How do people in the West avoid Nihlism nowadays?

[TheManBeyond]

animekitty posting despacito in intp fórum
Friends, this is the end

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

Could you post list of possible purposes for human being to decide you think are worthy your choice? What are your metrics? How will look process of this decision?
Genuinely interested,
nihilistic millennial

This is a very good question.

Nietzsche himself had the concept of figuring out who you are. He envisioned this process as looking back at your life and try to discern a pattern there which reveals your true self.

Sartre seems to think it can be more arbitrary. At the end of La Nausee, Roquentin is listening to a song and becomes envious of the composer because this composer managed to make himself immortal through creativity. Thus he wants to do the same, but he realizes for example that he doesn't have any musical training and that he should do it in some other way (I think here, Sartre is referring to the concept of facticity – Roquentin cannot change his past and just will musical talent into existence).

Couldn't I try... Naturally, it wouldn't be a question of a tune... But couldn't I in another medium? ... It would have to be a book: I don't know how to do anything else. [...] I don't quite know which kind – but you would have to guess, behind the printed words, behind the pages, something which didn't exist, which was above existence. The sort of story, for example, which could never happen, and adventure. It would have to be beautiful and hard as steel and make people ashamed of their existence.

So for Sartre, creative and artistic works appear to be worthy of a purpose.

For me, I do as Roquentin. I look at my past and see what I can and cannot do, and try to make my experience, my skills, my tastes, my aspirations and sense of aesthetics converge to a unified purpose. I am also a supporter of the concept of Arete – living up to one's full potential.

Some possible ones off the top of my head:

• Devote your life to the study of a specific subject
• Write some book that is extremely original and impacts the world in a constructive way
• Come up with an idea and turn it into a successful business
• Invent something spectacular
• Devote your life to fighting corruption or crime
• Become a movie director and make deep, beautiful movies like Tarkovsky

Etc. Your list might look completely different.

 

[ummidk]

Most people just don't really think about it that much.

 

[scorpiomover]

Nietzsche predicted that when people absolve themselves of the belief in True Worlds, they would become deeply nihilistic, which, as mentioned doesn't seem to be true.

Nietzsche also said that people believe things because of their Will to Truth, and do things because of their Will to Power. He also said that their Will to Truth is derived from their Will to Power. Lifestyle => beliefs.

People collapse into drink, drugs and lose the will to work, when they see millions of people like them lose their lives before they can achieve their lifestyles, like in World War 1. It makes them think that they are likely to never achieve their life goals in their lifetime as well, and that as a consequence, their lives are not worth living.

If they lose their Will to Truth, if they lose their beliefs, as long as they do not lose their Will to Power, as long as they do not lose their lifestyle, their motivation for having a Will to Truth has never really gone away. It's just been re-directed in a different direction.

My question then is – what do these people actually believe

Look at their Will to Power, their lifestyle and the way they live their lives. What do they do on a daily basis? What do they do the most in their free time? What do they make a lot of effort for? Sex? Drink? Drugs? Kids? Watching Youtube videos? Eating nachos? Talking on internet forums?

and how do they avoid slipping into the vortex of nihilism?

They don't. As long as they don't lose their Will to Power, they don't not really lose their Will to Truth. It just gets re-directed into modern terms.

People reframed modern values into the modern age by reapplying it to modern technology. Modern values include that we should be against ISIS, homophobia, should be for liberalism, and many other things. So people protest in favour of those things. They don't do that in demonstrations anymore. Instead, they use the modern medium of the internet, by writing blogs and posting in forums arguing for modern values.

 

[AndyC]

Nietzsche also said that people believe things because of their Will to Truth, and do things because of their Will to Power. He also said that their Will to Truth is derived from their Will to Power. Lifestyle => beliefs.

The former promotes the ego, whilst the latter promotes ego dissolution and self-transcendence.

People collapse into drink, drugs and lose the will to work, when they see millions of people like them lose their lives before they can achieve their lifestyles, like in World War 1. It makes them think that they are likely to never achieve their life goals in their lifetime as well, and that as a consequence, their lives are not worth living.

If they lose their Will to Truth, if they lose their beliefs, as long as they do not lose their Will to Power, as long as they do not lose their lifestyle, their motivation for having a Will to Truth has never really gone away. It's just been re-directed in a different direction.

Look at their Will to Power, their lifestyle and the way they live their lives. What do they do on a daily basis? What do they do the most in their free time? What do they make a lot of effort for? Sex? Drink? Drugs? Kids? Watching Youtube videos? Eating nachos? Talking on internet forums?

