nihilism

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popeye1945
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Re: nihilism

Post by popeye1945 »

Gary Childress wrote: Wed Feb 08, 2023 4:17 am I think I tend toward nihilism in so far as I think a person's conduct doesn't necessarily have much effect on the overall outcome or quality of their life. I mean, I haven't seen a lot of advantages to many things that one may normally think advantageous. I've stayed away from illegal drugs and I actually think I'm no better off than a lot of people who have at least done a little experimentation with them. Pretty women tend to think I'm nerdy and no fun. Heck, a very pretty lady I'm hopelessly crazy for told me, "We need to get you stoned one day." She looks down on me and won't have anything to do with me.

Some say coming from a two-parent biological family household should increase the chances of success of a person. I've met a lot of very determined go-getters who come from "broken" families, even foster kids who are very successful. Both my parents have stayed together throughout my life and it didn't seem to stop me from getting mentally ill and being shy and withdrawn. Kids I know from "broken" families seem to be much more outgoing and popular among their peers compared to me. Many of the "coolest" kids I knew in high school who had friends and popularity galore seemed to be from broken families, families plagued by substance abuse or who smoked like chimneys. I stayed out of trouble in life for the most part, didn't smoke in the bathroom at school etc. Didn't do a thing for me that I can tell. Can't say I recommend the "straight and narrow" path. Didn't do much for me.
Perhaps you can't see the forest for the trees, maybe like many, perhaps most maladjusted people they are the product of family. It may be politically incorrect to look at one's upbringing but if so it's moronic. The family factory system churns out copies of itself, copies of its own maladjustment, for even traumas it is now recognized as intergenerational. I was raised by very damaged people and surprise, I am a damaged individual, but how far back does this dis-ease go? It is like a ripple on a generational pond ever spreading out and one really can't blame the previous generations, it's all one pond. Individuals are SO complex to start with and the innocence brought into the world gains its sense of identity from its given context, the family is a first-order context; which is supposed to prepare one for one's societal context. This is when the shock comes for the individual who was adjusted to his/her abnormal family context when it doesn't quite mesh with society.

If you are like most you trusted in your maladjusted parents/family and only slowly realized with time that all is not as it should be. One realization might give you some comfort, the rest of the crew, your peers are not as well-adjusted as they appear, for in this societal pond we all tend to hide our hurts and inadequacies it is a very stressful pond out there. Raising a family is far from a science. I was shocked one time hearing a statement that even raising pigs one must first be knowledgeable about their needs but raising a family no such knowledge is required. Today, I sometimes see a child or young person with an obviously inadequate family, and I feel sorrow not only for the child but for the parents who were once the child in the situation. The meanest of statements or attitudes is that which blames the victim, in insisting that the individual take sole responsibility for his/her present psychological state. Don't let them do that to you, it's a sick fuck that wants to kick you when you're down. One can only give to one's children what one has acquired for oneself, perhaps this is the greatest of reasons that a child's healthy upbringing should be a community project.
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist.
Why? Because, again, as suggested above, if you are a pessimist because your life [circumstantially] is in the toilet and all you have to look forward to is the flush, how exactly would you go about keeping that grim frame of mind from others?

On the other hand...
But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea. Indeed you could yourself be a nihilist and have no idea. Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it.
Same thing. If, circumstantially, your life is bursting at the seams with all manner of pleasurable and fulfilling and rewarding experiences, but your philosophy of life is straight out of waiting for Godot...so what? And, whether you do seek to actually sweep your despairing "life is essentially meaningless and purposeless" philosophy under the rug or not is often beside the point. You are so busy being distracted from it by the satisfying life that you live from day to day, there's no need to dwell on it.

Was, perhaps, that the case with Samuel Beckett? I don't know. I'm not familiar with his personal life. But I suspect that given his fame and celebrity he had his share of rewarding experiences.

