Understanding Nihilism
When Nietzsche declared the death of God, the erudite were taken aback. The effect was seen in most of the nineteenth and twentieth century philosophical literature and even now, a young fresher to philosophy starts with this notion itself. When I first read Nietzsche, I did not believe that it took humanity 2000 years of sophisticated studies -right from Socrates to Heidegger- to come to the conclusion that nothing means anything. It must have been our first instinct, right? I mean imagine, our hunter-gatherer ancestors, going about their lives, not having discovered language, noteworthy tools, concept of society or even agriculture- it must have made no sense to them. Then we went into the heuristics and started societies. Why did we forget that it did not mean anything?
The basis of Nihilism is the notion of meaninglessness. The convergence of Positive and Negative resulting in absolute Zero. The outright rejection of the Objective truth raises many ears and many arguments and does set up the plot for a good dinner table argument. But that’s where it loses ground too. Nihilism is then confused synonymous with Pessimism and declared as death as God. One cannot refuse to acknowledge the existence of Knowledge, of Values, of Morality and hence- of Meaning.
Nietzsche’s Nihilism rooted from religious bigotry of the Western society and seeped into all of his further works. His most famous quote- “God is dead” is taken out of context just to inculpate the entire Philosophical decree as Atheism. Though, Theism is also frowned upon by philosophers, this quote is trying to prove something else. He writes, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers?”
If you read a self-proclaimed Nihilist, you’d realise they’re not Atheists. They’re actually raising their glasses to God so as to toast him and say, “Well played, you made us suffer for nothing.” Some might actually call their beliefs a satirical commentary, but they all agree that there is no meaning and life is useless. They all cry out in unison about how society is made to be doomed.
The modern society, however, takes a refined approach towards Nihilism. We have all grown up watching, quoting, misquoting and idolising Tyler Durden as our Nietzsche. The movie based on the club we are not supposed to talk about had made us all a Nihilist at some point. Norton saying, "On a long enough timeline, the survival rate for everyone drops to zero." -was the first dose of nothingness we got there and then came the masterstroke. The most quoted line on Materialism from an American movie, “Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don’t need. We’re the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our great war is a spiritual war. Our great depression is our lives. We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars, but we won’t. And we’re slowly learning that fact. And we’re very, very pissed off.”
In some ways, you’d identify with this para more than you did with Nietzsche’s. and you’re not to blame. Everyone does this. The irony here is that what was meant to be a Nihilist cult film ended up being a new subject to Consumerism.
In retrospect, had that fish never walked out of water, Nihilists would’ve been the happiest. But alas! it did, and here we are, 400 million years later, sad and disgusted with our lives, seeking refuge in nothingness.