They don't. As long as they don't lose their Will to Power, they don't not really lose their Will to Truth. It just gets re-directed into modern terms.

People reframed modern values into the modern age by reapplying it to modern technology. Modern values include that we should be against ISIS, homophobia, should be for liberalism, and many other things. So people protest in favour of those things. They don't do that in demonstrations anymore. Instead, they use the modern medium of the internet, by writing blogs and posting in forums arguing for modern values.

Will to Power does not promote well-being, for any recognition of an ego will lead to suffering, this is a commonly accepted phenomenon in philosophy and psychology. This will to power is the cause of the suffering seen in those who lose the will to work, for the ego transforms the way you see the world as a reflection of the meaning of your being, hence, your attitude, and hence, your thoughts. In an individualized Western culture, the will to power is therefore an abundant precursor to a lacking Will of Truth for the majority, for Will to Truth and Will to Power are essentially opposites in the way one promotes, and one dissolves the ego. Therefore it should not be surprising to see such an ignorance in this cursed society.

 

[gilliatt]

First of all, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. He is a somewhat! He is more on the emotional side, feelings side! He wants to rule others and sacrifice them to himself. There is a psychological subjectivist that is unable fully to identify his values or to prove their objective validity, he has terrible psycho-epistemological difficulty. This nihilist holds no values, he does not believe A is A. He is a mystic, irrationalist, he does not believe that reason is a valid means of knowledge or a proper guide to action.

 

[Black Rose]

What I came across was that the ubermensch creates his own values and he has no obligations to society at all. It is radical individualism and in complete alinement with the death of God. If God does not exist then no one can tell you what to do. Only you can define who you are and what you want to do with your life. Society enslaves the individual with values that tell them what to do with their life. No God means we have radical freedom because anyone that tells you you are obligated to obey is pretending to be God and that means they can fuck off. No God means no rules except for the rules the individual creates for themselves.

 

[Ex-User (14663)]

First of all, Nietzsche is a mystic and an irrationalist. He is a somewhat! He is more on the emotional side, feelings side! He wants to rule others and sacrifice them to himself. There is a psychological subjectivist that is unable fully to identify his values or to prove their objective validity, he has terrible psycho-epistemological difficulty. This nihilist holds no values, he does not believe A is A. He is a mystic, irrationalist, he does not believe that reason is a valid means of knowledge or a proper guide to action.

Feel free to tell us how you deduce values "objectively", independently of your own physiology, and how you "prove their objective validity".

Other than that, I believe you have a slightly incomplete understanding of Nietzsche. You can call him an irrationalist in the sense that his nemesis was Socrates. Nietzsche thought that Socrates tried to reject and undermine life through reason. Nietzsche himself was everything other than a nihilist. His view was that you are supposed to affirm and embrace life. He wasn't against rational analysis, but he was against the Socratic notion that only that which is rational is valuable. According to Nietzsche, that which is raw and emotional – the Dionysian – should not be viewed as pathological but rather a part of being human.

To further the split, Nietzsche diagnoses the Socratic Dialectic as being diseased in the manner that it deals with looking at life. The scholarly dialectic is directly opposed to the concept of the Dionysian because it only seeks to negate life; it uses reason to always deflect, but never to create. Socrates rejects the intrinsic value of the senses and life for "higher" ideals. Nietzsche claims in The Gay Science that when Socrates drinks the hemlock, he sees the hemlock as the cure for life, proclaiming that he has been sick a long time. (Section 340.) In contrast, the Dionysian existence constantly seeks to affirm life. Whether in pain or pleasure, suffering or joy, the intoxicating revelry that Dionysus has for life itself overcomes the Socratic sickness and perpetuates the growth and flourishing of visceral life force—a great Dionysian 'Yes', to a Socratic 'No'.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollonian_and_Dionysian

 

[scorpiomover]

The former promotes the ego, whilst the latter promotes ego dissolution and self-transcendence.

Being committed to getting more power for yourself, promotes the ego, for your objective is to make your self more powerful and more important.

Being committed to gaining more truth, requires that you accept the truth wherever you may find it. Accepting truths that you already believe are true will not gain you anything. Accepting truths that you do not know will gain you something. But accepting truths that you think are false will gain you most of all. So commitment to truth requires that you learn to say "I am wrong" as frequently as possible, and to generally take the attitude that you are probably wrong in any situation.

Thus, the man who seeks truth says "I am probably wrong and others are probably right".

But when Nietzsche talks about the Will to Truth, he is talking about what most people mean when they talk about truth, that they am right and others are wrong, and that consequently, everyone else should agree with them. That is the attitude of the man who claims that he ALREADY has the truth. He does not seek it, but seeks to convince others that he is omniscient and that they should believe him. He is ego-full.

