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Nihilism is a philosophical doctrine that rejects the possibility of objective meaning, truth, or value in the world. It is often associated with skepticism, pessimism, and the belief that life is inherently meaningless. Nihilism can manifest in various forms, from the rejection of objective moral* values to the denial of the purposelessness of existence.
*Who's morals? Yours, theirs? His? Hers? Who chooses what is a moral value'?
BTW I am quite happy in my life knowing that it is entirely meaningless. Much like a dandelion, I bring joy to some, irritation to others but am fundamentally unimportant and serve no purpose
Meaningless isn't necessarily a negative.
"It's brief, just enjoy it while you can" is enough for me.
I don't need it to serve a higher purpose of deciding whether I go to heaven or hell or anything like that. It is what it is, we're just a collection of atoms and molecules with some bits of electricity in our brains. That doesn't have to 'mean' anything, other than that's how evolution works. I feel quite content knowing that I am totally insignificant in the scale of this planet, never mind the universe
Meaningfull, or meaningless are very much subjective terms, though, they are not universal.
Technically, all life is 'meaningless', as it'll all be long gone before the sun explodes and burns our solar system into nothing anyway, and if that doesn't end it, entrophy, or the heat death of the universe will take care of that!
So there's a happy thought for you all!
However... I find meaning and feelings of love in all sorts of things, the most obvious one is my dog, when he does something sweet without realising it....
I can feel a blade runner quote comming on...
"I've seen things you people wouldn't believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time... like tears in rain... Time to die."
EDIT. that was pretty dark, I didn't mean it that way, I'm not really sure what I mean, other then you can find love and beauty in the strangest of places, which is contrary to the facts.
Is there something more? modern wisdom suggests not, and our feelings are just chemical reactions in our brains, a function of evolution?
If it was so 'black and white' then empathy wouldn't exist, there would be no reason to get angry, or feel sad about anything, and equaly there would be no reason to be happy, or excited about anything.
Having read the definition, I’m a very long way from that!
I like Nihilism.
When someone tells you you're wasting your time doing something you enjoy you can just say, 'So are you' and no matter what they do with their time you are right.
However, I prefer Absurdism where doing stuff because we enjoy it becomes an act of rebellion against the Universe.
Existentialism takes itself too seriously and Sartre should have done some editing before publishing.
BTW I am quite happy in my life knowing that it is entirely meaningless. Much like a dandelion, I bring joy to some, irritation to others but am fundamentally unimportant and serve no purpose
Good to know that about yourself 🙂
I like it as it helps me find joy in the now, not some planned perfect future version of things.
I stopped in a graveyard to listen to some bellringers practicing this week. All those gravestones from the last few hundred years is probably all that's left of the villagers. So if I'm going to be work food at best I might as well enjoy the now
🥳🥳
Are you Flea ?
“We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.”
Often I feel that people who subscribe to the Nihilism world view are using it as, for lack of a better term, a cope. We live in a time where people feel alienated from their work and what we see of what's going on in the world, and in politics, is often at odds with the ethics that we believe in (or we have been taught to believe in). From this position of powerlessness it's quite comforting to think 'oh well, we're all just cells, what is meaning anyway, nothing is objective'. I'm being quite reductive but that is what my friends tend to mean when they say they have this world view.
The problem is, I don't think they're being honest with themselves. They do care about things, because they experience meaning as a real concept. They live broadly ethical lives and would like to see their ethics reflected in the world around them more than it is. But their perceived lack of ability to affect that is jarring and it's easier to think that it's not real than accept our powerlessness in the current social condition.
Worse, and I apologise for getting all political, I think the Nihilistic world view is very convenient to the actors in our world that do have power and a clear vision of what they want to do with it. Us 'masses' are bombarded with information, we don't have the lexicon to describe our condition in order to understand it and in the confusion we turn inwards, surrendering our collective power to corporations/states/tech bro nutters.
The moral values thing is being an arse, doing the dirty on people and having no notion of rule #1. God is brought into it because nihilism is pretty much the opposite of Christian values (I'm excluding some of the old testament vindictiveness), nihilists don't have God to answer to. In literature nihilists kill with no remorse or even pleasure in it, they're destructive, cruel, selfish... . When people feel free to do as they want and serve only their own interests they become monsters. Putin is a real life example.
In the modern world an example would be a petrolhead climatic denier thrashing along a B road in a Maccan cutting up asthmatic cyclists and ultimately crashing into a minibus of kids from the local school. 🙂
came here to post Lebowski quote, beaten to it
It's probably one of the reasons why capitalism likes to keep us so busy under their continual growth mindset, too busy to consider that extinction of the species wouldn't actually
Anyway, was looking for an excuse to post this video, and here perhaps is the closest fit
We believe in nothing, Lebowski. Nothing. And tomorrow we come back and we cut off your chonson.