And then this guy...
This difference was illustrated by Woody Allen in his movie “Annie Hall” when his alter ego Alvy Singer has the following exchange with a couple he stops on the street for advice:

Alvy: (He moves up the sidewalk to a young trendy-looking couple, arms wrapped around each other): You-you look like a really happy couple. Uh, uh … are you?
Young Woman: Yeah.
Alvy: Yeah! So … h-h-how do you account for it?
Young Woman: Uh, I’m very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.
Young Man: And I’m exactly the same way.
Alvy: I see. Well, that’s very interesting. So you’ve managed to work out something, huh?
Young Man: Right.
Only, again, that's his own subjective assessment of the distinction. Mine is different.

The man and the woman are hardly what one would call nihilists given my own perspective. Philosophical nihilists? No way. But they are still able to live lives that they construe to be happy by simply not pondering things like Sisyphus and his boulder at all.

Though, sure, today, Woody Allen himself, his life revolving in part around all the sexual abuse charges and, at 87 years of age, is almost certainly both a pessimist and a nihilist. Tired of living perhaps but still no less scared of dying. The worst possible frame of mind there is for some.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195600
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
What is most illuminating about this scene [above] is that it shows how a pessimist can reveal the identity of a nihilist, just as it might be argued that the pessimism of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer helped reveal to Nietzsche his own nihilism.
Whatever that means. I'm sticking with the suggestion that pessimism revolves more around the circumstances of one's life while nihilism revolves more around how one construes meaning and purpose in one's life in a No God world.
Before they are confronted by Alvy, they are just a happily shallow and happily empty couple. However, when he asks them to explain their happiness, they are no longer shallow and empty; they are instead forced to awaken from their reverie and to become self-aware.
Really? That's not how I remember it: https://youtu.be/nDtYgdzcCog

instead, Allen puts his own words in their mouths. As though if they were able to grasp their own lives as he sees them, that's what they would admit about themselves. You see this over and over again in his films. Think the Sam character in Husbands and Wives.

It's basically the culturally/intellectually sophisticated Allen mocking those who are not as grim and glum as he is about everything...but still manage to live lives not in the least filled with quiet desperation.

I do that myself sometimes.
It is not that they are happy that reveals their nihilism; rather it is their attempt to explain to a pessimist why they are happy that reveals their nihilism.
Come on, think about what they tell Alvy. Who would ever say that? They are admitting to the Woody Allens of the world that they are basically too stupid to grasp just how shallow their happiness is...so the Woody Allens have to put the words in their mouths.

Thus the smug and cynical Alvy Singer gets to mock those he's convinced are not really happy at all...they're just ignorant of how the world really is.
On the surface, they are soul mates who have found each other. But surface is all that they are. The attempt to go any deeper reveals that there is nothing deeper. And it is precisely a pessimist who, when confronted with such a happy couple, would ask the “Why?” that reveals their nothingness.
Or, sure, the author's take on them is more perceptive.

But why is Alvy Singer -- the Woody Allen character -- the pessimist?

Woody Allen, the man who in "real life" had accumulated fortune and fame. A man who did what he loved -- making films -- going from one sophisticated and intelligent and beautiful woman/relationship to the next. The man loved by millions around the globe...until the Soon-Yi Previn scandal and all the allegations of child abuse started piling up?
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism.
Yes, depending on how you differentiate them, that can be the case. As, for example, I do above. If your pessimism revolves around personal experiences -- circumstances -- that have left you in the proverbial toilet, you may well be far beyond the reach of optimism. But, given that a philosophical nihilist can still live a rich and rewarding life, he or she can sustain their optimism as long as "for all practical purposes" it makes sense to.

