Who enjoys Nihilism?

[wtfNeedSignUp]

After watching someone talk about a game with the amazing original moral of "we're small and insignificant speck of dust in the cosmos", I've been wondering, who enjoys those morals or finds them deep?

Nihilistic ideas are degenerative by definition. They don't tell anything or teach us about the world. The only works where nihilism work are horror stories as the concept of not mattering and no god should horrify every sane man.

The only people I can think that like it are society's losers and criminals that take solace in the lack of goals and moral judgment.

 

[Fascist Frederick]

Hi, I'm a nihilist, ask me anything.

 

[Ultrapenguin]

I guess to some extent I agree with my boy Nietzsche; should the universe not having any grander purpose really horrify someone? Why is the idea of simply living for living not good enough for you?

Religious ideas where there's some afterlife or whatever are anti-life, because they encourage someone to focus on some imagined idea of all this being some trial or a step up to something better rather than something to be taken and owned and made the most of.

And if someone needs to have a spiritual knife held to their throat to not be a shitty person, that's concerning.
Tons of athiests and agnostics manage to lead good lives, because of ideas like honor, because they do value their life and aren't going to sully it by acting like a fucking animal, behavior which causes a sense of wrongness, a sense a person should have without needing to be threatened.

Plus if nothing matters, all those other things aren't really important. There might be countless galaxies out there in the universe, but they'll never impact me, I'm just told they exist someplace, so to me we aren't any less important. What's here to me is all that's real, and all that significant.

I don't know if I'd say I enjoy nihilism, but I'm pretty comfortable with it personally.

 

[CowPox]

Does a true nihilist have a choice but nihilism?

I also find it funny how the religious will often site that the origin of their morality is their respect or fear of a god then scoff when you explain that the source of your own is yourself and that it is your own true choice to act, not some mask of morality you have contorted yourself into, supposedly imposed upon them from without instead of from within etc...

 

[Maverick Vile]

I think anyone who subscribes to ninhilism entirely is just looking for an excuse to do nothing. Nietzsche is often labeled a nihilist, but he's more accurately an anti-nihilist, saying that there is no meaning but what we create. I also think it's dumb to reject religiousity. If the 20th century taught us anything, it's that the religious drive doesn't go away with religion, it just gets obsessed with some other stupid bullshit.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Nihilism is ballsy, in that it's really the only consistent view for a hard materialist.

False, but ballsy.

 

[PonderosaPete]

I've been enjoying radical nihilism.

 

[Kill Your Idols]

Do you enjoy falling ill? Is there a valuable lesson in getting in a car accident and dying? If a mass shooter decides to go off and you're his first target, are you going to care about the moral value of his actions? I'll stop being edgy, but these are unfortunate realities we have to acknowledge happen in our world. They don't "mean" anything, they just are. You can try your best to prevent them, but we're all rolling dice at the end of the day hoping that nothing bad happens to us or the people we care about. If you have no faith in a higher power, it's even more depressing and makes the whole human experience feel pointless.

Nihilism as a philosophy isn't necessarily about giving into darker impulses, it's more about learning how to approach life with these thoughts in mind. That's what makes it interesting to me. If you strip man of his religion, his morals, his intrinsic worth, what do you have left? Will we all devolve into an animalistic society that's only concerned with our own hedonism? Or can we still find value in existing on this speck of space dust? While it can seem that baby's first nihilistic thought is immature and leads nowhere, it's an important first step in determining what we should be doing with our time on Earth, especially as people stop seeking solace from churches and start seeking it from identity politics, demagogues, and fringe communities. The void is already here, what are we going to do about it?

 

[Gog & Magog]

I understand Nihilism but I dislike the smug attitude of many nihilists.

Religious ideas where there's some afterlife or whatever are anti-life, because they encourage someone to focus on some imagined idea of all this being some trial or a step up to something better rather than something to be taken and owned and made the most of.

