What are your thoughts about nihilism? I kind of see some truth in it but it's been depressing me lately

there is meaning in life. you don't know what it is, but you have no particular reason to believe in its nonexistence.

you're aware that is retarded.

But is absurdism not just one of the possible conclusions of nihilism?

>disguise
*in ignorance or denial

I see. Thank you for clarifying. Do mind explaining why you don't agree with the metaphysical and episteme parts? If you can't be bothered to do that here I can understand though.

It is nihilism applied only to objective meaning. You can still create subjective one by yourself.

>relativists vs nihilists

I never understood pure Nihilism as the rejection of even subjective experiences to be honest.

I'm aware that you're a shitty person that thinks life is given some empirical value because you can't face the fact that everything is bullshit and then shrug and go on.

Most hedonists are just nihilists in disguise.

Nihilism leads to hedonism, usually not the other way around.

Nihilism is not nearly as deep as most people think it is. Okay, nothing matters. Now what? You still get up every morning, you still eat, drink, fuck, piss and shit. No matter how much you try to convince yourself that "nothing rely mattress" you ultimately end up changing nothing about your behavior. You still abide the law, you still feel the need to have sex and / or masturbate, you still do everything you did before, except somehow something is different, but not really. The only exception to this are those who decide to up and off themselves when they decide that nothing really matters, but that is in itself a form of saying something matters (as in, declaring life not having meaning as meaning enough to take your own life)

>>You still abide the law
Meh, most people don't really abide the law honestly.Laws against file sharing, weed and hookers alone are probably enough to get most people busted.

Unless by abide the law you actually mean don't murder your peers for funzies or some shit, in which case I would say that is less a matter of abiding the law then it is a matter of not being a sociopath.

This for the most part. Nihilism is completely unfulfilling, thus why it usually ends in hedonism and bouts of depression.

>The only exception to this are those who decide to up and off themselves when they decide that nothing really matters, but that is in itself a form of saying something matters (as in, declaring life not having meaning as meaning enough to take your own life)

This is more so the existentialist viewpoint, which is really the best next step for nihilists.

Also to elaborate on the final viewpoint since I realized I'm gonna confuse a lot of people since I partially misread that.

If they are considering suicide, existentialism is the next logical step, because that ties in with the Absurd. Actually committing suicide is obviously not existentialist. Forgive me misreading, it's 5 am here.

but if you can, does it make a difference? if not, you wouldn't be posting. if yes, you'd be wrong.

also >implying truth = empirical

> if not, you wouldn't be posting.
Why wouldn't I? We all robots moved by meaningless laws of physics and fate.

I am nihilistic not because I choose to be but because it is logically the only thing that makes sense to me given what I think I know (and suspect I don't know) in the world I live in. It's not that I think I'm cool or edgy because of my views or a conscious decision I made one day, it's just that over time I have developed a perspective that is heavily influenced by nihilism.

I really do not see how one could argue that there exists an extrinsic purpose in life. The only purpose we can have are the ones that we assign ourselves or through society as a whole.

I think i have BPD and am extremely suicidal though so I don't know, maybe I'm blinded by that. I truly don't believe there is any purpose for mine or anyone's life, and seeing as how I have no interest in society and can find very few like-minded people, this mental state is not something I choose.

I am in the same position in regards to nihlism which is why I find it weird to constantly be accused of trying to be edgy on here.

In regards to the BPD and the suicidal tendencies (saw them life btw, great band :^)) I wish you the very best. You may feel alone but there are many that share your view on life, so rest assured.

Thanks user, I'll drink to that.

Okey, so life has no objective truth, we can agree on that. But is objective truth all that matters? i think not. i think subjective truth and axioms build based on your instincts are important too. So try to change you viewpoint, to something no so wild and alienated, like some netral observer of the universe and start careing abut yourself, the things that make you happy, that inspire you, i dont know, just try m8. Is not that hard to become an existencialist. I t makes plain of sence.

what if a person subscribed to hedonistic belief found meaning in his hedonistic aspect of life. would he still be a nihilist?

