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Thought on why people find Nihilism depressing

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pakled
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02 Jan 2009, 11:44 pm

I don't know that much of Nihilism, but I see it as a philosophy of rejection or negation. If it works for them, fine by me.



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02 Jan 2009, 11:58 pm

Ah_Q wrote:
I'm honestly astonished that they are people who self identify as nihilist. It must be a recent occurence. It has not historically really been a worked out philosophy with tenets and adherents like other philosophies. The term 'nihilism' has been used more to describe various aspects of other philosophies. It is an insult to be called a nihilist!

90+% of the time, it's still not a philosophy. It's a teenaged prop.


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Ah_Q
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03 Jan 2009, 12:37 am

I suspected as much.


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ruveyn
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03 Jan 2009, 2:58 pm

DeanFoley wrote:
The first post speaking about how people who disagree with Nihilism or find it depressing are actually arrogant and know it is actually true.

That is telling me what my opinion is, saying that my opinion is that it is actually true. That is incorrect, however. I disagree with Nihilism. Just because there isn't any inherent purpose or reason doesn't mean nothing matters in some way, to humans.


Something matters to somebody sometimes. Proof: look at the birth rate.

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03 Jan 2009, 6:10 pm

Krem wrote:
It is because of arrogance. They think all they do must mean something, must matter. It does not matter. Eventually, all you have done, any traces of your existence forgotten. The denial is due to arrogance. Why should you matter? You do not matter, nothing does. At all. People do not like that, due to arrogance, so they find it saddening, for deep down, it makes sense to them.


But, how could one like Nihilism? How could they find it not depressing?


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Krem
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03 Jan 2009, 9:04 pm

If you lack pride, you accept it.



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03 Jan 2009, 9:41 pm

My nihilism includes the likelihood that there is nothing, plain and simple. Just eternal void tying itself in knots. That way, while apparent things don't get much chance to mean anything, the fact that they're apparently there is astounding, since objectively there's nothing there but vibration_

And let's not forget that if anything is said to have ultimate value, that raises the question of how to live in harmony with that value, and the answer always seems to bar certain people from the possibility of soing so. For example, if God had decided that the meaning of all human life were to connect with others, us auties'd be pretty buggered :P



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04 Jan 2009, 1:35 am

Nihilism is too easy. It's one big cop-out.



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05 Jan 2009, 3:06 am

Krem wrote:
that impact will not matter, for whatever it did, it has happened before, and will happen again. There are too many stars to count, and you becoming 1/1000000000th of a star will not matter. No matter what happens in space, it has so little permanent, large-scale impact, it does not matter.


How do you know that something you have already done has not already started a chain of events which will offset the placement of one atom, then about 28973459028347502938475203948752039487520394872 other steps result from that which lead to a completely different universe?


You don't. Even the smallest of things matter. Everything is but one tiny part of the whole, but without everything, it wouldn't be a whole.

Thats like saying it's alright for everybody to take a drop of water from a bucket because it won't matter. Next thing you know, you have an empty bucket on your hands.

So even though everybody has a small impact relative to the whole, you are still changing the universe in an extremely small way, because the stuff that happens after us will have to build off of what we did, and so on and so on.

Even if the universe at one time will cease to exist, why does it even matter if nothing you do will extend to infinity? Seriously. Anybody who has an issue with their legacy not lasting for eternity has some mindset problems in my opinion.