Comments on “Cold comfort: the promise of nihilism”

you are wrong. nihilism doesnt mean that you dont have to care, it means to woke up, to look over the fog of society, religion, anything that has a doctine or a purpose and say ‘it is wrong’. after you die the world will continue without you, in a few generations no one will remember you, fast forward in time there will be no evidence of you, ever farther, one day there will be no man, and after that there will be nothing. the last sparks of light from the neuton stars will stop lighting the farthest corners of the universe, and there will be no one to withness them giving up. there is nothing except death. our lives are a long story of how we die, and how the world will end. it doesnt have a happpy ending. once you realise that, once you realise that there is nothing more than death and that you are meaningless, that emotions are just a tool to surviveand and free will doesnt exist , thats when you truly understand what it means.

https://www.google.ro/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwjnkfa6jIDYAhXNxqQKHdyIDGMQFgguMAE&url=https%3A%2F%2Fexistentialnihilist.wordpress.com%2F2010%2F06%2F30%2Fnihilism-the-most-logical-view-of-life%2F&usg=AOvVaw3GKIiJAvtcbwBTVLhLg3H0

To paraphrase the quote from Nietzsche at the end of the post you linked to: isn’t your interpretation of your life, the world and the (lack of any) relationship between them just a function of whatever will to power is currently active within you?

If every set of values, including the empty set, is objectively meaningless, then what reason is there for me to argue in favour of a doctrineless doctrine other than the sense of power I feel when I do so? The post’s appeal to logic, as some kind of formal requirement for the appearance of ‘truth’, is a red herring. What if, following your conclusion wherein I am meaningless, everything I thought was meaningless as well?

In that case, nothing I think or write or do or say makes sense except as the expression of a felt sense of power existing somewhere within me. It could be a feeling of superiority I get from refuting the false doctrines I see lesser beings clamouring to embrace; the sense of undead invulnerability it gives me to watch from a high point as the sparks of men, women, animals, plants, rocks, planets and stars are successively extinguished; the power I get from closing my eyes and knowing that all the lights in the universe have gone out.

Nihilist elitism depends on the implicit belief that recognizing the meaninglessness of everything is meaningful. That’s self-contradictory.

I can either acknowledge that feeling as a real living force and use it to create new values with, which could totally mean rejecting the value of that force for my life at this moment, or I could deny its having an effective existence through me and continue on a relentless path of delumination toward universal heat death . . .

But then, there’s a curious twinkling in the deep darkness beneath my eyelids - what if, in the absence of any witnesses, the neutron stars were to inexplicably light up once more?

I am a nihilist, without a doubt. But there’s a “split the difference” without saying that things matter, ultimately. Things matter in the moment. But not ultimately. Keep adding time, and it doesn’t.
Yes something may matter this second.
That matter may even extend to a minute
an hour
a day
a week
a year
a decade
but once you start hitting a century, more often than not, you’re dead.
And most assuredly, at a millennia you’re long dead, as will be anyone you ever met.
What about 10 millennia
100 millennia
1,000 millennia
10,000 millennia
100,000 millennia
1,000,000 millennia?
The largest far out number - and it’s not even a number per se because it has no name - a googolplex factorial millennia raised to a googolplex factorial millennia, a googolplex factorial millennia number of times, parenthesis that and the whole process repeated a googolplex factorial time with each set of parenthesis.
I feel it’s useful to exist in a mental timeframe of a future so far removed, mankind will be no more, the earth nothing but dust, all our accomplishments, nothing.
So yes, care in the moment. But know that it doesn’t matter, ultimately. and when things go badly, oh well, c’est la vie!

Interesting to see you getting some pushback from real live nihilists.

I have been having this weird impulse to argue with you on this topic; weird I mostly agree with you, as usual. But I need to beef about this for some reason.

The gist of my objection is that you are treating nihilism too much as a philosophy or conscious belief. That trivializes it and makes it seem like an easily-defeatable enemy. Nihilism as a philosophy is, as you say, obviously wrong and silly.

But the philosophical aspect of nihilism is just the tip of the iceberg, which extends in two directions: down into psychological mechanism (depression) and upwards into the postmodern condition or whatever you want to call the state of society. Those aren’t so easily cured.

I know you talk about both of these and so my objection might not even be a real objection. Maybe a matter of emphasis?

I think your material helps a lot with personal nihilism, but the larger problem is cultural nihilism. People (especially young people) need some sense of purpose to their life and it has to be connected to that of larger groups. Late capitalism doesn’t offer much in this regard; politics does offer group purpose but it’s often stupid or harmful, and even more nihilistic than the nihilists once its illusions are punctured.

Nonetheless I think the only cure for cultural nihilism is new forms of social engagement, which may be political or may be more like building alternative communities and institutions. I don’t know what this really looks like; it’s a job for younger people to figure it out.

I guess my non-objection boils down to accusing you of only engaging in the difficult project of trying to fix individual nihilism and not the even more difficult one of trying to fix social nihilism.

It’s kind of like Pema Chodron says in the “The Wisdom of No Escape”: to be nihilistic is to lie face-down in the sand as waves crash over you, but you have no will to get up. But you don’t even have the privilege of dying - you just lie there with the waves crashing over you.