Find a good women and inpregnate her and all that will change. It comes at a cost but men are suppose to bond with women and if that is missing in life then there is no point to live. Most men screw up by being with a women for the wrong reason and when things go to shit in the relationship it reinforces their prior logic that they don't need women. A man is only as good as his women.

>What are your thoughts about nihilism?

There are no facts, only interpretations. "Life is inherently meaningless" is not a fact, but another interpretation — meaninglessness being yet another meaning one has dressed the world in. Meaninglessness becomes your interpretation of the world when you have previously placed value in areas of nothingness, conceptual spaces of non-life, fantasy.

Life is meaningless when you fail to give it meaning. It is not permanently meaningless. We have the ability to change this; we are the ones who gave it the meaning of meaninglessness in the first place. To other animals, there is no question of meaningfulness or meaninglessness to them. So if you live in a world of meaninglessness, you are 100% responsible for that world, because this quality originates from you, it is not discovered on the outside by you.

>I kind of see some truth in it

Truth doesn't exist in a nihilistic worldview, dummy.

It's the only philosophy that is objectively verified by science, and therefore it is superior to any conceptual philosophies.

>it is logically the only thing that makes sense

But logic is meaningless.

But science is meaningless.

Yes, just as meaningless as any other object of thought. However, nihilism has science on its side while other philosophies don't even have that. Out of all the arbitrary bullshit that people came up with and decided to call philosophy, it's the closest one to being non-bullshit.

Give Stuart Kauffman a try, I think his ideas are flawed but yet still interesting.

>However, nihilism has science on its side
I don't know where you get that from. Science presupposes that there is a truth to declare and that it is worth pursuing.

Science also tells us that everything is coming to an inevitable end.

If science is meaningless, then how does it support anything let alone a specific philosophy?

Not really tbqhwy.

How do you figure?

Even if you can rationally explain this, you'd have to then explain how things coming to an end equate to the world being meaningless.

Something as entirely conceptual and arbitrary as numbers will stop existing once the last document containing them stops existing. Which will happen sooner or later.

The world and all that there is within it will come to an end, followed by the galaxies and eventually the whole universe. The process is inherent to the very nature of the universe, and it is inevitable. No matter how advanced we humans or any other beings are or will become, we're all gonna end one day, along with everything else. So how can something have meaning if our reality itself is temporary?

The ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter will continue to exist regardless if anyone is there to measure it.

Also

>numbers
>arbitrary

>So how can something have meaning if our reality itself is temporary?
Does music not have value to you because all songs eventually end?

Besides, there is nothing indicating that when the universe fizzles out, it doesn't start over again. In fact, looking at how all things work (constant transformation, all ends being new beginnings; the temporal nature of things) it would be more likely that the universe simply transforms when it comes to a so-called "end."

Also, all beginnings and ends are reliant on our human perception of the passage of time. Outside of this, there are no beginnings and ends.

Retarded, because it denies Christ/is Calvinism

He's a nihilist user, "value" is just another meaningless word.

Nihilism is just the acceptance of loss

Nihilism is to be overcome. Even if that means resorting to the absurd.

I overcome in your mum desu

Yes, arbitrary. The symbols that we attach to mathematical concepts exist only for us humans. In the grand scale of things, they mean nothing. As for the concept of mathematics itself, what meaning will it have once there are neither any circles nor anything to comprehend them anymore? The concepts you hold concrete only exist through our limited understanding, and once there is no more of that, there will be no more concepts.

>Does music not have value to you because all songs eventually end?

No, it has no value due to the inevitable finality of the universe. It may serve as a temporary hedonism fix, like fucking or playing a videogame, but it's just as pointless in the end. And for music you don't even need to wait that long. What difference will Mozart make in a billion years?

>Also, all beginnings and ends are reliant on our human perception of the passage of time. Outside of this, there are no beginnings and ends.
Indeed, hence why we are talking about human nihilism. Who knows, there might exist an Xth dimensional race that has the exact opposite philosophical outlook because they objectively know that nothing really begins or ends and reality just exists and will continue to do so indefinitely. But as far as I'm concerned, reality exists within the boundary of our universe.

