Huge metal distro Hells Headbangers now has Brett Stevens’ Nihilism: A Philosophy Based In Nothingness And Eternity in stock. Hells Headbangers has DHL shipping so those who want to read it in countries without a local Amazon affiliate may obtain the book more easily now.
Tags: book, brett stevens, Manticore Press, Nihilism, Philosophy
Hey is this book any good??? XD
Is there any parallels between cosmic consciousness theory and nihilism?
Where do psychedelics fit in to Nihilism?
Cosmic consciousness and Nihilism : both views maintain that consciousness is not a strictly human phenomenon, right? I see no conflict between the two, basically. If consciousness is an emergent property then it’s likely that somewhere in the universe some system has achieved the mechanical unity and harmony that gives rise to the output-turned-input loop of self-consciousness, even.
Psychedelics and Nihilism : obviously your mileage may vary but I have found that psychs grant me the chance to consider human relationships (law, commerce, friendship, sex, war) more naturally, less ethically, than usual. Social concepts seem generally retarded, though there is often a utility buried way, way beneath the facade of morality. Probably psychs are useful for anyone looking to see nihilism from its roots upward, since it’s a more immediate and less conceptual experience.
Who says ‘Nihilism’ has anything interesting to say about consciousness?
Me.
Has there ever been some form of political ideology/government that has embraced Nihilism?
I think there was a group of anarchists in late 19th century Russia that were called nihilists.
No. All have bought into the idea that life is inherently meaningful.
“Buying in” to the idea that life is inherently meaningful is not contradictory to a nihilistic perspective, because the value of survival is self-evident and can hardly be rationally contested due to the whole evolutionary drive to avoid dying being an integral component to our being. Nihilism dismantles more complex constructs like reciprocity or monogamy. Attempting to dismantle instinct isn’t nihilistic, it’s just stupid. See; modern Western social politics. Nihilists don’t kill themselves; downtrodden narcissists do.
You’re out of your element, Donny.
Nihilists don’t kill themselves; downtrodden narcissists do.
Narcisstic iconoclast is an interesting idea …
Hippies…
Someone smashing idols to put himself in their place as that’s how it ought to be is one aspect. But as this means he’s an idol, too, the finale should be him smashing his own head with a hammer.
Is this a paraducks?
Haha, precisely.
There were anarchist communes here and there in the recent past across the United States, and they were more nihilistic than not since they abandoned contemporary social constructs and roles for the most part. Not surprisingly they never lasted more than a few years, probably due to the lack of stable organization afforded by the social constructs that they avoided. That, and a lot of them were artists rather than farmers, so you can imagine how that played out.
Other than that I don’t think Nihilism as a practical philosophy turned social structure has been embraced anywhere.
Some early anarchists, Nietzsche (proto-nazism), Kierkegaard (dull christian conservatism), and pretty much all of postmodernism in one way or another since it all boils down to Nietzsche under various pseudo-leftwing disguise.
Nietzsche (proto-nazism)
When imagining a kind of person all my instincts reject, the result is invariably a German.
[Ecce Home, Causa Wagner, 4.]
Yeah, and he despised antisemites too… but only because he thought the jews were a master race superior to many, the peculiars of each racism are not what I meant by PROTO-nazism, it’s the whole notion that society is rightfully made of a hierarchy of classes and that the top layer is made of people who contribute nothing to society, who not even give orders, and those are “the ubermensch”, the best persons there can be.
Hitler was a fan for a good reason, Nazism is more than racism, at it’s core it’s about enforcing a feudal order long made useless through propaganda and violence, and that was pretty much in line with Nietzsche’s views.
Yeah, and he despised antisemites too… but only because he thought the jews were a master race superior to many
Nietzsche’s view of ‘human race distinctions’ is – unsurprisingly – based on the theories which were prominent during his lifetime, eg, he considered the existence of “the Jewish race” or “the German race”, including specific properties of both, an undisputed fact. In line with this, he credits “the Jewish race” with spawning two of the finest individuals who ever lived – Jesus and Baruch de Spinoza – and thus rejects the standpoint of the antisemites but OTOH, faults it for inventing the original theocracy, the rule of those incapable of living and thus, bent on destroying life. In contrast to this, the Jewish master race is exactly the foundation of antisemitism and this would thus turn Nietzsche into an inverted antisemite — not someone who thinks the Jews must be fought before they take over everything but positively welcoming this. And this underlying idea that the mass of the people (the ‘race’) matter more than the highest individuals is completey un-Nietzschean (albeit a cornerstone of Nazism — »Du bist nichts, dein Volk ist alles«, also evidenced in Hitler final attempts to destroy Germany as the German race had proven to be unworthy).
society is rightfully made of a hierarchy of classes and that the top layer is made of people who contribute nothing to society, who not even give orders, and those are “the ubermensch”, the best persons there can be.
