How to get rid of Nihilism?

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Fair point.

But I was responding to the 'absolute nihilist' statement.

From my understanding of 'absolute nihilism' in it's purest form you must reject all socially imposed ethics/morals/religions AND believe that life is ultimately without conscious meaning.

An 'absolute nihilist' from that definition, should not be able to make personal preferences over his or her own life or death, they are both equally pointless.

Nihilism can often lead a person to conclude that he doesn't care what happens to him, or even have the slightest preference, but I don't think I've ever heard of that being a necessary part of the philosophy itself. That sounds like more of an existential crisis in conjuncture with depression or some other mental illness.

Every philosophy has a large/enormous/hypocritical amount of compromise in it, but when you have a philosophical debate about philosophy and stick the words, fundamentalist, zealot, extremist, absolutist etc etc in front of the philosophy it is kinda required to push that philosophy to it's absolute logical extreme.

In reality, I think we are in agreement. My initial post suggested that an 'absolute nihilist' (in the extreme terms I just laid out) when faced with imminent death, everybody sits up and pays attention in some form.

Well at that point it's more than an issue of wanting to die or not caring if you die. Some people who try to commit suicide truly want to die, but then reach a certain point and something registers in their brain and suddenly they're fighting their own instincts. You can hang yourself, and want the outcome of death, but unless you've trained yourself extensively you're gonna be thrashing around trying to get free once you start going. You'd need to be a monk to face down death all the way and not flinch. Like literally, that Buddhist monk guy who set himself on fire as a political protest and sat there motionless as he burned to death. So yeah, on some level you're gonna not wanna die, no matter what your beliefs are.

It is not quite as simple as that.

Take hard, non-sport rock climbing for example.

You know that you can probably climb the route, but it isn't easy so you can't be dismissive. Failure will mean the distinct possibility of serious injury or death.

But.

If you panic or get an adrenalin rush while you are climbing the route a number of things will happen.

The adrenalin will make you 'over grip' the holds leading to fatigue and muscle failure followed by the nasty fall to earth.

The adrenalin will make you sweat, oil lubricating the palms of your hands is a Bad Thing TM.

The adrenalin will make your inaccurate, when you need to move your foot from one position to another you will hit the rock wrong and plummet to earth.

The adrenalin will make you stiff, when you need to move fluidly and be a super smooth ninja you will instead be jerky and that will break the limit of friction that your feet can maintain and bye bye...


Basically in order to climb something hard and dangerous successfully, you have to put yourself in that absolute nihilist position of honestly not giving a s**t if you live or die.

The millisecond you fail to do that you lose control, the bubble bursts and you fall off. Likewise if you lose control of the situation reality comes pouring in the millisecond you slip and your mental bubble is destroyed. Screaming like a little girl is now the order of the day.

I don't think the extreme, 'absolute nihilism' actually exists I've only ever met people able to sustain it for a very limited period of time. The Buddhist monk is not a good example as he is immolating himself because he cares about a cause more than he cares about his own life, just like the Jihadi flying a plane into a building.

Watch this to scare yourself.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kK7DfNZLK9E[/youtube]

You can rationalize that some people are taking extreme risks and that they must not care if they live or die, but extreme risk takers never actually think they're going to die. They might get a rush off of risking their lives, but the kind of people who do extreme sports and put their lives at risk tend to have the mindset where on some level they always think they can make it through. I'm talking about that moment when you have an instinctive fear of death, not that you're doing something where you risk dying, but that you are already physically in the act of dying, like you're in freefall onto jagged rocks or in the process of being hanged or lying on the ground bleeding out. And as for the monk, I meant him as an example of someone who could overcome the very strong instinctive fear of death due to extensive mental preparation, and certainly not to imply that he was a nihilist, which he certainly isn't.