The symbols we use are arbitrary yes, but the things they point to are not. For example, consider these periods:

. . .

. . . . .

These are actually different amounts. We happen to call them "three" and "five" but we could call them whatever and it wouldn't change the fact that the amounts are different. The fact that they are different is "meaningful" because it accurately describes reality.

Everyone is a hedonist in disguise.

>No, it has no value due to the inevitable finality of the universe. It may serve as a temporary hedonism fix, like fucking or playing a videogame, but it's just as pointless in the end.
As long as you realize that none of this is fact, or a finality, and just your interpretation. If so, then fine, enjoy. But if you think any of this is fact then not only are you not really a nihilist, but you are also a fool who has fallen for his own mental trappings.

>there is meaning in life

Reproduction, Every organism we call life does it, It's the only reason you exist.

...

change it to incoherent and it's spot on

But it's opposite though, nihilism was born of Kierkegaard's ideas of existentialism. In fact, all of the german philosofies born in this time came from existentialism.

No, nihilism came much before, it just didn't reach meme level until even after Nietzsche.

I've seen edgy tumblr kids post this image, right now people have been spewing the ideas of nihilism to seem cool and deep to the rest of the kids in the ninth grade

Nihilism cannot be true at all, because meaning and value is everywhere.

>right now
More like for the past few centuries

Sure the idea may have existed, but the philosofical branch known as nihilism was not a thing until after existentialism.

Actually I'm wrong, I'm confusing existential nihilism with nihilism as a broad term. Although then I think It's very hard to say which was first, since the idea existentialism must've also been toyed with since before Kierkegaard.

How the fuck does somebody just decide to become a nihilist? Like, seriously, what's the most mature form of the thought process that leads to nihilism? I've never encountered a self-proclaimed nihilist who was capable of explaining himself or herself. (Trannies are head-cases and are invariably of their birth-gender.)

How did you get on to trannies?

Nihilism for me formed a foundation of my beliefs. As I examined my own beliefs, and the beliefs of others, I came to the conclusion that there is no external metric upon which to evaluate them, and being that neither I or them have any inherent validity in my judgements, that neither could be effectively evaluated in any substantial sense and thus lacked apparent intrinsic value. Once this was realized, I took a process of stripping myself of ideology, examining what was truly ideological in my views and actions and built over from there, always understanding that everything I built would be built on sand and thus necessarily designed to be abandoned when proven ready to collapse.

What does it mean when you are in complete acceptance of the idea that nihilists are right about things, yet you live your life and have your mental processes like it isn't necessarily right?

I dunno, nihilism seems rather dead end, and I've never been able to keep my thoughts restrained like that.

It's baby's first philosophic position. It's the mark of someone who hasn't ventured into conceptual subtleties and alternative ways of thinking.

I said "himself or herself," I wanted to explain why I was only acknowledging two genders and two sexes.
Do you think that you've actually examined every non-nihilist theory to the point where you can actually reject them? I mean, there's no reason to call yourself a nihilist because you're skeptical about the existence of intrinsic value or the possibility of objective knowledge.

Ooor its the mark of someone whose realized that all value systems are dependent upon unproven axioms that are asserted as the basis of that value system, and that you cannot derive an ought from an is, and you just want your own ideology to reflect some intrinsic teleological meaning in the universe.

Or maybe it's the mark of someone who wants to approach ethics as you would epistemology and then gives up when he finds out it doesn't work.

>all value systems are dependent upon unproven axioms
Why do you care about whether or not something has been proven?

Actually no. I just take the Nietzsche/existentialist approach and realize that value systems being constructed with no 'real' basis doesn't make them any less useful. I mean language and political systems are spooks too, that doesn't mean I want to abolish them.

So what is a spook to you exactly?

>Do you think that you've actually examined every non-nihilist theory to the point where you can actually reject them?

No. But I don't need to, well no more than anyone else needs to examine every ideological theory to come to the conclusion that their own is the correct one.