Nietzsche asserts that certain ‘noble’ individual are worth more than the mass of people who are not noble for any meaningful definition of that. Grouping the ‘noble’ individuals into ‘a class’ and putting it in a conflict situation with other ‘classes of people’ is a marxist misinterpretation of that, especially if it goes to the degree of asserting that what Nietzsche considered to be ‘noble’ is characterized as ‘members of the ruling class’ (no further attributes required). That’s completely absurd. Nietzsche is not an apologist of the established social order (in Germany at that time), rather strictly opposed to it, eg, he consider Napoleon Bonaparte a miracle and his ultimatively victorious opponents, especially the German ones, as a great calamity for mankind, despite they represented the very feudal nobility and established order of things you’d like to associated him with. Lastly, the superman is just that — not J. Random Whilhelm von Hohenzollern by grace of God emperor etc etc but the next evolutionary step for mankind: Something which doesn’t yet exist but whose existance is considered desirable.
Hitler was a fan for a good reason
This good reason being Elizabeth Foerster-Nietzsche’s stewardship of Nietzsche’s estate according to her political agenda, which was German nationalist and antisemitic. That’s the lady who composed (or supervised composition of) The Will To Power from random text fragments her brother had left in a way which suited her. Nietzsche, OTOH, was the guy who called nationalism “the most irrational and culture-adverse of all of mankind’s affections”.
He was swept by the nationalism of Heinrich von Treitschke, in his correspondence one can find relief when he learned of the Paris commune massacre, his enthusiasm for Schopenhauer puts him in the “stick to the old order” camp too,
I’d say he mostly despised elements of the old order like the Church, or later distanced himself from Wagner and Schopenhauer, because they had proved they were no longer efficient to maintain upper class rule, not first and foremost because they were based on lies/idealism. Somehow like a modern german version of the Gracchus brothers, he wanted to save the ruling class from itself by rejuvenating it, but without the respect for manual labor.
Nietzsche became alienated from Wagner because Wagner established himself as sanctum of (2nd Reich) German nationalism via the Bayreuth festival,
Der arme Wagner! Wohin war er gerathen! Wäre er doch wenigstens unter die Säue gefahren! Aber unter Deutsche!
This is an allusion to the exorcism of the Gerasene demoniac: Instead of being sent into the swine, “poor Wagner” was forced into the Germans. The text continues with the suggestion to conserve a typical attendant of this festival by putting him into spirit as spirit’s so completely wanting to enable future generations to get an authentic idea of the spirit[us rector] behind 1871 German empire.
So much for “the ruling class”.
“Has there ever been some form of political ideology/government that has embraced Nihilism?”
Ahem…every single government in history works on nihilistic principles. All functioning of government requires the acceptance of moral relativism.
Example: It is morally wrong for the average citizen to commit extortion and morally good for the government to commit extortion.
Also here’s a quote from Mussolini.
“Everything I have said and done is these last years is relativism, by intuition. From the fact that all ideologies are of equal value, that all ideologies are mere fictions, the modern relativist infers that everybody has the right to create for himself his own ideology, and to attempt to enforce it with all the energy of which he is capable. If relativism signifies contempt for fixed categories, and men who claim to be the bearers of an objective immortal truth, then there is nothing more relativistic than fascism.”
If you think governments functions on absolutism you have it all backwards dude.
Good news, they’re a merely OK label but great distro often stocking many classics and hidden gems, you can tell they pay attention to what goes in stock and this book will be in my next order. Cheers fellows.
HellsHeadbangers has a huge selection, which is great but they have a somewhat questionable customer service. I ordered some shirts awhile back that were advertised as one brand, and they all came as a different one(3″ length difference). I had messaged them 6 times with no reply, which came as a surprise because they had been very good with communications in the past with me.
I won’t judge them too harshly over it but it still pissed me off because im picky about tshirts… DELTA MAGNUM WEIGHT for the win.