/lit/ - Literature

>>12517733
be careful with nihilism, fren
you’re saying you possess the truth and everybody else is stupid
look at this course, how incredible stoicism is
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/courses/practical-philosophy-the-greco-roman-moralists.html

>>12517733

Because it drags everyone down to the same level. It's also fun to espouse because normies hate hate hate the idea for the usual faggot striver normie reasons. Being forced to actually think about nihilism reminds them that they themselves will die and become nothing one day, which is unpleasant next to their efforts at self improvement.

The flip side of this comfy nihilism is a certain contemporary understanding of religion (a story-about-stories). What I mean by the latter is that since living humans spend their entire lives living in a social hierarchy where some are better and others worse, they take this living idea and falsely project it into their religions; gods are superior, man inferior, and animals still more inferior. And of course men fall into their own intraspecies hierarchies. This applies also to the afterlife, with some being saved and others damned. The afterlife becomes one big high school, with spiritual jocks, chads and stacies enjoying the former, and the various outcasts being consigned to the latter.

Nihilism explodes this idea, making everyone identically equal. People hate the idea that Dahmer and Christ are really equal, where it really counts, in the end. And it's fun to suggest that idea to them, to elicit their reaction. Being one of the crabs in the bucket has a pleasure all its own.

"When the game is over, the king and the pawn go back in the same box." -purported Italian proverb, passed around on the internet

because it's philosophical suicide

Because it feels comfortable and safe to give up and abandon ideas of bettering yourself.

are there nihilists in foxholes?

>>12517733
This is the nihilism trap, comfort. I was thinking just like you. Then my life got fucked up really hard.

>>12517733
Nihilism leads in two opposite directions—follow the line of least resistance, and to adopt strong poses and fanatic resolutions. The quest begun by Odysseus and continued over three millennia has come to an end with the observation that there is nothing to seek. This alleged fact was announced by Nietzsche just over a century ago when he said, “God is dead.” Good and evil now for the first time appeared as values, of which there have been a thousand and one, none rationally or objectively preferable to any other. The salutary illusion about the existence of good and evil has been definitively dispelled. For Nietzsche this was an unparalleled catastrophe; it meant the decomposition of culture and the loss of human aspiration. The Socratic “examined” life was no longer possible or desirable. It was—itself unexamined, and if there was any possibility of a human life in the future it must begin from the naive capacity to live an unexamined life. The philosophic way of life had become simply poisonous. In short, Nietzsche with the utmost gravity told modern man that he was free-falling in the abyss of nihilism. Perhaps after having lived through this terrible experience, drunk it to the dregs, people might hope for a fresh era of value creation, the emergence of new gods.

>>12517813
Dahmer Jesus example is the best example of nihilism I’ve seen
turned my stomach

>>12517884
life went FUBAR for me too
stay strong, fren

>>12517733
because it’s a totalizing world view, an imposition of “being” when you are in a playing of anything but, and because you’re the product of millenia of slave morality and bad conscience wherein nihilism seems like the feasible options compared to the terrible thought of overcoming.

>>12517733
I mean, isn't it kinda boring? Just taking everything as is.

>>12518114
it isn’t boring. more like a way to handle the polarity of life, the ups and downs. if i emotionally attach to either side, i get hurt. being in the middle, as in letting things just be, to let them pass is a more efficient way to deal with the present, to my understanding that is. exertion to “good” or “bad” has been futile in my efforts in life. i’m not saying that i strive to be bad, but in striving to be good, it’s quite exhausing. in the end, i feel that i’m just trying to find my place in life (sry for blogpost bit).

>>12518199
wow you sound like a weakling OP. You know you are made of the same stuff Napolean and Alexander were. The least you can do is get off your lazy ass ethics wise.

>>12518199
great post

>>12518199
>striving to be good, it’s quite exhausting
so you just choose the path of least resistance? you just "go with the flow" because it's easy?
pathetic.
with that mindset , you'll be nothing more than a bottom feeder.

>>12518083
Surprisingly perceptive.

>>12518215
>>12518267
anything wrong with this? why is it important to be great? power? money? influence? for the greater good of all man? weren’t the philosophical greats bottom feeders?

i am aware that my posts smell of angst. i am questioning my life right now and the meaning of it.

>>12518371
nothing wrong in being without meaning, nothing right either

>>12517733
If nothing you do matters it means you are absolved of responsibility since it doesn't matter anyway. Convenient for those who don't want to be responsible.

>>12517733
I think the core of nihilism is just the understanding that values come from us as opposed to preceding us/being intrinsic to the universe. I don't see how that necessarily proscribes having values/morals or that they shouldn't matter or be useful to us. On the contrary I would think the more reasonable conclusion is that as an expression of our own nature, they should matter to us very much.

Ideally, I'd think nihilism would lead to a realization that things don't have to be perfect, eternal or universal to be worthwhile. Perfect is the enemy of good and all that.

>>12519260
but good lost all its meaning in nihilism

>>12519260
in nihilism, values exist, but morals do not

i need someone to define nihilism for me

>>12519303
its reductionism taken to its logical end point.
The road goes on tho, the tools you need to follow it are just different so it seems like the dead end

>>12517813
>>12517818
>>12517869

>>12519303
American nihilism is a mood, a mood of moodiness, a vague disquiet.

>>12519303
Value is the key term
the fact/value distinction
value relativism
It comes from Germany, Nietzsche

>>12519301
No. Morals exist as well.

They just don't matter

>>12519772
you mean they exist as figments?
Nihilism replaced good vs. evil with “values”

>>12517733
if you think nihilism is comfortable, you're doing it wrong.

>>12517733
Because you never actually talk to people.

>dude like nothing matters lol

>>12519292
Not really, there are obviously outcomes which are healthier for the vast majority of people (even if they don't know it). Good still has meaning when related to our own nature, it's only the notion of truly universal good/bad that is dispelled. This makes sense as nature is quite capricious and the universe doesn't appear to care about anything.

>>12517873
If the war is grueling and long enough, most of them will be (see WWI)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91bY9h35qTg

>>12517884
This, nihilism is great when you're life is fine, but when you're life sucks nihilism suddenly doesnt help anymore. Telling someone who just got a divorce or lost a loved one that none of it actually matters has never made them happy.

Nietzsche was not a nihilist. His idea was to create your own meaning out of the nihilistic environment you find yourself in. I think this is the most healthy path.

>>12517733
Asexuality is the nihilist's sexuality.