So for Dust1n what is Nihilism?
"Nihilism no longer wears the dark, Wagnerian, Spenglerian, fuliginous colors of the end of the century. It no longer comes from a Weltanschauung of decadence nor from a metaphysical radicality born of the death of God and of all the consequences that must be taken from this death. Today's nihilism is one of transparency, and it is in some sense more radical, more crucial than in its prior and historical forms, because this transparency, this irresolution is indissolubly that of the system, and that of all the theory that still pretends to analyze it. When God died, there was still Nietzsche to say so - the great nihilist before the Eternal and the cadaver of the Eternal. But before the simulated transparency of all things, before the simulacrum of the materialist or idealist realization of the world in hyperreality (God is not dead, he has become hyper-real), there is no longer a theoretical or critical God to recognize his own.
The universe, and all of us, have entered live into simulation, into the malefic, not even malefic, indifferent, sphere of deterrence: in a bizarre fashion, nihilism has been entirely realized no longer through destruction, but through simulation and deterrence. From the active, violent phantasm, from the phantasm of the myth and the stage that it also was, historically, it has passed into the transparent, falsely transparent, operation of things. What then remains of a possible nihilism in theory? What new scene can unfold, where nothing and death could be replayed as a challenge, as a stake?
We are in a new, and without a doubt insoluble, position in relation to prior forms of nihilism:
Romanticism is its first great manifestation: it, along with the Enlightenment's Revolution, corresponds to the destruction of the order of appearances. Surrealism, dada, the absurd, and political nihilism are the second great manifestation, which corresponds to the destruction of the order of meaning.
The first is still an aesthetic form of nihilism (dandyism), the second, a political, historical, and metaphysical form (terrorism).
These two forms no longer concern us except in part, or not at all. The nihilism of transparency is no longer either aesthetic or political, no longer borrows from either the extermination of appearances, nor from extinguishing the embers of meaning, nor from the last nuances of an apocalypse. There is no longer an apocalypse (only aleatory terrorism still tries to reflect it, but it is certainly no longer political, and it only has one mode of manifestation left that is at the same time a mode of disappearance: the media - now the media are not a stage where something is played, they are a strip, a track, a perforated map of which we are no longer even spectators: receivers). The apocalypse is finished, today it is the precession of the neutral, of forms of the neutral and of indifference. I will leave it to be considered whether there can be a romanticism, an aesthetic of the neutral therein. I don't think so - all that remains, is the fascination for desertlike and indifferent forms, for the very operation of the system that annihilates us. Now, fascination (in contrast to seduction, which was attached to appearances, and to dialectical reason, which was attached to meaning) is a nihilistic passion par excellence, it is the passion proper to the mode of disappearance. We are fascinated by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance. Melancholic and fascinated, such is our general situation in an era of involuntary transparency.
I am a nihilist.
I observe, I accept, I assume the immense process of the destruction of appearances (and of the seduction of appearances) in the service of meaning (representation, history, criticism, etc.) that is the fundamental fact of the nineteenth century. The true revolution of the nineteenth century, of modernity, is the radical destruction of appearances, the disenchantment of the world and its abandonment to the violence of interpretation and of history.
I observe, I accept, I assume, I analyze the second revolution, that of the twentieth century, that of postmodernity, which is the immense process of the destruction of meaning, equal to the earlier destruction of appearances. He who strikes with meaning is killed by meaning.
The dialectic stage, the critical stage is empty. There is no more stage. There is no therapy of meaning or therapy through meaning: therapy itself is part of the generalized process of indifferentiation.
The stage of analysis itself has become uncertain, aleatory: theories float (in fact, nihilism is impossible, because it is still a desperate but determined theory, an imaginary of the end, a weltanschauung of catastrophe).*1
Analysis is itself perhaps the decisive element of the immense process of the freezing over of meaning. The surplus of meaning that theories bring, their competition at the level of meaning is completely secondary in relation to their coalition in the glacial and four-tiered operation of dissection and transparency. One must be conscious that, no matter how the analysis proceeds, it proceeds toward the freezing over of meaning, it assists in the precession of simulacra and of indifferent forms. The desert grows."
- Jean Baudrillard
Simulacra And-Simulations
The root cause of Nihilism is an introspective and reflective (both are necessary) acceptance of loss of consciousness i.e. you and everyone else is going to be nothing in the end and all the implications that come with that. For example, a Nihilist would think to himself there is no point in being a famous philosopher or poet because in the end you will be nothing, everyone who may reads your work will be nothing, and after a certain period of time your work will be nothing. For example, Shakespeare is less revered over time and in about a century from now know one will know or care who he was;
Passive nihilism is nihilism as an end point. It’s a rejection of all traditional sources of meaning, truth, knowledge and value with no further progress being possible. It is characterized by fatalism, rejection, paralysis, withdrawal, defeat, and suicide (literal or figurative).
Active nihilism is nihilism as a starting point. It’s a rejection of all traditional sources of meaning, truth, knowledge and value and an embrace of the resulting freedom. It is the active creation of new sources of meaning, truth, knowledge and value out of the freedom of nothingness. It is an inherently personal and creative project rather than universal and deductive.
The distinction between the two types of nihilism is credited mainly to Nietzsche and subsequent Nietzsche scholars. Active nihilism is most readily identified with Nietzsche’s reevaluation of morals and Albert Camus’ absurdist, humanist rebellion.