Also, some nihilists embrace "moderation, negotiation and compromise" as, politically, the best of all possible worlds. And that almost always revolves in turn around democracy and the rule of law. Which means a nation that does not practice might makes right or right makes might as its governing principle. And that certainly strikes many as a more optimistic reality.
To see the glass as half full is to think that we should be happy with what we have rather than focusing on what is missing. But being happy with what we have can also be a way of remaining complacent, of ignoring what is missing so as to avoid having to seek change.
Here again, given what context? For those who embrace might makes right [the autocrats in Russia or China or North Korea] or right makes might [the theocrats in Iran or Saudi Arabia or Afghanistan] the glass is always filled right to the top. But only they get to say what the glass is filled with. And others are optimistic or pessimistic depending on how they think and feel about what is in the glass. But a nihilist of my own ilk rejects both autocracy and theocracy. If he or she is optimistic it all revolves around circumstances and in being fortunate enough to live in a democratic nation. Though, again, given dasein, each of us as individuals might react to the world around us in very different ways...living very different lives with very different options.
Similarly, to believe that everything will work out in the end, that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, is to believe that life is teleological, that there is some goal or purpose — whether God or Justice — operating invisibly behind what we experience.
And that is of fundamental importance in my view. There's a lot more you can endure if you genuinely believe that on Judgment Day you will earn your just reward...immortality and salvation. And even without that for many political ideologues, the fact that you are on the side of Truth and Justice "here and now" can make any trials and tribulation all the of more bearable.

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Agent Smith
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Re: nihilism

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Nihilism is poison, but what isn't? Bad people don't fear good people, they fear other bad people. :mrgreen:
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Nihilism versus Cynicism

In Ancient Greece, a Cynic was someone who lived like a dog (the Greek kynikos means “doglike”), or, to be more precise, was someone who lived by the Cynic philosophy of staying true to nature rather than conforming to what that person saw as social artifice. Today, a cynic is similarly someone who looks down on society and sees it as fake, though not because the cynic sees society as unnatural, but because the cynic sees the people who make up society as fake.
Of course: the Holden Caulfield Syndrome.

On the other hand, how is being cynical really any different from being pessimistic? It is one thing to be cynical about the world around you when that is derived from personal experiences such that, time and time again, circumstances and the people in them have let you down. But it's another thing altogether to root your cynicism philosophically in the assumption that the circumstances themselves are by and large existential contraptions and that people act out lives rooted in ever evolving and ever changing historical and cultural and personal interactions. There is no one way in which to assess, evaluate and judge people and things so as to actually root doubt and distrust out.

People are "fake" because they are basically indoctrinated from the earliest of age to act out behaviors that are in accord with "society". Then those who embrace one or another moral, political or religious dogma so fiercely they become all but caricatures...cartoon characters...utterly predictable.
To be cynical is to assume the worst of people, to think that morality is mere pretense, and to suppose that even when people seem to be helping others they are really only trying to help themselves. Believing in only self-interest, the cynic appears to others to believe in nothing. Consequently, cynicism can appear to be nihilism. But it is not nihilism.
"Cynicism is a pessimistic outlook on a human beings capacity to make decisions that are moral, or ethical. Cynicism has overall doubt about peoples nobility, and social values. Nihilism on the other hand, may argue that there is no morality at all; in other words, no action is inherently good or bad." quora

Again, however, in what way is this applicable to each of us as individuals? Are you cynical because you note how many people are basically just hypocrites? You do believe in objective morality, but others merely pay lip service to it?

After all, in the capitalist political economy so much human interaction revolves around "what's in it for me?". Competitive and selfish behavior is rewarded. How to reconcile that with "the common good"?

Nihilists on the other hand, more or less expect that sort of thing. There is no "one size fits all" ethical narrative or political agenda. So, yes, of course people are going to be all up and down the idealistic or the ideological spectrum. And, in fact, when the idealists and the ideologues are not being hypocritical, they can instead become dangerous once in power.
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Re: nihilism

