I love that book, but disagree that it's nihilistic. I see it as stoical. It asserts that worldly pursuits are in vain, and you are left with no option other than to esteem God.

It's a warning to avoid a life of short-lived, material goals. Everything you do will come to an end in due course, and there's an appropriate time for all things...good and bad. Accept them as they come. Take on your trials with diligence, and rejoice in your time.

Everyone on the planet, wise and foolish...are subject to the same fate. So, accept it.

But then there's also Isaiah 22:13

13 and behold, joy and gladness,

killing oxen and slaughtering sheep,

eating flesh and drinking wine.

r“Let us eat and drink,

for tomorrow we die.”

I certainly don't have the scientific background, specifically in Astronomy and/or things such as Quantum Physics, to know whether or now we're being gassed when we're told things about the Universe like how quickly it is expanding, the number of galaxy clusters, the density of neutron stars and black holes, etc etc etc. Personally, I suspect that some of the more scary aspects of how the universe might be propagated just to detect the more alarmist/survivalist among us so that they can be "dealt with"

But I do know that when I consider such things from time to time, that's when my nihilism becomes more prominent than usual.

I'm a pretty, pretty strong believer in "God". VERY strong believer in "God", actually. Notice my use of parenthesis, there, of course.

Nihilism, if largely a "feeling" in a person who is going through a "normal" adolescentish phase of philosophical development, makes perfect sense. And at least occasionally returning to that mental state throughout one's life is, I think, probably fairly normal.

When it comes to Nihilism applied to human behavior, however, I also think about a term I've seen used in the good bit of reading I've done on psychology and mental disorders - that term/phrase is "Primitive Personality Structure". You will run across this term in relation to reading about things like narcissism and antisociality, for example. My conception of what is meant by PPS (which might have a formal definition, but I think its meaning might be a little fluid, as well), is that of a person who is extremely, extremely reluctant to trust anything outside of themselves to the point of them being unnecessarily aggressive to a very high degree - essentially, a criminal mentality. These are people who, through perhaps just a lot of bad luck and/or really bad home-rearing and/or perhaps congenitally-based reasons, just don't at all understand that we live in a world where there have been people who have tried and tried and tried to build something called "civilization". They literally don't understand philosophy, art, ethics - any of that stuff - on a very deep level. They just don't get it. That is maybe a certain kind of Nihilism, as well, but not quite the same thing I was referring to before this paragraph.

You must be an Adlerian alt. Honored to have you post twice in this thread to share your extensive expertise, sir.

Isn't that similar? Enjoy the day at hand.

It's not saying your day is without value.

All of it seems to imply that we need a God to have any meaning. Which is interesting

It would be great to not feel nihilistic. Everyone feels differently about their lives, and some people never live long enough to even think about it. So ultimately, who cares?

Feel however you feel, or don’t. Nobody gives a hell. And an eternity from now, you’ll never have existed.

There is no meaning, it’s just whatever lies you tell yourself to assuage death anxiety and rationalize the fact that life is pure suffering.

Damn.

how few women do you get that the sheer novelty of pussy is able to overcome nihilism?

Seems like miserable kunts

You sound enlightened brah

Nihilism assigns too much meaning to meaninglessness

Yes reality is meaningless, but that's a good thing

I don't think nihilism assigns any meaning to meaninglessness. People do that sometimes though

It doesn't really matter at the end of the day

Yep

Imagine how people create something that mimics biology (think AI and robots and such), right, they have the knowledge and power to make it, and a will to choose to do so. And they pat themselves on the back for it.

Yet the biologythat they are trying to mimicdoesnt have a maker with even more knowledge and power?

What I meant is, they say life is meaningless thus "life is negative, you can do whatever evils you want"... To me that's overthinking it. It's healthier to just accept that we don't live in a LOTR-esque fantasy World where everything has meaning and the individuals are deep/spiritually connected and have a certain 'raison d'etre'. Humanity is pretty inherently meaningless, but otherwise one can still live life normally and be about your business. Obviously society and humanity still exists, even if you can't ask too much of them or take them too seriously.

It's all relative

Nihilism is for pretentious edgelord *******s, bro.

The moment they slip into those sugary wall of sweetness, their lives will have meaning again. I promise.

Imagine going through life thinking it's meaningless. What a gigantic virgin phegget you have to be to think that.

If nihilism is true, there is no such thing as morality. Since morality would not based upon anything objective and is temporal, the ideas then of goodness and justice are completely man made. Thus are subjective to whoever holds power to make the determination of what goodness and justice are defined as. If one were to disagree with the one in power who says what is good or just, on what measure is that person going to refute the one in power’s? The person’s own thoughts? Well those are ultimately created from nothing, and nothing has no purpose or meaning, so those thoughts are just as meaningless. So an appeal to what is objectively good or just can’t be made, and falls back to whoever holds power makes the determination.

My core is Nihilism, wrapped in Relativism.

A lot of Nihilists are indeed edgelord kunts. For me it was freeing af.
You just described like... all of human history. The people in power have always decided what goodness and justice are defined as.

