Nihilism

[Positive3]

What do you think about Nihilism?

[Stillwater]

What do you think about outer space?

[Nameless]

I don't think nihilism is a natural state.

[Szaxx]

I don't think nihilism is a natural state.

Sociopaths would most likely disagree lol.

[ThaomasOfGrey]

I had to google the word and I got this:

"the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."

How can religious and moral principles be anything but our own subjective creations? The kinds of things that are commonly referred to as "right" or "wrong" don't seem to hold up to scrutiny. We call a human wrong and a murderer for killing another person, yet, what if I dreamed some scenario and fought to the death with dream people for fun.

If you were dreaming this entire reality would you restrict yourself to only dreaming the things that are right? The consciousness systems not to. When Lions murder each other it is a beautiful part of nature. Doesn't the Buddhist love the entirety of reality and shed attachment to the likes of moral principles.

If you are thinking in terms of right and wrong you might be closing your mind.

[Nameless]

"It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy." Encyclopedia of Philosophy

[Stillwater]

Why an "Impulse to destroy"? that just sounds silly.

I feel like they are trying to make something dramatic out of something that really isn't.

[Rakkso]

Wouldn't the act of giving up oneself to non-attachment be the beginning of self destruction? Even if to someone it can be just for fun?
Even if life were to be meaningless, a pattern remains, one that is seen everywhere in nature and everything that is, one of beginning and end, creation and destruction, something is created, it unfolds, then is dust, natural or man-made. What characterizes something, anything, is the way that something unfolds, isn't it so? Wouldn't that begin by a simple choice? Again I'm writing this as a small, perhaps poor argumentative idea against meaninglessness.

In this universe, before the sun was created, there could have been no planet earth because there would have been no center to gravitate towards to. yet what made the sun 'was', so that then the planets could 'be', so that then us would come to 'be' so that then things smaller than us would 'be', and those things, ideas, constructions, systems, created by us, would in turn compose smaller things that would effect their influence in us, like a bacteria, or just again, an idea. Any idea. The pattern unfolding seems to be all that is, that pattern could not be meaningless, in my humble opinion.

Could an idea have been before the sun? Perhaps... but the sun must be there to nurture our ideas, as well as anyone's ideas above us.
So in a sense, the ultimate purpose of the sun was not to have planets to have life, but to have more ideas working together??
Just a thought.

[Nameless]

Why an "Impulse to destroy"? that just sounds silly.

I feel like they are trying to make something dramatic out of something that really isn't.

That was a quote from the Encyclopedia. Check both annihilate and nihilism in Dictionary.com. If destruction is not the reasoning behind being a nihilist then why call themselves by that name. But, on the other hand, personally I wouldn't have a clue what a nihilist is.

[Stillwater]

Because "nihil" means "nothing".

So "nihilsm" is lacking beliefs, or positively asserting there is nothing to believe in.

"Annihilate" comes from Latin "ad" for "to, and "nihil" for nothing; annihilate literally means to reduce to nothing.

The two words share a root, but annihilate is not the parent word for nihilism; they are instead sister words, so "nihilism" has nothing direct to do with destruction.

[Szaxx]

That was a quote from the Encyclopedia. Check both annihilate and nihilism in Dictionary.com. If destruction is not the reasoning behind being a nihilist then why call themselves by that name. But, on the other hand, personally I wouldn't have a clue what a nihilist is.

In a way, the ultimate in manic depression.
I wonder if Marvin out of Hitchhikers guide was a nihilist lol.

[RobertForsythe]

"It is often associated with extreme pessimism and a radical skepticism that condemns existence. A true nihilist would believe in nothing, have no loyalties, and no purpose other than, perhaps, an impulse to destroy." Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I saw one graph that shows the use of this word gaining huge popularity in the years leading up to the Russian Revolution. It was indeed a very destructive movement that led Russia into a very long and nightmarish period of suffering and mass murder on a scale never before imagined.

Maybe this life is totally meaningless but it does not have to be without Purpose. But in order to have *purpose* one must make the effort to give it purpose. There is a huge percentage of the population that is just too lazy to make that sort of effort. In this case it becomes easy to settle into a nihilistic worldview.


ni·hil·ism.
[ˈnīəˌlizəm, ˈnēəˌlizəm]
NOUN
1.the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless.

synonyms: skepticism · negativity · cynicism · pessimism · disbelief ·
unbelief · agnosticism · atheism

philosophy
extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence.

historical
the doctrine of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900, which found nothing to approve of in the established social order.

[ThaomasOfGrey]

Maybe this life is totally meaningless but it does not have to be without Purpose. But in order to have *purpose* one must make the effort to give it purpose.

A life lived to the full with purpose is still objectively equal to the experience of a life without purpose. They are equally valid. If you imagined that after this life time you would be reincarnating to experience every human life time one after the other it just stops mattering whether there is purpose. All there is to us is experiencing, so I guess experiencing objectively is the purpose and the meaning.

[RobertForsythe]

A life lived to the full with purpose is still objectively equal to the experience of a life without purpose. They are equally valid. If you imagined that after this life time you would be reincarnating to experience every human life time one after the other it just stops mattering whether there is purpose. All there is to us is experiencing, so I guess experiencing objectively is the purpose and the meaning.

I don't understand what "valid" has to do with it. Same with "objectively equal"... so what?

Two men wait at the WorkForce office available as day laborers and they both get hired by a landscaper. At the end of the day they are both tired, dirty and hungry... but one is disgruntled, disappointed and angry at life in general while the other is pretty happy with what he learned that day, and he is excited about tomorrow hoping he can learn more about operating a fork lift, the backhoe and how to plant rosebushes properly.

The objective equality of the experience doesn't really mean much.

Each lifetime matters for people when they have a Bill Murray/Groundhog Day purpose. "Purpose" can be optimized to provide a cumulative benefit
reflected in a superior Consciousness.