Well I should explain. Much of what we interact with in our everyday lives doesn't really exist. At least, not of itself. Phenomena exists on its own. Rocks, trees, rivers, buildings, all of them are real no matter what anyone thinks or believes.

But other things aren't like that. Value systems, political systems, language, concepts like property and money, groups, organizations, all of it forms a second layer to the world. A world of pure abstraction, things that only exist because people believe they do, and which are only kept in existence because power is applied to keep them in existence. Now I should be clear, this doesn't mean I want these things to be destroyed, it merely means I understand what they are, namely, pure abstraction, an idea. I only used Stirner jargon because its popular, my idea isn't identical to his.

Value systems aren't 'real'. There is no 'true' value system. They are created by individuals and groups to formalize their desires, nothing more. More importantly, value systems are only as real as they are promoted, believed in, and enforced. There is no such thing as a moral phenomena, only a moral interpretation of phenomena, as Nietzsche says.

It produced some cool music

youtube.com/watch?v=G3OaMZojJRg

I don't think it's a "second layer". It' just an alternative but equally valid mode of defining things.

I could point to someone's yard and call it a patch of grass or someone's property. Yet you would protest to the second why exactly?

If I gathered all the members of political party A into one room, I could either call it a mass of bipedal mammals or the A Party.

And you do say that value systems exist, just not concretely enough for your liking?

Why is a moral interpretation of phenomena illegitimate? Multiple interpretations of one thing can be valid.

>Yet you would protest to the second why exactly?

He never said he'd protest it. Just that it lacks substance. The core of it is that if people stop recognizing it as such, it ceases to exist in any substantial sense.

Your opinion is wrong, I'm nihilistic and i could care less if i have a good life or not, I just think "life" itself is a stupid/meaningless thing that doesn't matter until they do something that could actually matter to the universe.

>I'm nihilistic
>believe there are things actually matter to the universe
wew lad

And hedonism is evil and you shouldn't do it :(((

At one point you cared/believed and now you don't

Sounds like loss

I mean, I don't get why all nihilists aren't simply existentialist. Obviously things gain meaning if we decide to assign them meaning. So just decide in some way what you care about and assign that fucking meaning and get out of bed

I just like it because it has the capacity to trigger everyone on the political spectrum.

I always thought the distinct was arbitrary, and rooted in wanting to avoid the connotations of the word nihilist.

>Nietzsche/existentialist
You completely misunderstood Nietzsche if you think the concepts he articulated were nihilistic.

So, would the position that all philosophy is garbage nonsense trying to explain the absurd acts of the universe be nihilism? Absolute skepticism? Absurdism?

>No. But I don't need to
You really should, honestly. I mean, it honestly seems like you were trying to find a truth and just picked nihilism out of laziness.

No, that's Buddhism, or English empiricism.

>laziness

Well that's just fucking uncalled for. I'm not closed to the idea of truth, but I haven't found any yet, and suspect i wont.

Absurdism is better

Buddhism honestly comes off as a little a absurdist to me. I haven't spent a huge amount of time researching it, but I find the actual story and beliefs of the Guatama sincere and interesting. It has probably been totally twisted out of context by modern Buddhists, though. I'd probably find the faith unsavory.

Not trying to sound edgy but if i truly perscribed to nihilism id have raped and killed a few people by now.

The belif in punishment or pleasures on diffrent planes of existence tempers these urges though. I also have my petty life goals, which involve interfering in others lives. Harp on about 'leaving only footsteps' but fuck that. This worlds going to know i was here, even if only though the conciousness of some people, good or bad, doesnt matter too much to me.

Nhilism is self-pity and ive lived to hard to have a give up attitude.

I don't think you, or I, grasp it then. To me it's just a philosophy that teaches 'accept shit's shit and fleeting yo' more than anything.

Well, get looking, or you're lazy.
>shit's
>shit is
You're no nihilist

I am not a nihilist, you are correct.

Existentialism is a 'have your cake and eat it too' worldview.

It's a degraded form of nihilism cut with narcissism.