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The wise man carries two guns :!: :?:
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Cynicism, like pessimism, is about negativity. However, whereas pessimism is about despair, about the feeling that life is pointless in the face of death, cynicism is instead much more about disdain than despair. A cynic wouldn’t say that life is pointless but would just say that what people claim about life is pointless. A cynic can even enjoy life. In particular, a cynic can take pleasure in mocking those who claim that altruism exists, or that politicians are self-sacrificing public servants, and especially finds laughable the idea that we should try to see the good in people.
In regard to this, I am inclined to agree. The cynics I've met over the years [and I am one of them] could in fact be rather optimistic about their own life. You simply keep your life revolving around things that bring you pleasure and fulfillment and satisfaction. You don't anchor your life to any particular philosophy. And, yes, you can become rather disdainful of those who not only anchor their own life to one or another objectivist dogma -- philosophy of life -- but seem determined as well to bring everyone else into the fold.
Pessimists are not nihilists because pessimists embrace rather than evade despair. Cynics are not nihilists because cynics embrace rather than evade mendacity.
Yes, if you are willing to anchor Pessimism and Cynicism and Nihilism to your very own existential assumptions regarding what they mean, then you get to make distinctions like this. I am more inclined myself towards pointing out how complex and convoluted such things can be when it pertains to one or another individual living what can be one or another very different life. Nihilism from my own subjective vantage point revolves more around what in a No God world seems to be a lack of any essential meaning and purpose in human interactions.

On the other hand...
A key part of evading despair is the willingness to believe, to believe that people can be good, that goodness is rewarded, and that such rewards can exist even if we do not experience them. But to a cynic such a willingness to believe is a willingness to be naive, to be gullible, and to be manipulated. The cynic mocks such beliefs not because the cynic claims to know that such beliefs are necessarily false, but because the cynic is aware of the danger represented by people who claim to know that such beliefs are necessarily true.
As a philosophical cynic myself, this makes sense up to a point. But since philosophies of life and sets of circumstances can get all tangled up here going from individual to individual, each of us will end up being cynical in their own way. For me, my own cynicism tends to take aim at the objectivists among us. They become dangerous when, once in power, they go after those who don't or won't share their own beliefs.

https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195600
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Re: nihilism

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"Ab imo pectore I love her!"

"As you can see ladies and gentlemen the patient, Mr. Xavier, is completely mad!"

"No, no, sir, I can't live without Gloria, I simply can't! I feel so empty, so god help me"

"Typical symptoms, si?! Mr. Xavier is in love. Sister, can you please remove the patient's shirt? Gracias. If you'll now observe the pathognomonic sign over the patient's chest, there,there, just 3 cm left of the midclavicular line, in the 4th intercostal space, in this case, at the level of the left nipple. Do you see? A hyperpigmented macule, the exact spot where the poor man was struck."

"The Blackburn spot!!"

"Si, si!"

"What about the treatment, sir, Dr?"

"Ah that?! We've isolated the toxin and our team is working on an antidote. We'll have Mr. Xavier back on his feet in no time."

"Gloria! Gloria!"
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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Agent Smith wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:39 am "Ab imo pectore I love her!"

"As you can see ladies and gentlemen the patient, Mr. Xavier, is completely mad!"

"No, no, sir, I can't live without Gloria, I simply can't! I feel so empty, so god help me"

"Typical symptoms, si?! Mr. Xavier is in love. Sister, can you please remove the patient's shirt? Gracias. If you'll now observe the pathognomonic sign over the patient's chest, there,there, just 3 cm left of the midclavicular line, in the 4th intercostal space, in this case, at the level of the left nipple. Do you see? A hyperpigmented macule, the exact spot where the poor man was struck."

"The Blackburn spot!!"

"Si, si!"

"What about the treatment, sir, Dr?"

"Ah that?! We've isolated the toxin and our team is working on an antidote. We'll have Mr. Xavier back on his feet in no time."

"Gloria! Gloria!"
Note to Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and/or the Oracle:

Just out of curiosity, is this a Matrix thing?

Or is he just being a smartass? 8)
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Agent Smith
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Re: nihilism

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iambiguous wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 8:39 pm
Agent Smith wrote: Mon Mar 20, 2023 7:39 am "Ab imo pectore I love her!"

"As you can see ladies and gentlemen the patient, Mr. Xavier, is completely mad!"

"No, no, sir, I can't live without Gloria, I simply can't! I feel so empty, so god help me"

"Typical symptoms, si?! Mr. Xavier is in love. Sister, can you please remove the patient's shirt? Gracias. If you'll now observe the pathognomonic sign over the patient's chest, there,there, just 3 cm left of the midclavicular line, in the 4th intercostal space, in this case, at the level of the left nipple. Do you see? A hyperpigmented macule, the exact spot where the poor man was struck."

