Nihilism and its consequences

[PyramidHead]

In a thread about humanism, another poster and I agreed that treating people as if they were objectively valuable can be dangerous. This goes against the conventional wisdom that states the opposite: without assigning some kind of inherent worth to each individual, we fall into a territory where anything goes. Many people believe that the only way to live ethically is to affirm the unshakeable value of life, human life specifically. I don't think this is necessarily the case, and on the contrary, a lot of the havoc that happens in the world may be traceable to that absolutist notion.

The plain fact is that nothing is valuable in itself, and instrumental values depend on subjective preferences. But this isn't a potent motivator toward action, for most people who realize it. Given the empty and ultimately meaningless futility of everything, a nihilist is unlikely to rush into a crowded building and start stabbing people, because that too will have been drained of its significance. Rather, it's the people who feel like they have to protect something sacred and immutable who are spurned into every kind of mayhem by their values. The average person will feel sympathy with such defenders, and think "at least they have principles and are willing to fight for them." Fighting for principles is delusional and destructive, always reactionary, and not something my subjective preferences allow me to admire.

When it really sinks in that I am one among billions dragging myself across the surface of the planet and nothing good is guaranteed to happen to me, I lose the ability to have enemies. When I think of how every act I take to improve my well-being is necessarily at the expense of someone else, I am provided with no positive reason to further sabotage the plans of others. When the hollowness of whatever I work hard to obtain is laid bare, I can share it more freely. When I realize the many ways everybody is doomed to struggle and be forgotten, I naturally avoid perpetuating another generation of suffering. If I thought that I was a special being, and people who had the same ideas as me were similarly special, I might vilify those who disagreed with me. If I believed there was a proper way to behave in all circumstances, grounded in a consistent set of ethical norms, I would spend time diverting the trajectories of other people. In every case, I find that it's the moralist with deep convictions who makes a mess of the world. The more cemented their foundation, the more pernicious the mischief they cause wherever they go.

I really don't have a question or an argument here, I just wanted to share my point of view. It's kind of like Buddhism I guess, only with no possibility of enlightenment.

 

[Tom Sawyer]

Maybe nihilism has consequences and maybe it doesn't. Honestly, it doesn't really matter either way.

 

[Underseer]

Other people do have inherent value. Human beings are social mammals, and like most social species our primary survival strategy is each other.

The emotional bonds we form with other people in our social group is how our instincts encourage us to work towards the well being and survival of the others in our social group, and I'm convinced this is the source of our nearly universal "human life has value" notion. Only sociopaths and psychopaths can truly separate themselves from these bonds.

If you want to decide that those bonds have no meaning, then great. Knock yourself out. However I don't think you can say those bonds don't exist or don't have value. Without those bonds society as we know it wouldn't be possible and we would still be a bunch of primitive ground apes living on the Savannah and easy prey for lions/hyenas/etc.

 

[untermensche]

When it really sinks in that I am one among billions dragging myself across the surface of the planet and nothing good is guaranteed to happen to me, I lose the ability to have enemies.

Dragging yourself around and understanding that there are no guarantees means everybody is an enemy.

Being in a foul mood causes one to meet more assholes.

Tell two people that life is all there is and you can get two reactions. One person can say that all experience is worthless and the other can say that all experience is priceless.

Some try to die a whole lot before their actual death in an attempt to make it easier.

 

[PyramidHead]

When it really sinks in that I am one among billions dragging myself across the surface of the planet and nothing good is guaranteed to happen to me, I lose the ability to have enemies.

Dragging yourself around and understanding that there are no guarantees means everybody is an enemy.

That only holds if I have an inflated opinion of my worth and that of whatever projects I choose to undertake. Since I have stopped imagining that I am owed any kind of success or stability merely by virtue of being alive, I don't have the rational capacity to demonize those who get in my way. I may resist them, wrestle against them, as we are all bound to do, but I don't think any worse of them as people (usually!).

Being in a foul mood causes one to meet more assholes.

What does this have to do with the topic? Are you under the impression that the Buddha was in a foul mood all the time? Maybe Beckett was, but he had other problems.

Tell two people that life is all there is and you can get two reactions. One person can say that all experience is worthless and the other can say that all experience is priceless.

Again, not a lot to do with the subject of the thread. Whether there is an afterlife or not, this life, the actual one, cannot be shown to have any inherent value. But I do agree with you, incidentally; some people go into a flurry of activity, some people say what's the use. I'm more on the what's the use end of the spectrum.

