Optimistic Nihilism: Nothing matters, but it’s ok

Life is but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage and then is heard no more. It's a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Have you ever met someone who calls himself a nihilist? Maybe you have a friend from college or a family member who says they're a disciple of Nietzsche at every opportunity. They love to wax poetic about the meaninglessness of life. Briefly indulging them in their philosophical ideas can expand your mind and help you to see things you never would have.

But the truth is, outside of philosophical discussion, leading a nihilistic life is bleak. Think about it: if nothing matters and we're all just specks of dust floating through space and time, what's the point in trying at all? Building healthy relationships with friends and family doesn't seem worth it because, in the end, everyone you know will die anyway. All attempts at self-improvement are futile because in the universe's grand plan, none of it matters.

Even if you're not all doom and gloom, there will be days when getting out of bed will seem pointless, where life itself will seem kind of pointless. The current state of the world, with issues like the climate crisis, the rise in extreme politics, and economic instability, doesn't help with our psychological state. This glimpse into the void might dissuade you from wanting to do anything with your life.

You're staring down nihilism, the belief in nothing, and framed like this, it makes life sound pretty awful. But there's another way to look at nihilism, one that teaches you not to see the glass as half full or half empty, but instead to throw the glass away and drink straight from the faucet until you're satisfied. This is optimistic nihilism: the realization that the universe's meaninglessness is the most liberating thing in the world.

It's the type of nihilism you get when standing on the precipice of a huge mountain or watching a mother bird feed her young. It's the profound smack of insignificance you feel when faced with the miracle of your existence, the amount of luck and chance that it took for you to get here in the first place.

Optimistic nihilism doesn't mean we're doomed to live in a meaningless universe; instead, it allows us to experience the universe in our own unique ways. One of the best ways to experience the universe is to understand how it works. Brilliant.org is the best way to learn math and computer science interactively. Brilliant currently has thousands of lessons, from foundational and advanced math to AI, data science, neural networks, and more, with new lessons added every single month.

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According to the nihilist, you and I don't matter; nothing does. Religious morality or societal norms don't restrict your existence. You are entirely free and in control of making your life mean something. Once you accept the meaninglessness of your life as a gift rather than a burden, you find peace with the life you have because life is brief and fleeting; it's precious.

Writing in the late 19th century, German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was worried about modernity. He was very critical of the traditional European morality and the religion of his time, which placed Christian beliefs at the center of social and political life. In his 1882 book, "The Gay Science," he proclaimed the infamous line: "God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him."

Here, Nietzsche didn't make an argument for atheism; instead, he observed that believing in one true Christian God was no longer central to European society. People's lives no longer revolved around the church's calendar or teaching. Industrial means of production gripped Europe, flooding the pockets of factory owners and enforcing a standardized workday on everyone else.

With that, personal freedom and agency became core values in society. People no longer yearned for a higher power to guide them through life, explain what comes after death, or show them right from wrong. Increasingly, people took these matters into their own hands. While Nietzsche was critical of religion, he was equally skeptical of what society could become without it.

He understood that without Christianity as a guiding principle, people might move through life confused and disoriented. A world without God creates a void of understanding in our lives, and humans aren't psychologically capable of a pure belief in nothing. We're always searching for purpose in anything, even when we're not aware of it.

Think about how you start your day. Imagine you wake up and look out your window to see a beautiful owl perched on your balcony railing. You might associate that with having a good or bad day, depending on the culture you were raised in. We're constantly making connections and associations like this in our lives, down to the most mundane things.

People aren't built to remain in a constant nihilistic state; it's only a phase that allows us to gain perspective on the structures that govern our everyday life. According to Nietzsche, we fill the void where God once was with ourselves. We become our own tiny gods, so to speak. We give ourselves the authority to distinguish right from wrong and determine our individual meanings in life.

If nihilism from a Nietzschean point of view interests you, we made an entire video on nihilism, so you can check that out by clicking on the link in the description. The existentialists who came after Nietzsche, like French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, expanded on this idea. To Sartre, we have complete freedom over our lives in a world without God or objective meaning, but with great power comes great responsibility.

You have the power to shape the life you want to live. Let that sink in for a moment. Yes, you can make good choices for yourself, but how are you supposed to know which choices are good? And how often do you do things that are against your own self-interest? In good moments, when things are going well for you, you might feel empowered and in control. You may get the promotion you deserve, or marry the person you love.