The man who is ego-less, rejects the idea that he has the truth, for truth is not his to command.

Will to Power does not promote well-being, for any recognition of an ego will lead to suffering, this is a commonly accepted phenomenon in philosophy and psychology.

If you have no ego, you have no "I", no sense of self, no desire to live. When your body says that it needs food, that is just a statement. There is no reason to give it food, unless you wish to preserve the self, to keep the "I" alive. Thus, without ego, all beings cease to strive to live. They do not eat. They do not drink. They have no desires, including the desire to live. They just pass away into the dust.

It is well-known in psychology that too much ego is harmful. But too little ego, aka low self-esteem, is just as harmful.

This will to power is the cause of the suffering seen in those who lose the will to work, for the ego transforms the way you see the world as a reflection of the meaning of your being, hence, your attitude, and hence, your thoughts.

True. But you can only see through your own eyes. You can only understand through your own brain. You cannot experience directly. Thus, you can only experience reality as a reflection and a perception. So there is no way to deny the ego-based attitude. All we can do is to know that our viewpoint is biased, and try to counter for the biases that we have.

In an individualized Western culture, the will to power is therefore an abundant precursor to a lacking Will of Truth for the majority, for Will to Truth and Will to Power are essentially opposites in the way one promotes, and one dissolves the ego. Therefore it should not be surprising to see such an ignorance in this cursed society.

Individualism is not inherently harmful. Each being is different to the other. To deny that is to pretend that all humans are clones.

But to take that to an extreme, and deny our commonalities, to think that one is different to the "sheeple", is to imagine that one is completely different to all other humans, that one cannot fall prey to their weaknesses.

To accept that individualism is not completely wonderful, is to acknowledge that one is a human like other humans, that one shares their weaknesses and their strengths, that their mistakes are also one's own, that one is a sheeple just like they are, and thus to have compassion on them, for they only make the same mistakes that one has already made.

Thus, the Will to Power and the Will to Truth are in all of us, for to deny that, is to claim that one is superior to all other humans, which is just another form of egotism.

Better that we cling to truth, and say "we are like them. We share in their weaknesses. We glory in their strengths."

 

[ZenRaiden]

What I came across was that the ubermensch creates his own values and he has no obligations to society at all. It is radical individualism and in complete alinement with the death of God. If God does not exist then no one can tell you what to do. Only you can define who you are and what you want to do with your life. Society enslaves the individual with values that tell them what to do with their life. No God means we have radical freedom because anyone that tells you you are obligated to obey is pretending to be God and that means they can fuck off. No God means no rules except for the rules the individual creates for themselves.

He had a problem with heirarchies. Intellectual and social heirarchies. But even if people are aware of these hierarchies they adhere and play by them, because it benefits them. If it didnt benefit them they would avoid playing by them, yet dictators are replaced by dictators and religions are replaced by other religions. CEOs by CEOs and presidents by presidents.
The only system that would come close to what Nietzsche wanted would be communism, but I dont think he really thought of himself like that.

 

[AndyC]

Being committed to getting more power for yourself, promotes the ego, for your objective is to make your self more powerful and more important.

Being committed to gaining more truth, requires that you accept the truth wherever you may find it. Accepting truths that you already believe are true will not gain you anything. Accepting truths that you do not know will gain you something. But accepting truths that you think are false will gain you most of all. So commitment to truth requires that you learn to say "I am wrong" as frequently as possible, and to generally take the attitude that you are probably wrong in any situation.

Thus, the man who seeks truth says "I am probably wrong and others are probably right".

But when Nietzsche talks about the Will to Truth, he is talking about what most people mean when they talk about truth, that they am right and others are wrong, and that consequently, everyone else should agree with them. That is the attitude of the man who claims that he ALREADY has the truth. He does not seek it, but seeks to convince others that he is omniscient and that they should believe him. He is ego-full.

The man who is ego-less, rejects the idea that he has the truth, for truth is not his to command.

I haven't read Nietzsche, so I'll try not to comment on anything regarding his writings.

If you have no ego, you have no "I", no sense of self, no desire to live. When your body says that it needs food, that is just a statement. There is no reason to give it food, unless you wish to preserve the self, to keep the "I" alive. Thus, without ego, all beings cease to strive to live. They do not eat. They do not drink. They have no desires, including the desire to live. They just pass away into the dust.

It is well-known in psychology that too much ego is harmful. But too little ego, aka low self-esteem, is just as harmful.