Some try to die a whole lot before their actual death in an attempt to make it easier.

Good quote, mind if I steal it?

 

[ontological_realist]

To think that cosmos functions according to human values, whether religious or secular, is a delusion.
Psychologically, this is infantile or religious.

 

[Supercaliber]

Other people do have inherent value. Human beings are social mammals, and like most social species our primary survival strategy is each other.

The emotional bonds we form with other people in our social group is how our instincts encourage us to work towards the well being and survival of the others in our social group, and I'm convinced this is the source of our nearly universal "human life has value" notion. Only sociopaths and psychopaths can truly separate themselves from these bonds.

If you want to decide that those bonds have no meaning, then great. Knock yourself out. However I don't think you can say those bonds don't exist or don't have value. Without those bonds society as we know it wouldn't be possible and we would still be a bunch of primitive ground apes living on the Savannah and easy prey for lions/hyenas/etc.

Primitive ground apes bonded...There is less bonding by humans now more than ever and the bonding you think your getting has less meaning and emotion for each individual..Our primary strategy is to procreate..That hasn't changed..And how do we get there now?..By fluffing, primping, lying, cheating and doing whatever it takes to find the perfect mate.. TV programming makes me retch. If that doesn't work we strive for wealth and power as they are the exact same boring want..but it allows for attracting quite a few..I'm pretty much appalled by humans these days..How is ISIS bonding?..It must be their outstanding recruiting efforts..They are bonding, are they not?..To me their meaningless along with love, money and Allah..You can't put meaning to something you don't have..At 55, single, alone, and downright disappointed by life (And I've done my best..Its all I could do) reading PyramidHead's nihilistic tendencies brings me some joy..BTW, If I could have a beer with any human in history it would be Schopenhauer..And you?

 

[fast]

Fighting for principles is delusional and destructive, always reactionary, and not something my subjective preferences allow me to admire.

Oh, just change your view so that it's more positive.

 

[Horatio Parker]

You are concerned with justice. That's not nihilistic. Nihilism denies morality. You clearly believe in morality.

I think what you're describing is more like Stoicism, cultivating your mind through an ascetic lifestyle in order to avoid strong emotions that might lead to negative actions. Apathy in the classic sense.

 

[Unbeatable]

When it really sinks in that I am one among billions dragging myself across the surface of the planet and nothing good is guaranteed to happen to me, I lose the ability to have enemies.

Dragging yourself around and understanding that there are no guarantees means everybody is an enemy.

Understanding on an emotional level(I think that may be what he means by "when it really sinks in"; it's one thing to intellectually acknowledge an abstract truth, but another to experience it) that there are no guarantees means not having rigid expectations. It means accepting reality for what it is instead of condemning it for not living up to some imaginary standard of what it "should" be, and that means accepting other people for what they are as well. You can perceive everyone as a threat to your interests, since in fact they are, simply by virtue of us all being separate beings with separate, overlapping-but-not-identical interests. But for you to really feel that they are your enemy, you must on some level condemn them for this, in a way that you don't condemn a thunderstorm or influenza.

Some try to die a whole lot before their actual death in an attempt to make it easier.

That's my goal in a nutshell.

 

[PyramidHead]

You are concerned with justice. That's not nihilistic. Nihilism denies morality. You clearly believe in morality.

I think what you're describing is more like Stoicism, cultivating your mind through an ascetic lifestyle in order to avoid strong emotions that might lead to negative actions. Apathy in the classic sense.

I do have political and moral views that I occasionally defend, but I don't believe they are grounded in absolute moral truths. Whether that means I "believe in morality or not", I don't really know. My views on that change a lot; the underlying points of my opening post haven't changed in a while, so perhaps they are more ingrained in my thinking.

I wouldn't say I'm a Stoic by intention. However, emotional extremes are often associated with ways of thinking based on values I don't recognize, so in practice I am rather even-keeled. But it's not by choice, as it is for the devout Stoic.

 

[Horatio Parker]

You are concerned with justice. That's not nihilistic. Nihilism denies morality. You clearly believe in morality.

I think what you're describing is more like Stoicism, cultivating your mind through an ascetic lifestyle in order to avoid strong emotions that might lead to negative actions. Apathy in the classic sense.