Active and Passive Nihilism | 1 Thing Today
Speaking of:
"Whatever may be the plays on words and the acrobatics of logic, to understand is, above all, to unify. The mind's deepest desire, even in its most elaborate operations, parallels man's unconscious feeling in the face of his universe : it is an insistence upon familiarity, an appetite for clarity. Understanding the world for a man is reducing it to the human, stamping it with his seal. The cat's universe is not the universe of the anthill. The truism "All thought is anthropomorphic" has no other meaning. Likewise, the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled. If thought discovered in the shimmering mirrors of phenomena eternal relations capable of summing them up and summing themselves up in a single principle, then would be seen an intellectual joy of which the myth of the blessed would be but a ridiculous imitation. That nostalgia for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse of the human drama But the fact of that nostalgia's existence does not imply that it is to be immediately satisfied. For if, bridging the gulf that separates desire from conquest, we assert with Parmenides the reality of the One (whatever it may be), we fall into the ridiculous contradiction of a mind that asserts total unity and proves by its very assertion its own difference and the diversity it claimed to resolve. This other vicious circle is enough to stifle our hopes.
These are again truisms. I shall again repeat that they are not interesting in thernselves but in the consequences that can be deduced from them. I know another truism : it tells me that man is mortal. One can nevertheless count the minds that have deduced the extreme conclusions from it. It is essential to consider as a constant point of reference in this essay the regular hiatus between what we fancy we know and what we really know, practical assent and simulated ignorance which allows us to live with ideas which, if we truly put them to the test, ought to upset our whole life. Faced with this inextricable contradiction of the mind, we shall fully grasp the divorce separating us from our own creations. So long as the mind keeps silent in the motionless world of its hopes, everything is reflected and arranged in the unity of its nostalgia. But with its first move this world cracks and tumbles : an infinite number of shimmering fragments is offered to the understanding. We must despair of ever reconstructing the familiar, calm surface which would give us peace of heart. After so many centuries of inquiries, so many abdications among thinkers, we are well aware that this is true for all our knowledge. With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
Of whom and of what indeed can I say: "I know that!" This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction. For if I try to seize this self of which I feel sure, if I try to define and to summarize it, it is nothing but water slipping through my fingers. I can sketch one by one all the aspects it is able to assume, all those likewise that have been attributed to it, this upbringing, this origin, this ardor or these silences, this nobility or this vileness. But aspects cannot be added up. This very heart which is mine will forever remain indefinable to me. Between the certainty I have of my existence and the content I try to give to that assurance, the gap will never be filled. Forever I shall be a stranger to myself. In psychology as in logic, there are truths but no truth. Socrates' "Know thyself" has as much value as the "Be virtuous" of our confessionals. They reveal a nostalgia at the same time as an ignorance. They are sterile exercises on great subjects. They are legiti mate only in precisely so far as they are approximate.
And here are trees and I know their gnarled surface, water and I feel its taste. These scents of grass and stars at night, certain evenings when the heart relaxes-how shall I negate this world whose power and strength I feel? Yet all the knowledge on earth will give me nothing to assure me that this world is mine. You describe it to me and you teach me to classify it. You enumerate its laws and in my thirst for knowledge I admit that they are true. You take apart its mechanism and my hope increases. At the final stage you teach me that this wondrous and multicolored universe can be reduced to the atom and that the atom itself can be reduced to the electron. All this is good and I wait for you to continue. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realize then that you have been reduced to poetry: I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts? The soft lines of these hills and the hand of evening on this troubled heart teach me much more. I have returned to my beginning. I realize that if through science I can seize phenomena and enumerate them, I cannot, for all that, apprehend the world. Were I to trace its entire relief with my finger, I should not know any more. And you give me the choice between a description that is sure but that teaches me nothing and hypotheses that claim to teach men but that are not sure. A stranger to myself and to the world, armed solely with a thought that negates itself as soon as it asserts, what is this condition in which I can have peace only by refusing to know and to live, in which the appetite for conquest bumps into walls that defy its assaults? To will is to stir up paradoxes. Everything is ordered in such a way as to bring into being that poisoned peace produced by thoughtlessness, lack of heart, or fatal renunciations."
-Albert Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus
it has already happened to poets such as Wordsworth, Byron, Coleridge, Keats and others; helk, urban youth don't even know who the Beatles are.
To be fair, rural youth don't like the Beatles either. Heck, I don't like the Beatles. I'd take Pet Sounds any day anyways. It turns out that people tend to relate with the art that reflects their present circumstances, as oppose to ones centuries gone. That's not to say Lord Byron and Keats aren't good, or Shakespeare. The others I don't think I've encountered since grade school. Kids know Huxley and Orwell.
If you are introspective and reflective you are able to fully comprehend the implications of nothingness, see the logical pattern of nothing, and conclude there is nothing that is worth doing; it's all just a waste of time.
And? What's the difference between a waste of time and a good use of time to a nihilist?
I can go further into describing Nihilism but Nihilism is such an ugly concept I would not want to inadvertently induce Nihilism in anyone. So, if you don't get it, good. In my older age I no longer see not being introspective and reflective i.e. fully conscious ,as a flaw, it's probably the only thing that keeps people going. I am a religious man by the way and not an Atheist. With humility the only cure for Nihilism, in my humble opinion, is religion and spirituality i.e. the ability to realize that there is no such thing as "nothing" for all conscious life and, "nothing" is just a material term that has only significance to counting but nothing else. However, that is me and I know lesser conscious atheists will never understand it.
Yes, lots of people have claimed to solve the problems of nihilism; religions generally on the forefront.
my familarity with both Nazi and Fascist ideologies is minimal, so I'm more than happy to bow to your superior knowledge. In the OP, I was unintentionally repeating a somewhat propagandistic line that gets repeated alot in popular culture that because the Nazis rejected judeo-Christian morality they had no morality and were "nihilists". There were also some very vague reference by which the Nazi's appealed to F. Neitzsche's concept of the Ubermensch, but I've read some of his work so I know that it really is a gutter interpretation of it. the term nihilism is a kind of slander that gets used against people that we don't want to understand whereas actually it has a much more precise meaning than in common usage.