Consider the practice of 'flow'. One of the conditions for flow s that the activity you are indulged in has purpose/meaning within itself. Flow is an example of how focus can dissolve the ego, another example would be mindfulness, it's about finding meaning in the things you do, not having meaning as an individual. Also, one can still cherish their connection to nature (essentially saying the same thing), it is the willed individualisation of a person's identity that endangers their wellbeing.

True. But you can only see through your own eyes. You can only understand through your own brain. You cannot experience directly. Thus, you can only experience reality as a reflection and a perception. So there is no way to deny the ego-based attitude. All we can do is to know that our viewpoint is biased, and try to counter for the biases that we have.

It is when the ego causes the attitude to become fixed that it becomes dangerous.

Individualism is not inherently harmful. Each being is different to the other. To deny that is to pretend that all humans are clones.

This follows the idea of connection and the will to individualise above.

 

[TransientMoment]

Nihilism, and its subsequent conversion to this existentialism, tends to be an INTP problem (not to say other types don't have it). It results from attempting to thoroughly understand reality with the mind, dissecting it based on the assumption that there is no God, and thus coming to the inevitable conclusion that all is meaningless. It's sort of "Duh! What did you expect?" If ultimate purpose comes from God, then obviously removing God from the picture should result in no purpose. Perhaps then, as this reality sinks in to INTPs more than others - because INTPs think more about these things - then they find themselves more bitter/saddened/depressed by its consequences. But since the INTP is a thinker, the architectural mind of the INTP builds its way back out of it by saying he can generate his own purpose, and so he returns himself to more or less the plane of "meaning" that everyone else exists on (as far as he's concerned): having some chosen life purpose. The only difference is that, from his perspective, he believes that his purpose is self-chosen whereas everyone else is somehow "in the dark", being manipulated by [insert the latest trending explanation in his mind]. Supposing he is an arrogant lad, his only basis for insulting people or viewing them in inferior light is his own pride for thinking he somehow now has the truth about reality and they don't, and he desires to enlighten such ignorant plebians who care nothing about his explanations anyways for varying reasons of their own. Perhaps we can explain it like this: With thousands of years of history, people haven't fallen into nihilism, not because they were "busy" nor "unaware" nor not taught it, but because such a conclusion is utterly worthless to them (and for good reason). They have goals, and they like them, and raw truth isn't one of them. INTPs value truth more than other personalities, so naturally, such an interesting discovery would be prized by its discoverer, inasmuch as it also hurts him. Though being independent thinkers, they also have the tendency to consider the ideas of their counterparts as perhaps equal or inferior to their own, so anyone listening to such a nihilist wouldn't be quite as interested as he would in his own theories on life. Admittedly, it is possible that a conclusion such as nihilism spawns from an INTP's rebellion. If by that we mean cognitive rebellion, I would say it's more of a natural mentality in that the INTP is willing to accept the truth in whatever way it comes. This, for instance, also explains why INTPs tend towards agnosticism whereas INTJs, who MUST have an answer to satisfy themselves, tend more towards atheism. If we mean social rebellion, then yes, it's possible an INTP, being so insistent on breaking away from "stupid people" finds himself ditching all of their ideas - good and bad - for the sake of "real truth" and finds himself walking the road of philosophy few enjoy to take. This doesn't mean his conclusions are wrong, but it does mean his mentality is clearly the product of his own choice to rebel. || The fact that INTPs even ask such a question as "purpose" says something significant, and perhaps we can explain that with answers such as (a) there really is something, such as God, who instilled this idea of purpose within them so that they might ask for it or (b) they have been taught by culture to believe such a myth as "ultimate purpose", in which case, we would question the origin of such a myth or (c) that purpose is actually an error of the mind over-analyzing some concept that a person describes as their driving factor in life, which begs the same question as (b) in that we must ask where this/these driving factor(s) come from. Sex, money, power, and worldly wealth are usual "answers", but these seem to be statistically rare vices for INTPs, who are more concerned with truth - and, for that matter, more concerned with ultimate purpose - than other personality types. So what's the explanation for INTPs? Why do we care so much? Let's not deny that we do care, nor pretend the desire for it goes away (since it's quite clear we have to reinvent it to satisfy ourselves). || Apologies for the wall of text. I can't seem to figure out how to get newlines added. Adding newlines doesn't seem to work.

 

[Intolerable]

I think most people are taught to never look down. That's the key. We're trained one way or another to latch onto objectives. We define ourselves in those circumstances.

It's when people disregard those objectives and try to define themselves in the morass of purposeless life that they realize it's all meaningless.