I do have political and moral views that I occasionally defend, but I don't believe they are grounded in absolute moral truths. Whether that means I "believe in morality or not", I don't really know. My views on that change a lot; the underlying points of my opening post haven't changed in a while, so perhaps they are more ingrained in my thinking.

I wouldn't say I'm a Stoic by intention. However, emotional extremes are often associated with ways of thinking based on values I don't recognize, so in practice I am rather even-keeled. But it's not by choice, as it is for the devout Stoic.

I get that.

I'm only saying that your goal of avoidance of strong passions that spring from moral convictions of one kind or another resembles Stoicism. Coincidence, whatever. More importantly, it's not nihilism.

The other thing I notice that you seem to feel strongly about but not stating it directly is equality. The point of worthlessness in your system, AFACIT, is that we are equally worthless. That suggests to me that equality is really the important part, whether equally worthless or equally valuable.

 

[Unbeatable]

I get that.

I'm only saying that your goal of avoidance of strong passions that spring from moral convictions of one kind or another resembles Stoicism. Coincidence, whatever. More importantly, it's not nihilism.

I'm curious about something-- what actually would nihilism look like, in your eyes?

 

[The AntiChris]

I get that.

I'm only saying that your goal of avoidance of strong passions that spring from moral convictions of one kind or another resembles Stoicism. Coincidence, whatever. More importantly, it's not nihilism.

I'm curious about something-- what actually would nihilism look like, in your eyes?

As I understand it moral nihilism is the view that there are no objective (i.e. non-subjective moral truths). In other words nothing is intrinsically moral or immoral. This doesn't imply that we can't make moral judgments - just that those judgements are expressions of own subjective view and don't express objective facts.

I've also seen moral nihilism portrayed (usually by its critics) as the view that all expressions of moral approval or disapproval are mistaken. I think this view is incoherent and therefore a misconception.

 

[Togo]

I get that.

I'm only saying that your goal of avoidance of strong passions that spring from moral convictions of one kind or another resembles Stoicism. Coincidence, whatever. More importantly, it's not nihilism.

I'm curious about something-- what actually would nihilism look like, in your eyes?

Absolute nihilism is very difficult. It's very hard to coherently both believe in the idea that there are no cohereant moral convictions or values, while at the same time having any kind of reason or value behind doing so. The closest I've seen in practice is a religious/occult group who believed that reality itself was an illusion, and thus morality was baseless and irrelevent, but their beliefs basically ended up as a selfish form of hedonism.

The kind of nihilism that Antichris is talking about, rejection of absolute morality, is much more common. There's no particular difficulty in not tracing back moral judgements to an absolute moral authority or an absolute value system, provided you're intellectually happy with a competing eco-system of interlocking moral values. However, many are not happy with any kind of moral judgement unless they can trace it back to an authority of some kind.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Using reason to prove that reason is meaningless seems to me a futile exercise with an untrustworthy conclusion. I think of nihilism more in the nature of a revelation: I feel it or think it therefore it is(or is not). So a nihilist might adopt reason or morality in order to gain something, but the only important point is the object attained. Something of a sociopath that embraces their sociopathy, I guess.

I guess to me nihilism has to be absolute. I think it's hard to reject structure and therefore morals among humans when there is so much structure in our reality.

You, OTOH, by deliberately lowering the value of your own creations out of sensitivity to others displays much too fine a sense of justice to be a nihilist IMO.

 

[PyramidHead]

Well, it doesn't really matter what it's called, then. My only point, if I had one specifically in mind when writing the OP, was that there is a common misconception about people who dispute inherent values, the innate worth of human life, and so on: we must be destructive hedonists. When you follow the denial of those things to its logical end, however (and I don't have any beef with logic), it's hard to come up with a plausible motivation for that outcome. The secondary point is that it's actually easier to justify violence when you hold certain values as absolute, and certain rights as inviolable.

I now understand what you (Horatio Parker) mean by 'justice', but I don't think of it in the way most do, as a principle to be positively upheld for its own sake. What manifests as 'justice' in my worldview comes from the negative side, where the lack of any reason to discriminate between people who are entitled to my benevolence and those who aren't leaves me with no alternative but to let them go about their business. Absent a legitimate claim that my projects, aspirations, distractions etc. are more valid than anyone else's, and equipped with the knowledge that inevitably theirs will clash spectacularly with mine, it requires intentional effort on my part to conclude "this person has committed an unforgivable offense to my dignity." In the abstract, of course. In practice, like anyone else, I have my vendettas. But if I thought everybody were entitled to pursue their dreams, I probably would get more riled up when mine are thwarted by someone else's trajectory. Since that notion seems silly on its face, I don't have the energy to do what Pat Robertson predicts is in my character as a moral relativist/subjectivist/nihilist/whatever.