Some religious think like that, just as some irreligious think that if nothing comes after then they are free to do whatever they please. Some athiests believe if this is it then they must make it count, just as some religious believe that if what we do here echoes into eternity, then they must make it count too. People will be people wherever you go regardless of what you or I or anyone believes.

 

[Mr Bubbless]

Young teenagers, pseudointellectuals, redditors, and verbose idiots with no insight. Nihilism is lazy and boring.

 

[Strix454]

Historically Nihilism has mostly been a pejorative rather than a philosophy. Turgenev popularized it that way but then the people he was critical of took it up as their own. Nietzsche was (IMO) as much observing a strong trend toward Nihilism in western society as he was advocating a philosophy of it.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

I don't know why it became talking about Nihilism as a philosophy when I expressly asked about Nihilism as a moral of a story.

 

[Strix454]

In a literary sense, Nihilism has always worked well in the context of horror (Lovecraft for example). It can also work as a moral of a story in stories dealing with hubris or arrogance. But it generally has to associated with an antagonist being humbled. It can also be used as a motivation for a character given over to apathy or not doing something.
The modern story that ends with the protagonist looking up into the sky and talking about their own insignificance is really a bad cliche. Hack writing IMO.

 

[CAPTAIN HAPPY]

Cunts.

 

[Stoicism Is For Losers]

Nihilists are a bunch of emo faggots who need to go outside and feel the sun on their skin

 

[Little oak tree]

The only nihilism I enjoy is believing everything is so connected and full of meaning that nothing is really meaningless, making everything "meaningless" but full of meaning at the same time.

 

[Matt Damon]

Nietzsche was (IMO) as much observing a strong trend toward Nihilism in western society as he was advocating a philosophy of it.

Did you ever read any Nietzsche?

He never advocated a philosophy of nihilism. Everything he ever wrote was warning against it, predicting how the death of Christianity would bring it into the world, and the best way to fight against it in a world without God.

If his disjointed writing ever had a single coherent thesis, that was it. I don't think there's ever been a philosopher where his beliefs were more different from the normie "common knowledge" about him.

 

[Otterly]

we're small and insignificant speck of dust in the cosmos",

Douglas Adams had something to say about this with the Total Perspective Vortex.
My view: We are small and insignificant, and yet to those who love us we are the world. To realise that both those things are true simultaneously is probably a healthier viewpoint. I don’t think full on nihilism is healthy.

 

[Matt Damon]

I don’t think full on nihilism is healthy.

I don't think it's supposed to be healthy. I doubt it's a view anyone (who actually understands its implications) advocates for or glorifies.

It's just what's left after everything else falls away and every other belief system proves to be untenable or unjustifiable. It's existentialism after you realize embracing the absurd doesn't actually get you anywhere.

 

[Otterly]

I don't think it's supposed to be healthy. I doubt it's a view anyone (who actually understands its implications) advocates for or glorifies.

It's just what's left after everything else falls away and every other belief system proves to be untenable or unjustifiable. It's existentialism after you realize embracing the absurd doesn't actually get you anywhere.

That’s probably true. My point is that that’s no way to live a happy life. We believe all sorts of lies becasue the cold dark void exists and we need to still get up and take the kids to school and sort dinner out and fold the laundry and work all day. If we truly grasped the abyss we’d just sit and dispair. If you believe that you have a purpose, you’re happier. Maybe the universe is cold and dead and you’ll be dust in forty years. Now, you still have to live those forty years, do you want to nope about or feel ok? It’s that contradiction we have to deal with. It may be true but damn it’s bleak.
Religion exists to fill that hole. Maybe One day some half ape looked up at the starts and realised there was no point and he was going to die and thought fucking hell that’s dark, I feel better thinking there’s an afterlife. Or maybe there is something after. We dont know. It’s probably why the religious are happier on some metrics, they avoid the abyss of nothingness. I choose to think there’s something else bigger than us. Maybe I’m wrong, it can’t be proven either way.