Are these the Nazis, Walter?,
No Donny, these men are nihilists, there's nothing to be afraid of.
The problem is, I don't think they're being honest with themselves. They do care about things, because they experience meaning as a real concept. They live broadly ethical lives and would like to see their ethics reflected in the world around them more than it is. But their perceived lack of ability to affect that is jarring and it's easier to think that it's not real than accept our powerlessness in the current social condition.
I often describe myself as a nihilist, and you've pretty much hit the nail on the head. I'm not being dishonest though, I'm fully aware it's a coping mechanism to shield myself from the horrors of the real world*. But there is a higher recognition that ultimately what we humans think or do is largely irrelevant compared to the scale of the environment in which we exist. I suppose it's a question of reference frames. Is our existence defined by what we personally experience, or is it defined at the much larger scales of the universe? If the latter then it doesn't take long to conclude that we don't really matter.
*There's a flip side to this coping mechanism. You get so good at shielding yourself from horrible stuff that you also stop caring about stuff you really should care about.
[i]The problem is, I don't think they're being honest with themselves. They do care about things, because they experience meaning as a real concept. They live broadly ethical lives and would like to see their ethics reflected in the world around them more than it is. But their perceived lack of ability to affect that is jarring and it's easier to think that it's not real than accept our powerlessness in the current social condition.[/i]
Possibly true for some people. I would suggest that just because something is meaningless, doesn't mean you won't do it, just that it has no real consequence whether you do it or not. This is true for perceived positive or negative actions.
If I see a little old lady struggling to reach something on a high shelf in the supermarket I could choose to help her by passing it to her, or just walk on by. Neither choice matters but I will have to do one of them. I would choose to help her normally but that doesn't make it a meaningful act.
If she is walking across the carpark when I am driving out, I could choose to run her over or slow down and let her cross. Neither choice matters but I will have to do one of them. I choose to slow down and let her cross safely.
Just because you can do something, doesn't mean you have to. Unfortunately that makes for a rubbish story line in a book or movie - "Man helps lady in a supermarket and then drives home safely" is a pretty weak plot line. "Nihilist demon walks callously past struggling pensioner and then drives mercilessly over her fail body" is far more Netflix friendly.
I could choose to help her by passing it to her, or just walk on by. Neither choice matters.
On a cosmic scale it doesn't. But on a human level it does. Even if you believe (as I do) we are sacks of chemicals and electrons on a random rock in space, there are reasons not to be a dick which aren't just altruistic or for some imagined higher purpose.
We largely rub along with each other without daily mass murder because being cooperative social creatures has benefitted us evolutionarily. Making that work requires behaviours which have become instinctive over millenia which equate to not being a dick. You help the old lady in part because you have evolved to have empathy for other members of your own species.
I would choose to help her normally but that doesn't make it a meaningful act.
To you. But to her? Might be the nicest thing anybody has done for he in a while.
To you. But to her? Might be the nicest thing anybody has done for he in a while.
Agreed, which is why I tend to do it. I like to bring a little happiness into the world, even if it doesn't ultimately matter. That is the point I was trying to make. You don't need to believe that things have a purpose or a meaning to do things or even some reward, you can just do stuff
There is only the moment, nothing else, no past or future, only now, so brief, outside of the moment is all the shite they brainwash and force feed us in order to control. We are so detached from the moment it makes us ill.
I want to believe that life has meaning, I want to believe that kindness isn't pointless. I guess part of me wants to believe in some kind of higher power, consciousness or intelligence.
But as I've got older I seem to have lost faith in anything beyond the science based 'proven' material world. I get that when we try to comprehend the scale of the universe it seems easy to dismiss our existence on this tiny rock as meaningless. The only thing we as Earth dwelling humans can seem to be able to use to help prove any measurable meaning to our existence, is the rest of the natural world on Earth that we co-inhabit with.
Trouble is as beautiful as Earth's natural world is the most important meaning for all life seems to be survival, and ultimately survival at any cost. That view does seem pretty nihilistic as it appears to indicate the concepts of morals and ethics are meaningless. If survival at any cost is the true meaning to existence then it is a depressing thought that those humans that are living their lives with a 'survival of the fittest, and **** everyone else attitude might be right!
My coping mechanism is to cling to the probably unfounded naive belief there's still a possibility that kindness, empathy and love do have meaning, because we humans do not yet really know much about life, the universe and everything,