 

[Horatio Parker]

Well, it doesn't really matter what it's called, then. My only point, if I had one specifically in mind when writing the OP, was that there is a common misconception about people who dispute inherent values, the innate worth of human life, and so on: we must be destructive hedonists. When you follow the denial of those things to its logical end, however (and I don't have any beef with logic), it's hard to come up with a plausible motivation for that outcome. The secondary point is that it's actually easier to justify violence when you hold certain values as absolute, and certain rights as inviolable.

What I've learned works like this: at first glance, on a personal level, absolutes seem arbitrary, even capricious. Once you are in a leadership position, though, the absolutists have a point. If you are responsible for others, consistency is required, and in turn some sort of (preferably just) law will have to result. This the argument of the Republic. Society is best off if specialists perform specialized tasks, and performing a task well is a virtue. The argument that virtue is therefore absolute comes from the notion that we all to an extent perform the same tasks as specialists. If we repair something, we are to an extent a mechanic. We pilot our cars or our shopping carts(ok so they're not all profound), or rule our homes. So, as society can be thought of as body, so is a body a society. This is the notion of the philosopher king who rules himself. So now the leadership argument has returned to the personal.

I now understand what you (Horatio Parker) mean by 'justice', but I don't think of it in the way most do, as a principle to be positively upheld for its own sake. What manifests as 'justice' in my worldview comes from the negative side, where the lack of any reason to discriminate between people who are entitled to my benevolence and those who aren't leaves me with no alternative but to let them go about their business.

Can't the same thing be stated positively? Eg All people are equal, regardless of their beliefs.

Absent a legitimate claim that my projects, aspirations, distractions etc. are more valid than anyone else's, and equipped with the knowledge that inevitably theirs will clash spectacularly with mine, it requires intentional effort on my part to conclude "this person has committed an unforgivable offense to my dignity." In the abstract, of course. In practice, like anyone else, I have my vendettas. But if I thought everybody were entitled to pursue their dreams, I probably would get more riled up when mine are thwarted by someone else's trajectory. Since that notion seems silly on its face, I don't have the energy to do what Pat Robertson predicts is in my character as a moral relativist/subjectivist/nihilist/whatever.

That's your sense of justice. If someone has done nothing to you, but maybe holds beliefs that you would question, what's the point? Why manufacture negativity in the form of judgement over a matter of interpretation? It's a waste of energy. I agree completely.

 

[PyramidHead]

What I've learned works like this: at first glance, on a personal level, absolutes seem arbitrary, even capricious. Once you are in a leadership position, though, the absolutists have a point. If you are responsible for others, consistency is required, and in turn some sort of (preferably just) law will have to result. This the argument of the Republic. Society is best off if specialists perform specialized tasks, and performing a task well is a virtue. The argument that virtue is therefore absolute comes from the notion that we all to an extent perform the same tasks as specialists. If we repair something, we are to an extent a mechanic. We pilot our cars or our shopping carts(ok so they're not all profound), or rule our homes. So, as society can be thought of as body, so is a body a society. This is the notion of the philosopher king who rules himself. So now the leadership argument has returned to the personal.

I like your description of the Republic. I would never try to make the case that my opinions about morality could form the foundation of a healthy society, or even a healthy body. Both entities have instrumental values that only make sense in a given context, and are not necessarily tied to anything true about reality--that is, in order to be useful, they need not be accurate representations of anything. I'm fine with that, but some people need their ideas about society to be somehow etched into the fabric of nature, or at least derived from it.

 

[Perspicuo]

Psychological contribution: the consequences of nihilism are all emotional. The feeling of pointlessness is created by lack of meaningful relationships, which is predictable for a social species. Fix the relational sphere and life goes back to mental health / wellbeing.

You can either decide nothing is valuable and everything is valuable, and in both cases you would be correct. But the emotional consequences of "nothing is valuable" are harrowing, and it's a rotten way to spend a life, to waste a lifetime rather. The only lifetime you will ever have.