I would like to add that depression or nihilism does not just promote ascetism. It promotes ritual self-flagellation through the use of pleasurable but addictive substances (I’m specifically thinking of coffee). When I was depressed, I would drink coffee as much as I could because it was the only thing that could make me feel better. Now that I’ve come forward a bit, I realize it’s a bad thing to drink because it affects your sleep negatively and it’s addictive. I still struggle with it a bit along with other unnamed things that I have to avoid.

And I agree (from your last comment), it’s really amazing how the pile of half-completed unfinished stuff keeps piling up, in my life too!

I wonder if a sailing metaphor is also helpful:

I like to think of Nihilism’s first temptation as the promise of “I don’t have to care about what YOU care about.” It helps us pull away from the obvious bizarre exaggerations of Eternalism (monistic or dualistic). Perhaps useful treatment of nihilism is as a wind on a lake which we can throw out our sails into and then move away from the land to supposedly perfect, ideal meaning. The trick is to tack with the nihilistic wind, not to let it take us to its final destination.

The land of Nihilism may offer evasion of all responsibility, but the refreshing wind of Nihilism offers and escape ride away from delusionally disappointing rigid externalism.

Hey sorry did not mean to add to the pressure for more stuff. What you already have written is valuable and thought provoking; finished or not it’s something I refer to all the time. Picking nits is my way of engaging with it.

Also I think I have some personal weird attachment to nihilism – weird in that I don’t quite understand it. I’m not consciously pro-nihil or anything, more like it seems like such a hugely important force in recent history that it deserves more attention and respect.

I should be writing my own stuff rather than picking on yours, but this particular topic is difficult for me; all I have managed so far is fragments and pointers (see http://www.hyperphor.com/ammdi/pages/Nihilism-in-Art.html )

(mtraven): I think your material helps a lot with personal nihilism, but the larger problem is cultural nihilism. People (especially young people) need some sense of purpose to their life and it has to be connected to that of larger groups. Late capitalism doesn’t offer much in this regard; politics does offer group purpose but it’s often stupid or harmful, and even more nihilistic than the nihilists once its illusions are punctured.

Totally agree that cultural nihilism is a big problem right now. Not sure I agree with you that the purposes people find in life have to be connected to large groups.

Just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing, I think of “cultural nihilism” as the pervasive influence the internet and mass media are having on indulging short-term consumerism, being clued in to the latest meme, fashion, or gossip, and the slow obliteration and replacement of cultural institutions of fulfilling meaning (religion, community, mission) with empty tribalism and slogans.

In other words, I think a big part of the problem itself is “wanting to belong,” but finding very empty and unfulfilling belonging opportunities, and having no courage to “not want to belong.”

And imo that’s the only way out. We aren’t entering into a world that is equipping us with reliable, universal morals, truths, and values - we must discover and select our own. We must commit ourselves to being the caretaker and provider we are looking for. We have to recognize the societal insanity and hollow depression that consumer culture is ultimately producing and resist it as the “best way forward.” To find ourselves and our place within the maelstrom, we first must define who we are and where that is.

(mtraven): Nonetheless I think the only cure for cultural nihilism is new forms of social engagement, which may be political or may be more like building alternative communities and institutions. I don’t know what this really looks like; it’s a job for younger people to figure it out.

I think, yes maybe, once we as individuals have built ourselves up first. There is a need for some bedrock of societal stability, and there are ways for us to add to it.

But I think the only way those new communities and institutions will “survive” (by which I mean flourish and sustain their adherents during their lifespan) will be if they, too, manifest this same courage and acceptance of their ultimate mortality.

We can’t go back to trying to build world-spanning religions and corporations and systems; they go mad, or power corrupted, or hypocritical; they don’t serve the newer generations because they don’t evolve along with them. And we can’t go fully atomic solipsist either: you need to coordinate something if you’re going to have a school or a hospital.

I look forward to finding, and seeing evolve, a new kind of institution that acts as a waystation and gathering place for likeminded individual wanderers. Something that admits its own tiny bit of hubris in wanting to exist at all, embraces it, and builds what best reflects the goals of its participants. And which makes no illusions of being some timeless new one true way, but that actively acknowledges that it might not be the right fit for every given person, and that’s ok, and if it doesn’t, it at least gives hope to them that they could find and build their own.

But I truly think it only works if we first actively reject the frothing societal madness. “Joining” is for suckers.

It seems a disproportionate amount of the reasoning on this page presumes that the nihilist hates their life. Hating their life is not a requirement for becoming a nihilist. I, for example, am a nihilist because I have yet to find a convincing argument against it. Even though I enjoy life, I always know that there is no meaning. Even if you feel that something is meaningful that is just hormones and electric impulses in your brain.

In the comments, I don’t see anyone presuming (let alone stating) that nihilists hate their life. Or started out hating their life?

In the article, I see David saying that one path to personal nihilism is to (try to) escape dealing with a lot of societal pressures. Pressures that may be making you miserable, sure.

I don’t know that he’s saying that’s the only path to nihilism? Or that hating one’s life is a feature of becoming a nihilist, after the fact?

Can you point more specifically at what you’re objecting to or disagreeing with?