>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.

>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.