legalise nihilism or something
I thought I’d write tonight because something kind of weird happened. Not in a way where it’s like a moment in time to be remembered, or even in a way that was like everyday spiritual in nature, like finding a strange object in a place you would never expect to find such a thing, but more like a moment that was sort of the culmination of some organic flow of thought and a merging of experience and feeling. I’ve been thinking lately a lot about the idea of how nihilism is becoming probably the fastest growing personal philosophy and one that people are sort of just stumbling onto on their own as the world has been sort of creating an atmosphere that is pleasant for it to grow in. Nihilism, thought of mostly like the weed in the human philosophical garden of morality and positivity, usually found next to hedonism, has been given a bit of bad reputation over the years. I guess on the philosophical streets, nihilism is kind of the bad boy gang leader with quirky side kicks, atheism, eulavism and antinatalism Its the antithesis of what society markets to us and sells their stuff with, like positivity. Ad people are just so god damn happy. It’s like they’re living in this weird alterative plain and they’re all like drugged up, like has anyone wondered if they’re okay, are they being kidnapped, trapped, it’s super weird…
But while on the surface, nihilism can seem like this big anti-society, anti-life affirming thing that is just this bad thing, sometimes I wonder if actually the suppression or sort of fear of aspects of nihilism in ourselves and the way we get annoyed at it in others is weirdly more of a toxic trait. Maybe nihilism unfiltered and unregulated, like a philosophical black market drug, largely untouched by mainstream influencers or if it’s mentioned, visa vie Jordan Peterson or whoever, seen as inherently just this super bad thing, we’re actually denying a justified part of being human and maybe making ourselves a little more crazy than we need to be.
Nihilism………..Not Even Once
I’m not going to pretend I know anything super intellectual and deep about nihilism, and to be honest, I’m also not going to pretend many people in general know about that either. What we know is sort of what we’ve been fed to us about nihilism, that it’s the belief that life has no meaning and that morals and values are sort of arbitrary. It’s basically like, this is it, what we have here, and in 100 years it won’t matter what you do, there’s no real purpose to this whole world project we have going on. In nihilism there’s a lot of emphasis put on meaning as some big almost religious sentiment and goal that’s disappeared, the idea that our name lives on or our spirit or this is all a part of a wider tapestry of things. But then the idea that actually, nothing you do really matters, whether you fly or fail, it’s all kind of the same, has a sort of spiritual hit. But nihilism today I think is a bit less far away and a bit more here and now. Climate change, political situations being x, economic struggles and also, for sure, some weird vibes about how we’re all starting to view relationships, there’s a bit more of a nihilism that what we do might not actually matter in our actual life. Like, it’s not going to be meaningless after we die and when future people are looking around, it might just start being meaningless like now, or in five years. It’s accelerationist nihilism and it’s genuinely causing real spiritual effects on people.
I think with the younger gens, it’s been a bit of a wild ride and with words like ‘pandemic’ and ‘nukes’ becoming far too commonly found in every day conversations and discourse, there’s a genuine sense that everything we know can literally change at any given moment. We’re all getting avoidant attachment issues, except to our literal societal structure and world. Climate change is actually happening now while at the same time, no real solutions have been given to people who want to not kill the planet but also want to not have to be Ted Kaczynski (who is getting a little revival in popularity). Denying the real shifts in how things are going and the sort of quick pace of everything is just one way to gaslight the masses, so is paying attention and acknowledge it while actually doing nothing about it.
But also, we didn’t all sign up to try to solve major world situations and honestly, a lot of people don’t actually know how to even start because nothing is super clear and everything’s real wonderland vibes right now. But one thing that people can sort of do is mentally find ways where they can sort of get it, like adopting modes of thoughts, frameworks of thinking, finding God or finding God’s dead. Nihilism can be a coping mechanism, it might sound counter intuitive, but actually, it’s pretty much the most popular cope on the internet. The thing is, we don’t know the dosage of it because nihilism is sort of that thing that people who aren’t in it and aren’t really feeling it don’t want to talk about or go into or adopt even a little. But nihilism isn’t depression, it’s not a mental illness, it can definitely for sure lead to depression in heavy amounts, but I don’t actually think it itself has to be this big bad thing, I actually think that micro-dosing nihilism could actually be a way to stop us from actually going insane sometimes.
Because the truth is, gaslighting ourselves into forced optimism is actually a way to make us lose touch with ourselves, reality and lose empathy and focus. Things aren’t super amazing happy fun times, but you know what, that doesn’t mean the opposite to forced positivity is chronic depression, rage or being an extremist. Nihilistic thinking in small doses can be grounding, kind of seeing things in their real colours, seeing what we see happening and recognising that actually, yeah, the world could shift and change and get really bad. They can and maybe diving a little into that sort of feeling of we’re here but we don’t know for how long and honestly, we’re not sure it’s always going to be okay. Sometimes actually it’s good to spend some time on a vibe that’s a little lower, listening to Nirvana, watching film noir or whatever your nihilistic plat du jour is. Sometimes it’s good to rage out, to realise the injustice, the real pain of existence sometimes, the acid rain, the napalm, the palm oil and how just fucking inhumane and insane we can be. And with that righteous rage we get the motivation to take part, to get active, to get in on the movements and to actually go to that protest. Okay so activity and nihilism, maybe don’t always seem to go together, but sometimes it’s the small acts of nihilistic revolt that actually keep us alive in times where we know we’re being soulfully or actually killed. It’s in the rage, the realisation of impending doom, the Cuban missile crisis at our door that we see the weakness in the fabric of our society. The people in charge are people and that can be a really scary thing baby.
I guess, the point of all this is to say that I think denial of the nihilism insider of us, or the resistance to a bit of it, might actually be suffocating us, driving us kind of crazy. Being forced ideas that we have to be happy all the time, that others are doing it, they’re being happy, or else we’re in the sad gang and they all have blue hair and cool style but are so annoying, or horribly depressed. But it’s not an either or, we don’t have to be nihilist junkies, we can live in a way where we incorporate it without going under, and honestly, I think that makes us active citizens (so God Bless America or something…) because we’re awake to what we see and we see the bad, but I also think it also makes us less insane, and honestly, that’s good enough for me, long as we know when to stop ofc.