You might move to a new city and establish a community of friends that you couldn't imagine life without. You've invested time, energy, and love into making a meaningful life for yourself without following arbitrary rules or some intangible plan ordained from above. All the good things in your life have come from you. Yet in the trenches of everyday life, it can seem overwhelming, especially when you're in charge of making sure you have a good one.

To give our lives meaning, we create internal narratives about ourselves, and this is where we start to run into issues. We tell ourselves we're hard workers, and consequently, the importance of our jobs and the identity they provide us with starts to weigh us down. It's the same at school; students get sick with anxiety about test scores and grades, as if getting into the perfect college will finally confirm their life's worth.

Similarly, you inject meaning into your love and family life. You strive to be the perfect parent, child, or partner because of your belief that these relationships will make your life meaningful. This is what keeps people in unhealthy or toxic relationships: they've attached this idea of meaning or worth to something that's ultimately meaningless.

Having to constantly reaffirm who you are because there's no higher power to do that work for you can be exhausting. While we have the freedom of total control, that also bogs us down. What happens when you're busy shaping the life you think you want, yet you're still unhappy? All this meaning-making, trying to make sense of your life, contributes to a plague of depression and anxiety, especially among Millennials and Gen Z.

People are burned out, stressed out, and exhausted. So why do we chase meaning, even with this feeling in the back of our minds that none of it matters? There's a contradiction between our pursuit of meaning and the reality of a meaningless universe. It's devastating to confront the idea that all the hard work we put into making our lives mean something is for nothing.

Optimistic nihilism is the solution to this anxiety that we inherit while we're forced into the position of making meaning out of our lives. Yes, nothing matters, but isn't that a relief? You can find yourself responding to seemingly urgent work emails at 3 AM or over-obsessing over your Instagram caption, but in the moment, it feels like the weight of the world rests on these things.

You spend late nights tossing and turning, all of your mistakes and wrongdoing spinning until you've convinced yourself that you're the worst person on the planet. But embracing that none of these things ultimately matter is freeing. Forgive yourself for your past mistakes and look forward, excited to experience the future.

When we're at the center of our own structures of meaning, every choice we make, good or bad, becomes weighted with significance. When you find yourself in one of these mindsets where your life feels too big to handle, remind yourself that you're small and insignificant. The universe isn't indifferent to your worries, struggles, and mistakes, and in the end, none of it matters.

You'll die one day, and in the future, no one will remember your brief flight on this planet. There's no use fretting about trying to create the perfect life because the energy spent making your life mean something is worthless. When it's all said and done, you're dust.

It's completely normal to allow the squirming sensation of your insignificance to wash over you for a moment, but staring nihilism in the face is only uncomfortable if you let it be. If you call yourself an optimistic nihilist, it's probably good practice to confront all the different emotions your meaninglessness makes you feel; otherwise, you won't reap the actual benefits of optimistic nihilism.

Instead, it'll be a bandage to your problems, something you just tell yourself to believe in order to get through the day, instead of a true guiding principle. You need to sit with your nothingness and accept it for what it is. Then use the objective meaninglessness of life to relieve yourself from the pressure that meaning-making entails.

Take a look at your life and all it means to you: your relationships, the values you hold close, the things that get you out of bed in the morning. You have to be willing to part with all of them and embrace the void that they leave behind. Suddenly, the choices you make and the problems you face every day—things that take up so much of your mental capacity—don't seem so overbearing.

Optimistic nihilism frees you from the crushing burden of meaning-making. Of course, it doesn't absolve you of wrongdoing; your actions still have consequences, and you shouldn't give in to all your impulses for the sake of it. Continue creating a life that you love, one that you're excited to live, whatever that means.

But just know that in the end, everything you've made will dissolve into the ether, and you'll leave nothing behind. In the face of this reality, take advantage of all the sweetness life offers. The good things in your life are made all the more beautiful because of their fleeting insignificance: sharing a meal with those you love, the smell of blooming lilacs in spring, and even petting your cat.

It's such a miracle that you're here, able to experience anything. So shouldn't you spend your life enjoying yourself instead of worrying so much about making your life mean something? Life is precious, beautiful, and awe-inspiring despite its chaos and disorder. It's a wonder that you can find goodness amid a void of meaning.

You need to end the hopeless search for meaning-making, and I've had firsthand experience with the void. When you emerge on the other side, you'll find nothing, but that nothing will be clear and bright—a guiding light into a better yet fleeting life.