Tom Howell
at the CBC website
In fact, this is the nihilism that is more readily understood. You lose all hope for a purposeful and meaningful existence because the circumstances in your life have overwhelmed you. You're convinced that you have run out of options and the anguish precipitating despair is [from your frame of mind] clearly appropriate. It is entirely reasonable to think and to feel nihilistic.Fighting back for nihilism
And The Guardian reported this winter on the "lonely repetition and growing nihilism" characterizing the lives of Australia's young adults after months of wildfires and pandemic-related news and restrictions. The nihilism in this case entails a sense of apathy with a loss of psychological ability to face the future and take actions aimed at achieving happiness.
Here the only hope seems to be a leap of faith to God or the No God equivalent. Or suicide.
But the nihilism that I root my own "fractured and fragmented" vantage point in is more...philosophical? It seems entirely reasonable to me that given a No God world there is no foundation that "I" am able to ground my Self in. There is no font around which allows me to think up or to discover objective morality. Life is construed to be essentially meaningless and purposeless. And, in the end, there is only oblivion.
But here's the thing...
In being a nihilist philosophically, one can, circumstantially, still have a day to day existence that is awash with fulfillment and satisfaction. You can have a truly great life even if convinced it has no necessary meaning and purpose. You simply accumulate the necssary distractions to keep all that "philosophical" stuff at bay.
As a consequence, the worst of all possible worlds is one in which you feel that your life has no overarching purpose and meaning...and your day to day existence is a misery.
This both makes sense and does not make sense to me. Too early or not the time given what set of circumstances? This will obviously mean different things to different people. In other words, given the balance in their life between their philosophy and their circumstances.Llanera told IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed that a constant barrage of anti-nihilist sentiment from acquaintances and the media helped prompt her to fight back on nihilism's behalf.
"Defending it really makes me feel like the madman in Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science," said Llanera. "You know, 'You've come too early! It's not yet time! Don't rock the boat!' But we think that it's about time and that's why we're making the case."
What I attempt here myself is to defend nihilism as a philosophy of life given a No God world. It seems entirely rational to believe that, sans God, meaning and purpose in one's life will be rooted existentially in dasein. Then it comes down to how each of us choose to embody nihilism in our everyday interactions with others. At one end are those who champion moderation, negotiation and compromise and at the other the out and out sociopaths intent only on sustaining "what's in it for me?".
https://ilovephilosophy.com/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=195600