Count me as unconvinced. I don't dispute that nihilism can be the subject of much humour - the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy proved that quite some time ago.
But there is no reason why, as a philosophical approach to life, it should lead to this:
One of the many criticisms of nihilism is that it opens the door to unchecked selfishness. It’s a logical next step if you think there’s nothing to gain from life except personal happiness and pleasure. Yet for the people who have absorbed this message, the trend isn’t towards greed, but community-mindedness.It can just as easily lead to the opposite - the view that no other lives have inherent worth and are, basically, disposable.
Skjoldborg urged his audience to solve problems. Gupta sought to build his own meaning. Tolentino’s whole book is an argument against self-serving, neoliberal systems that crush people lower down the economic ladder than you.
In the months since discovering I’m worthless, my life has felt more precious. When your existence is pointless, you shift focus to things that have more longevity than your own ego. I’ve become more engaged in environmental issues, my family and the community at large. Once you make peace with just being a lump of meat on a rock, you can stop stressing and appreciate the rock itself.
6 comments:
And then there's Ecclesiastes ...
Well, interesting point, Mayan. Not really sure that it should be considered as ultimately nihilistic, though, if it counsels to just get on with life (even if it seems a bit dreary at times), but keep to God's commandments?
That’s what the Guardian is. Carrying a patina of leftism but in reality fucking everyone over and laughing and laughing. Happy while the screw with everyone else. That would be their credo.
Our personal philosophy can have implications for our behavior but it is only one factor among many so don't over rate its causal power. The physicist Steven Weinberg once said that science points us towards a cold meaningless universe. He said that with a smile on his face.
The article is timely because younger generations are abandoning religion in huge numbers. Despite the general decline of religion crime is down, Western societies are much more peaceful than in bygone eras whereas societies dominated by religion are no more peaceful and altruistic than societies without belief.
We are naturally inclined to think that our beliefs shape our behavior. There is some truth in that and there is also truth in the idea that our behavior shapes our beliefs.
" The physicist Steven Weinberg once said that science points us towards a cold meaningless universe."
Thats the psy-op. Thats what the heat death universe and big bang is for. Its to demoralise everyone, turn them into nihilists, so that the people running the psy-op can control us and keep stealing off us around the clock.
There is no science to it. Thats why the same forces had no trouble going into the global warming fraud. They didn't go into the global warming fraud green. They had been getting their hooks into science as far back as the aether-denial campaign.
Mayan’s point is rather apt. The Bible is nowhere near as squidgy and nice as it is made out to be. Ecclesiastes comes fairly close to nihilism - what is the point in doing anything? He more or less counsels shrewdness over wisdom: ‘Be wise but not too wise: why shouldst thou destroy thyself?’ Job expands on one point in Ecclesiastes, that the wicked prosper while the righteous suffer: Job challenges God with this, and is commended for doing so: his comforters with their easier theology are all chastised. God doesn’t give a clear answer to Job’s challenge but provides challenges of his own. The implication may be that divine justice is nothing like human justice, and we may never know how to act accordingly!
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