing a bank, or doing heroin? How will that work out for me?) But it is not without values, it values whims and pleasure without context. Anyway I'm sure this is going to open up a big can of worms in the form of replies. I look forward to reading some of them but will probably opt to just do this single "drive by" comment since philosophical discussions are almost necessarily verbose and time consuming.

hathawsh 2y ago
That's an interesting distinction that clarifies the terms for me. Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? One is a removal of values, the other is adding values. It seems to me that, in most cultures, some degree of nihilism is a prerequisite for hedonism.
- gspencley 2y ago
  > Could you say that nihilism is rejecting values imposed upon the individual, while hedonism is asserting the right to arbitrary pleasure? I'm going to answer your question and, in doing so, answer another comment that argued with me about the definition of nihilism. The short answer to your question is "no." According to Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism): > Nihilism is a family of views within philosophy that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, such as knowledge, morality, or meaning. > There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities does not exist or is meaningless or pointless. If existence doesn't exist, then there no values because nothing exists. If morality does not exist (or is baseless), this is a rejection of values since morality is a code of values. If knowledge doesn't exist or is impossible, this is a rejection of values since values are that which we seek to acquire and keep, and so if you can't know anything then values become meaningless because you don't know what you value or what you ought to value. If nihilism is a rejection of meaning qua meaning, then you are rejecting values since nothing can mean anything, and therefore values have no bearing on your life or existence since life and existence itself is meaningless (no matter how you define "meaning"). Therefore, nihilism is the rejection of ALL values regardless of whether they are personally chosen values or "imposed" values. There may be degrees of nihilism. Some nihilists may reject certain values while choosing to retain others. But no matter how you slice it, nihilism is a declaration of war on values themselves. Now, slight digression: my personal opinion is that on a fundamental level, all values must be chosen by the individual since only individuals are capable of forming value judgements. Groups can agree upon values, or say "if you want to belong to this group then you must accept certain values ('our' values)", but at the end of the day the individual must ultimately decide what values to adopt. Hedonism broadly refers to a philosophy of "whim worship" or "pleasure seeking." It values pleasure for pleasure's sake and considers anything that brings pleasure to be "good" and anything that does not to be either "bad" or "neutral." While hedonism may very well assert the "right" to "arbitrary pleasure", I disagree that that is its defining characteristic, since you can assert that right while also acknowledging that pleasure seeking for pleasure sake can be self-destructive and therefore morally wrong (ex: bank robbing and heroin abuse). [Edit: upon re-reading the above paragraph, I think a better example here is to focus on drug abuse. I personally think that you have a "right" to put whatever you want into your body. And abusing hard drugs might feel good and bring you lots of immediate pleasure. That doesn't mean that it is "good for you" and therefore, under my code of ethics, self-destruction via drug abuse or other is immoral. But I'm also trying to steer clear of discussing the definition of morality, and why human beings need morality, because that would quickly get off topic]. I would say that pleasure is a positive value (vs the negation of values), whether you are a hedonist or not, and therefore hedonism and nihilism are mutually exclusive by definition. Though I would also argue that both are destructive since one dispenses with values all together while the other uses pleasure as a SOLE determiner of what to value and therefore values that which can be destructive.

asimpletune 2y ago

In this use the negative means answering in the negation. E.g Q: "Would you like some tea?" A: "I wouldn't mind!". You are answering 'yes', negatively, i.e. in the negation, by responding that you would _not_ mind to have some tea. It does not mean anything about the nature of the answer itself.

golly_ned 2y ago

He's using the words "negative" and "positive" in a different sense than a value judgment "good/bad" -- negative meaning "no", "negaton", "nothing", and positive meaning "something". In philosophy this is the standard usage of the word "negative/positive", in contrast to common language.

runjake 2y ago

I think of this as "optimistic nihilism". I used to consider myself an "optimistic nihilist". But now, I understand the meaning of my life (by way of my biological programming) is producing offspring and ensuring they get to the point where they can produce offspring. They bring me great joy (AKA the right combination of bio-chemicals + electrical signals, ego death be damned). So now, my meaning of life is my children. Any other "meaning" is something I make up and pretend (Eg. do a startup). And I'm at complete peace with all of that. And I'm still a very optimistic person.

hiAndrewQuinn 2y ago

>People think nihilism and absurdism to be very pessimistic philosophies, for the sole reason that they do not want to accept that life has no absolute meaning. Actually, I think this because a suspicious number of people who ID as open nihilists/absurdists when the Discord turns philosophical feel the need to say things like "but it's not like I'm depressed because life has no absolute meaning". Maybe, but they often do turn out to be depressed. And claiming the arrow of causality does not exist actually isn't a proof that it doesn't exist. Plenty of obese people claim their daily caloric surplus has no relationship to their health problems, and they are just incorrect. On the other hand, when I consider the moral realists I know, most of them seem to be quite happy people. I almost never hear someone say "But I'm not depressed because good is objective". Sometimes they might get sad or frustrated because they feel they suck at chasing it, but that's a level up. In the most interesting case, I know of someone who started as a depressed non realist, read a bunch of middlebrow philosophy books, realized the moral realists actually had much stronger arguments than r/nihilism led them to believe, became a moral realist, and actually stopped being depressed. That would be me, myself. So that suggests a pretty strong arrow of causality to me.

cryptonector 2y ago

> rather than going through life silently cursing a God that by not existing, forgot to give you meaning. That's not what people do you know. > Go through your own spiritual ego death. Then go do whatever you feel like doing, free from any shackles. Free from any shackles, even those of our innate empathy? No thanks. And please don't either.