Humans decide their own morals based on how they are raised, where/what kind of society they are raised in, and their experiences in life.

You can take 100 different people who follow the same doctrine and if you dig deep enough, you will find areas where they disagree on an issue of "morality".

Yes, many people have used moral relativism due to their underlying nihilistic nature to support their machinations.

One is free to murder, rape, steal, from another since the transgressor can make their own determination on whether their behavior is good, and since they are more powerful than the person they acted upon, their acts are good and just.

Thanks.

When I was a kid I had MANY relatives die from cancer and it really scared me. I also saw one relative really want to live AFTER they found out they had cancer then died.

Feeling this doom when I was a kid made me feel very nihilistic. However, I like doing positive things so it's a conflict to feel life is pointless while admiring positive people. I also liked superheroes as a kid and they do things for nothing without asking for a reward. So, I had that stuff in my head while thinking about relatives who just lived to die.

So, I decided I'm going to try hard to do the positive things I want just to laugh at how sh!tty life is.

As I've gotten older and more toward the age when relatives got cancer I think it's made me more positive because I'm going to "fight" no matter what. But, fighting is doing positive stuff, not getting pissed off at how annoying life is, and so on.

So, guys stole my catalytic converter the other day and I was barely even angry about it. I actually felt sorry for them.

Interestingly, I think this type of "f@ck it" attitude is keeping me healthy.

I see what you mean now boyo
I think there are some innate ideas of goodness in humans. Humans don't necessarily create their values, but discover them

I changed the meaning of Nihilistic to mean "The Euphoria of planting your seed inside of a woman for the first time, while raw-dawgin"

Yes.

I think its maybe too much of an extreme outlook? And like most extreme outlooks, once your committed to one, there's a tendency to view everything in accordance with your belief.

The universe & all matter came into existence. Why? Don't know. There doesn't have to be any meaning behind it, but i can't be 100% certain about that.

So i sit on the agnostic fence..

The nihilist flees from personal responsibility, which is what got them there in the first place. What you’re proposing goes against their character. This is why our character must change when we are in a living hell. To identify our actions matter. Our decisions matter. To the nihilist, none of that matters. One theory is that we are “just along for the ride” how does the quote go, that you can either dig your heels in or just ride along? Interpreting this can be tricky, because that does not mean you don’t have control. It just means that if you view everything and everyone as an obstacle instead of the path forward, you’re going to be really frustrated. Everyone and everything will be out to get you, at least, with that lens.

Buddhism and Christ are very similar in this manner. They both describe “the way”. How to live in harmony with the things that you cannot control

How can there be innate goodness if existence is meaningless and without purpose? Where did goodness come from?

Nobody knows. Nobody knows why flies like chit, or why pigs like mud. It's just the way it is, or the way things evolved into being.

Wherever goodness came from, badness also came from. If you're saying the meaning of life is to pursue what's good, that's fine, but what's good varies across individuals and across cultures, as does what's bad.

I didn't completely address it in my couple of posts, but yes I agree if you're in a living Hell what you ought to do is leave or 'plant flowers'. Try to work on your obstacles.

At the same time, those who are not in such a position should, imo, try to help knowing that people in dire situations may not be able to help themselves in the way it might make sense to do (addiction, depression, etc) or flatly they have no power to improve their dire situation because of unyielding social factors (poverty, hunger, disease, war).

My rationale for the want to help is considering we all partake in the same Being (God). In a real way, what happens to you happens to me. I just don't have have direct access to your experiences because of epistemic privacy created by our human form/brains.

But, imo secular humanists are basically doing the same thing...they're just using language differently and have a poor opinion of spirituality because they're jaded with superstition. However, even if they don't admit it...the virtues such as charity, kindness, humility, etc they may like are all strictly spiritual imo and not material.

Overall, I think nihilism is just unwarranted. People go out of their way to assert things are meaningless when if they only looked at their own daily motivation to do anything they'd maybe see...oh yeah, I guess that or this is meaningful after all (is it even coherent to have a motivation to something meaningless?)

Some on both sides do seem to think that nihilism is the case without an objective God who is person-like. I don't think God can be person-like in whole but rather includes all persons and their perspectives (and infinitely more) So, we derive some meager insight perhaps into God by reflection on human nature...which I think is good.

Those who shout it down aren't considering limits to freedom of action and disordered social development, psychological function, etc...

I think we need faith in something or, in this context, nothing, in order to have meaning.

We are the only animal that can toil in vain. For all other animals today is the marker of life, and their purpose is met when they sustain themselves and procreate.

For us life is both lived and imagined. It's in the imagining that nihilism can thrive. We have both the gift and the curse of creativity. We are creators (in this capacity we are made in God's image: a creator) . We have the ability to perform the most mundane tasks for the most noble reasons, or ignoble.

Life is what we make of it. I think nihilism is a perfectly rational response to the world we find ourselves in. For me, however, it is unconvincing.