"The Blackburn spot!!"

"Si, si!"

"What about the treatment, sir, Dr?"

"Ah that?! We've isolated the toxin and our team is working on an antidote. We'll have Mr. Xavier back on his feet in no time."

"Gloria! Gloria!"
Note to Neo, Trinity, Morpheus and/or the Oracle:

Just out of curiosity, is this a Matrix thing?

Or is he just being a smartass? 8)
:)
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Agent Smith
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Re: nihilism

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One-fifth of a demon-god
1.2 of a human, the unlucky sod
The one who laughs when rocks cry
Will, from the dead man's hand, the diamond pry
popeye1945
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Re: nihilism

Post by popeye1945 »

Nihilism is facing reality, for the physical world is utterly meaningless in the absence of a conscious subject. Nietzsche thought if humanity could/would accept this reality. it would lead to humanity's intellectual evolution or its complete destruction. The reality, whether accepted or not remains reality. For apparent reality is self-stimulation, it is the melody the cosmos plays on its instrument biology/a conscious subject. This process tells us little about what is out there, but more about how what is out there affects or alters our bodies; for apparent reality is a biological readout. Our subjective reality, the physical world in and of itself is utterly meaningless except for what biology/the conscious subject bestows upon it. You are the center of your own reality.
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Agent Smith
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Re: nihilism

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"What's Walter doing?"

"He's a nihilist for chrissakes! What do you think he's doing?"

"Working on Pax Mundi!"

"Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Sherlock Holmes!"
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iambiguous
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Re: nihilism

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What Nihilism Is Not
Nolen Gertz
Nihilism versus Apathy

Along with pessimism and cynicism, nihilism is also frequently associated with apathy. To be apathetic is to be without pathos, to be without feeling, to be without desire. While we are all occasionally given choices that do not particularly sway us one way or another (“Do you want to eat Italian or Chinese?”), such disinterestedness is what someone who is apathetic feels all the time. To be apathetic is thus to be seen as not caring about anything. The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing. In other words, apathy is seen as nihilism. But apathy is not nihilism.
Same thing.

Given a set of circumstances, what in particular are you apathetic about? Do you consider this apathy philosophically? Are you convinced it is reasonable to feel apathetic about it? Are you convinced further that if others thought it through, they too would feel apathetic about it?

It could be anything. Apathetic about sports? about sex? about a job? about politics? about philosophy?

Circumstances experienced differently by different people yields more or less apathy. Whereas from a nihilistic frame of mind as some construe it, i.e. human existence is essentially meaningless and purposeless, what is the point of committing yourself to anything?

But, again, who really thinks that way? Sure, someone might. And, yes, they might conclude that the only appropriate reaction to living in such a world is suicide. Or, as with Camus, to "revolt" against the absurdity of life itself.

But this is no less embedded existentially in dasein.

In other words...
Apathy can be an attitude (“I don’t care about that”) or a character trait (“I don’t care about anything”). However, in either case the apathetic individual is expressing a personal feeling (or, to be more precise, feelinglessness) and is not making a claim about how everyone should feel (or, again, not feel).
Okay, but, going from individual to individual, when does any of this become nihilism? How is nihilism itself not a personal feeling rooted in a personal frame of mind rooted existentially in dasein. That's why some nihilists might opt for suicide while others opt for living life to the fullest. As sociopaths, for example.
The apathetic individual understands perfectly well that other people feel differently insofar as they feel anything at all. And because the apathetic individual feels nothing, the apathetic individual does not feel any desire to convince others that they should similarly feel nothing. Others may care, but the apathetic individual does not, and because they do not care, the apathetic individual does not care that others care.
On the other hand, how is apathy itself not a feeling? Someone either feels apathetic about this or that or about everything or they don't. Caring is, in turn, a feeling. For me, nihilism -- "the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless" -- revolves around the extent to which meaning here is construed existentially or essentially.

And, either way, there are no less any number of options open to the nihilists. That's all embodied in dasein.

In a free will world, of course.

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