From Adam:
I suppose there are varying versions of nihilism, which bears my question: how does a nihilist live if he questions his own existence and the existence of all things around him? I know the definition of existence could be debated, but I mean it in the literal physical sense.
You are right to dispense with wordplay. We know what existence is: the literal portion of life, on the same level as that which makes us die, and what most people spend most of their lives in denying.
This literality terrifies people. Is this all?
I suggest we bypass this question. Life is consistent; whether it is data, or physicality, or some hybrid of the two, it is logical. For this reason, I suggest we take it seriously. It is consistent, both internally and externally, and it speaks a language to us that reveals the composition of the universe.
I doubt everything. At the same time, that which is logical I do not doubt. Otherwise, I succumb to the randomness found within the human mind, not within the (superior design of the) world.
Hopefully that helps. This path is like all others worth traveling, esoteric: every level is babble until the previous level is mastered.
Tags: Hate Mail, news, Nihilism, Philosophy
Weird album choice there Brett, care to explain?
It’s a great album. I’ve been listening to this and Skrewdriver Voice of Britain back-to-back for several days. Before that it was an old Crystal Method album.
Brett, have you moved away from metal?
Brother … Interesting choice of music … We ca always learn something new from you …. Iron lion of Zion hail jah…
You’re a fan of Bob Marley if I’m not mistaken, Brett?
Yes, as well as some of the other classic reggae and related genres composers.
What’s in that for you?
(btw, I fail to see how Adam’s question or the answer is hateful in any way)
Brett, are you afan of Sadus or other speed-death hybrids like Gammacide or Demolition Hammer? How can you enjoy reggae and not speed metal?? That makes no fucken sense!
He is a fan of Demolition Hammer. He reviewed Tortured Existence on his Amazon page.
Brett has an Amazon page?
http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A174NPQZ1EABX1
Wailers and Marley got boring after Peter Tosh left (76?) I always thought.
Cogito ergo non sum make no sense, not even for an existentialist.
Aside: What’s the reason to be terrified of death? One won’t have to worry about it afterwards.
Descartes maxim argues that to exist is equivalent to being known. Therefore, what exists is limited to what can be known. You can see this in contemporary scientism which argues that anything the human nervous system can’t both pick up or process cannot exist; it’s a simple epistemic limit blown out of proportion into an ontological position. A position which only works if you presuppose the human mind is unlimited in its capacity for knowledge – if it is, omniscient! That doesn’t bode well for a society which claims to reject Christianity.
Yep, Descartes was a tard.
Listen to basic Kant better, then go beyond Kant.
A little Nietzsche, and beyond them Plato.
Plato is full esoteric.
Simple then complex, but invisible or ungraspable to the yet unworthy or not ready.
The mundane mind cannot penetrate the esoteric.
Mental retardation, or more usually emotional blockage combined with pseudo rational arrogance makes them get stuck.
It’s an instinct, it doesn’t have to be rational.
It’s possibly the same instinct that leads people to intellectually place terminal value on life.
Life forms have the instinct, because it was evolutionarily selected for.
I do not fear death itself, for the reason you mentioned, but the agony that often comes with death, I have some fear for.
Brings to mind the great scene in Paths of Glory where the two soldiers pontificate on the fear of pain often being confused for the fear of death.
Just use some shotgun mouthwash, 100% painless death guaranteed!
Keep some Panadol suppositories at hand tho, just to be sure: https://s31.postimg.org/qi4uxlg7f/63465905122211875.jpg
It is said that living beings have an instinct of self-preservation. This would compel them to act in whatever way seems suitable to prolong their lives, not to be paralyzed by the notion of unknown (and unknowable) horrors. The latter is counter-productive and often, just a side effect of bodily exhaustion.
The external world, the noumenon, is irrational. The internal world (an artifact of our central nervous systems) the world you perceive, is rational. I think people are more worried that the external world isn’t logical and therefore beyond our ability to comprehend absolutely but even more, beyond our control.
Brett you don’t sound like a nihilist. You sound like a realist.
1)You believe that reality is objective and logical.
2)You believe that people OUGHT to conform to reality.
That’s not nihilism. Nihilists both a)reject the existence of objective truth all together and b)they don’t believe that anyone ought to conform to reality even if reality happen to be objective and logical (hell they don’t even believe that you OUGHT to be a nihilist as they are so nihilism as traditionally understood is just bewildering intellectual hypocrisy)
So really there is nothing “nihilistic” about metal whatsoever. Metal is realism albiet it is an idiosyncratic form of realism that because of the grand nature of its aims has to rely on the occult or mythological to explain reality. The true nihilists out there are active sociopaths and they don’t even bother trying to argue or explain their position. They just force you to comply with them.
No one is literally a nihilist, since the name means “Nothingist”. A nihilist would believe that nothing can be known, nothing has value, and nothing can be communicated.
No one is actually like this.
But when we call someone a nihilist, we mean that he thinks that some things don’t exist, not that nothing exists. For example, it is possible to be a nihilist with regards to objective value, moral or otherwise.
The term nihilism originated (AFAIK) in the late 19th century and it was supposed to refer to the phenomenon that progress of science had effectively abolished the Christian God and thus, rendered the traditionally Christian values of the societies of ‘The Occident’ baseless. These were thus expected to collapse on their own as they had turned into merely habitually accepted traditions and make way for the for the ‘animal man’ who rejects every notion overarching importance in favour of the well-being and productive employment of his stomach and genitals, not just as a de facto conviction of people lacking the desire and/or mental facilities to reach beyond satisfying the demands of this cell aggregate they happen to be living in but as generally accepted anti-ethic: Whoever thinks there could me something more important than sleep-eat-fuck-sleep-eat-fuck-sleep-eat-fuck-sleep[-die] is obviously a crackpot, proof God doesn’t exist and now, let’s get on with business.
