Nihilism

[Missing]

19 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:

Which makes it a little hard for the species to credibly postulate nihilism, imo 

 

Smacks of having the cake and eating it too, to me. Nihilism doesn’t follow, to me, from the argument against “God did that.”

I'm not sure I quite get the inconsistency you're alluding to. I'm reading this to mean that nihilism runs counter to our in-built drives to care about others, but please correct me if I'm wrong. I don't think nihilism runs in any direction, it doesn't tell us we shouldn't have wants, cares, feelings, drives, etc. So, I think they're only in conflict if we stick with seeing moral principles or values as a necessary component of those in-built drives for pro-social behavior. I don't think it is, I think we have those drives either way, and there's nothing about nihilism as a philosophy that says we shouldn't have those drives or shouldn't allow ourselves to be driven by them. It also doesn't say we should be driven by them, but we don't need it to. Our internal drives tend to be plenty motivating on their own.

 

I don't know if that was at all clarifying or if I was just repeating myself. Let me know if it would help for me to rephrase any of that.

[Olallieberry]

35 minutes ago, Mackenzie Holiday said:

I'm reading this to mean that nihilism runs counter to our in-built drives to care about others

It runs counter to the idea that right and wrong follow from those drives, or that the content of those drives are related in any way at all to any morality of any description.

 

That’s why it seems incongruous to me to say at once, there’s no source for morality while simultaneously elevating - what? Instinct, I guess? - to “everything we need.”

[Missing]

1 minute ago, Ollie415 said:

It runs counter to the idea that right and wrong follow from those drives, or that the content of those drives are

related in any way at all to any morality of any description.

I'm sorry, I'm not seeing how those are opposing ideas. Could you explain what about nihilism runs counter to those ideas?

[JimmyJazz]

32 minutes ago, Ollie415 said:

It runs counter to the idea that right and wrong follow from those drives, or that the content of those drives are related in any way at all to any morality of any description.

 

That’s why it seems incongruous to me to say at once, there’s no source for morality while simultaneously elevating - what? Instinct, I guess? - to “everything we need.”

Right and wrong are exactly the kind of moral simplifications that nihilists most wish to be abolished. 

[JimmyJazz]

3 hours ago, Steel13 said:

I don't think living under religious guidelines is necessarily better. It's more like, how do you know what "good" even means if nothing matters and you don't have any guidelines defining good and bad for you? Humans are very grey, morally speaking, so if we just do the first thing that pops in our head, we do horrible stuff in addition to the good stuff.

Mostly, my moral code is something I made up myself to give life meaning. However, I do truly believe I am doing good if I follow my own moral principles. If I didn't first define what is good and bad for myself, regardless of my motivation, I would struggle to make decisions. When is it okay to do what I want and when do I do what is better for others? Some days, in the moment, I want to commit homicide. Other days, I want to do community service. If I didn't assign them moral value and truly believe one to be morally bad and oneto be morally good, it would be tough to say which thing I deny myself and which thing I encourage. 

Your belief in morality as being what is most personally advantageous to the self sounds pretty close to a kind of moral nihilism. You are essentially saying there that “good” is just what is good for me. 

 

Your statement about creating and defining purpose is essentially existential nihilism because if you are creating it, you are admitting a disbelief in the previously established. You cannot create your own moral guide whilst supporting the one that already existed. If the principles are good, why have you created your own? And how is this anything but statements of support for nihilism rather than the argument against that you are trying to frame it as? 

[Gloomy]

Personally I like to think of myself as a “positive nihilist”. Life/the universe has no grand cosmic meaning. I’m just here because my parents had sex. I can live my life on my own terms. And that’s AWESOME. As someone who’s been dealing with anxiety for much of my life, letting go and telling myself that none of this will matter when the sun explodes in a few billion years is quite comforting.

 

Right and wrong? The universe doesn’t care about that. Some of the evolutionary traits of carnivores are basically torture devices. Every heard of the tarantula hawk? The vast majority of humans sitting in prison for violating the moral codes of human society have caused much less suffering than tarantula hawks cause to tarantulas. That doesn’t mean we can’t decide on our own that someone is an asshole. Isn’t that empowering?

 

Plus, nihilist has a nice ring to it. It makes me feel like a badass anime villain. Maybe some pedantic people would say I’m not really a nihilist for whatever reason, but eh, ok nerd. I guess that’s another way I laugh in life’s face. I sometimes use words that may or may not be correct just for the edgy lolz, that’s how seriously I take life.

[a little annihilation]

2 minutes ago, Gloomy said:

Personally I like to think of myself as a “positive nihilist”. Life/the universe has no grand cosmic meaning. I’m just here because my parents had sex. I can live my life on my own terms. And that’s AWESOME. As someone who’s been dealing with anxiety for much of my life, letting go and telling myself that none of this will matter when the sun explodes in a few billion years is quite comforting.

 

Right and wrong? The universe doesn’t care about that. Some of the evolutionary traits of carnivores are basically torture devices. Every heard of the tarantula hawk? The vast majority of humans sitting in prison for violating the moral codes of human society have caused much less suffering than tarantula hawks cause to tarantulas. That doesn’t mean we can’t decide on our own that someone is an asshole. Isn’t that empowering?

 

Plus, nihilist has a nice ring to it. It makes me feel like a badass anime villain. Maybe some pedantic people would say I’m not really a nihilist for whatever reason, but eh, ok nerd. I guess that’s another way I laugh in life’s face. I sometimes use words that may or may not be correct just for the edgy lolz, that’s how seriously I take life.

exactly lol. it's like that meme where there's two people, one is freaking out, and one is happy and relaxed, and they're both saying "everything is meaningless".

it can be taken however one wants it to be. 

[Slajmy]

What do you guys think of the different positions like cosmic nihilism, existential nihilism, moral nihilism and so on? Maybe it's already been debated but I put It out there.

[Lysandre, the Star-Crossed]

I consider myself to be some flavor of both nihilist and hedonist. I think all human behavior is driven by hedonistic desires, that morals/ethics are ultimately a mix of widespread consensus and clever manipulation by a few individuals, and that life is devoid of inherent meaning. 

 

 

[Sally]

On 8/17/2023 at 5:11 PM, Gloomy said:

Plus, nihilist has a nice ring to it. It makes me feel like a badass anime villain. Maybe some pedantic people would say I’m not really a nihilist for whatever reason, but eh, ok nerd. I guess that’s another way I laugh in life’s face. I sometimes use words that may or may not be correct just for the edgy lolz, that’s how seriously I take life.

You seem to be taking being a badass seriously.  

[Gloomy]

54 minutes ago, Sally said:

You seem to be taking being a badass seriously.  

Eh, not really. Most people I know IRL think I’m a timid and innocent girl which I think is pretty funny.