The term has also been used to refer to people trying to overcome these traditional values on the grounds of their baselessness in preparation to searching for something else as said traditional values still remain very useful for leading the herd such that remains useful to the leaders.
Rejecting objectivity would be an existentialist trait, that’s something altogether different (and later).
Not even moral nihilism makes any sense because trying to argue for anything on the basis of its truth value is presupposing that one ought to adhere to the truth. There is no way around this.
Your understanding of nihilism makes neither sense nor does it have more than a passing relation to the usual meaning of the term, cf Nihilism: the end is missing; there’s no answer to the »Why?«. What’s the meaning of nihilism? — the paramount values de-value themselves (Nietzsche, 1887, source Kaufmann: Nietzsche. Philosopher. Psychologist. Antichrist, 4th ed, p. 142 [German translation]). But that you can come up with stuff which makes no sense has no hidden meaning beyond that, no matter what words you happened to be using.
Oh are you trying to “correct” me or something? As though I OUGHT to be correct?
my sides. Thank you
I already explained to you that there is no such thing as an absolute nihilist.
Therefore, a nihilist will have values. He just won’t believe that there is an objective right or wrong, or an objective meaning.
So yes, a nihilist can value truth, and he can think that you should adhere to truth, in the same way that he can prefer a pleasant meal over a torture chamber and shit shoved down his throat.
I propose inventing the absolute nullicist: In order to avoid confusion, he has been cooled down to 0K, hence, all movements ceaseth and any questions became moot.
Joking aside, I’m going to argue from Nietzsche here because I’m somewhat familiar with that and I consider it broadly sensible: In this case, nihilism is a trait of the decadent, the latter-day person who lost any sense of direction and meaning in life as he realized that what he confused with that were mere constructions and mostly, constructions erected to serve other people’s/ organization’s self-interest. This can be accepted as-is on the grounds that it’s comfortable,
“Do you really not believe in sprits?” Lean asked. “The possibility of communicating with some eternal soul in the afterlife?”
Grey looked at him with one eyebrow pointing to heaven. “The overwhelming majority of the people in the world are unimaginative dullards who, in their three score and ten allotted years, manage to divine no purpose for their being other than to chase money, seize whatever moments of physical pleasure they can, and to create new, largely unimproved versions of themselves, whom they raise with the same mindless disregard they have applied to their own lifes. Tell me, please, what use would such beings have for an afterlife? Whatever would they do with an eternity?”
[K.N. Shields, The Salem Witch Society]
but that’s what characterizes the accidental man who could as well be a dog or a cow and isn’t worth more than either (rather less). Or he can try to transcend nihilism on the grounds that others have done so before (Nietzsches example would usually be the Greek tragedians) and because he isn’t satisified with this plush-polstered void. This may lead to a rediscovery of values/ meaning (there’s some romanticism creeping in here) and thus, annihilation of the nihil. But this is firmly grounded on the idea that objective existence exists and one can at least asymptotically approach it.
Understanding the world as a side effect of one’s subjective perspective (plus the horror arising from suddenly finding oneself an object in someone else’s perspective) is a later concept. IMHO, these are interesting thought experiments and there’s some truth to be discovered in them but they’re fundamentally a justification for inaction — for as long as a supply of Coca-Cola is steadily maintained, why bother? It’s hopeless, anyway [I’m also only very superficially familiar with this as I consider it useless to me].
That quote about the afterlife is brilliant, whether it was a real conversation or part of fiction.
I’m trying to point out that you aren’t discussing what you claim to do. Nihilism is (and that’s applicable here, see FAQ) usually understood to refer to certain, largely Christian, so-called values. And true or false aren’t values but logical, mathematical or scientific categories. People have also questioned these with the basic theory roughly being that only the self really exists and it only experiences an (absurd) non-self but this is not nihilism. Further, mixing objective categories (‘true’, ‘false’) with moral imperatives (‘ought to adhere to the truth’) is neither of both, it’s just confused thinking (or intentionally unclear talking, assuming it’s more nihilistically functional, “fuck it, that’s useful to me”, then driven by genuine interest in anything super-personal).
I’m not concerned with anything you ought to do and why would I?
If truth is not a value then why are you trying to correct me as though it is? Basically every single bit of gibberish you just spoke is metaphorically equivalent to a guy having a favorite flavor of soda and trying to argue with some else who has a different preference in soda to adopt his own preference for soda. That is complete nonsense dude. I can just ignore everything you say and under your own worldview there would be nothing “wrong” with it. Your very own philosophy renders any attempt for you justify your worldview meaningless.
“I can just ignore everything you say and under your own worldview there would be nothing “wrong” with it. Your very own philosophy renders any attempt for you justify your worldview meaningless.”
There is no objective wrong or right. It would be wrong according to some ethical systems, and right according to others. That is all that there is.
There is no absolute authority, only conflict, victory, and defeat.
If you don’t want slavery, you have to fight to end it. If you want to have slaves, you have to fight against those who would free your slaves.
Where do these ethical values come from?
They are part of human nature, like every other personality trait of the mind.
An enduring result of the wrong turn is that everybody considers life to be a joke, as if perpetually asking “is this for real?” suggesting that they’re not 100% sure the mirror’s reflection is worth all the effort to preserve. Especially if their tribe is under assault on multiple fronts, it’s so much easier to just say “oh well, we had a good run but it looks like it’s over because nihilism and stuff.”
On a cosmic scale this is all brand new, by the way. Prior to our ability to decode that reflection it was just a given that distinct mammalian flavors would obey the survival instinct. Forget about invasive hordes. Mirrors are clearly the biggest offenders, so let’s get rid of them immediately and then we’ll figure something out on water, glossy paint jobs and other reflective surfaces.