Embracing Nihilism: What do we do when there's nothing?
God is dead. God remains dead, and we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives. Who will wipe this blood off of us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement? What sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
This passage, written by Friedrich Nietzsche, poses a fascinating question: What do we do when we no longer find meaning in our religions and long-standing traditions? What do we do when the very foundations of society have been broken? How do we overcome the void that nihilism leaves behind? Nihilism is the belief that life has no meaning, that morals and values don't exist, and that all of the structures and institutions we seem destined to live by aren't real. You don't have to care about anything because nothing matters.
At first, the idea of nihilism is liberating; some might even say it's comforting. Imagine waking up without that feeling of the weight of the world being on your shoulders or going to bed without feeling like you've let everyone around you down. You're no longer bound by religion, moral codes, or sacred traditions. You're free to live life on your own terms, because at the end of the day, nothing matters.
The philosophy of nihilism was popularized by 19th-century philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, but contrary to what people think, he didn't want a nihilistic society. Instead, he believed nihilism was necessary to break down the institutions of morality of the time and to allow something new to take place—in a sense, to allow us to become gods. His philosophy was that we need to overcome nihilism, not get stuck in it. He believed the world has no order or structure except what we give to it. Essentially, what we think about the world is what is so. If we believe that nothing matters and that life has no meaning, then we're destined to live in a world void of meaning, community, relationships, or anything else we might value.
He felt that the effects of this philosophical approach would destroy any conviction society had, and we would see a full-blown crisis of humanity. Some of that came to pass in the 20th century after he died, when themes of nihilism were resonating with artists, social critics, and philosophers. The second half of the 20th century was defined in part by anti-foundationalism, an attitude of indifference to social structures, business, and what some might have called "the man." By the 2000s, a mood of gloom, anxiety, anger, and despair had taken hold and has, in many ways, had a grip on a severed sense.
Still, people turn to nihilism not to feel despair but to try and find an answer to the questions we all have. Why do I have to wake up every day and work eight hours at a job I hate? Why do I have to follow religious traditions that I don't even believe in? Why do I have to live my life according to the rules of others? These questions have become even more prevalent in our post-pandemic society, where it feels like the world is crumbling. Every day we hear of a new war in a different part of the world, and there's a cost of living crisis everywhere you look. AI is taking some of our jobs, and flowers are blooming in Antarctica.
When faced with this horrifying reality, the concept of "nothing matters" can be freeing. By taking the meaning out of things, they stop being so bleak. Instead of worrying about the future, you have an escape—an opportunity to not deal with the questions that you might not have the answers to. It's why the subreddit r/nihilism grew from 31,000 people before the pandemic to around 150,000 members today.
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Back to our story: the world, its problems, and our questions and worries about it can feel infinite. It's overwhelming, but nihilism offers an opportunity to feel insignificant within it all; to feel like you don't matter, because none of it matters. There's endless freedom in that. It allows us to feel indifferent about things that would otherwise occupy our attention 24/7. The world doesn't affect us, and therefore we don't affect the world. Politics doesn't matter, hardship doesn't matter.
But the challenge with nihilism and the problem that Nietzsche was unable to solve is that at the same time, that means friendships don't matter, family doesn't matter, love, happiness—none of it matters. If we fall too far down the nihilism rabbit hole, we start to feel a sense of loss; loss of the things that bring us joy in a world that's already hard to live in, and loss of our own selves.
Embracing nihilism is understandable and sometimes helpful, but it can create a loss of purpose and motivation in our lives. That sense of indifference about the world means we're also indifferent about our lives and the path we want to take. This makes us feel emptiness and despair about who and what we are. It can lead to destructive behavior. If nothing has meaning, then our actions don't have consequences; we end up not feeling any sort of personal responsibility for what we do, even if we do bad things.
Nihilism also makes it very hard to establish an ethical framework. I mean, it questions the very existence of morals, values, and ethics, and without these, there aren't really any universal principles to bond us all. Sure, we don't have to agree on everything, but if we stop trying to be good people and caring about others, society will fall apart. It means we become disconnected from not just strangers but also the people closest to us. Nihilism questions the mere existence of relationships and institutions. Essentially, it challenges community and fosters a feeling of detachment.
Sure, not all institutions are good, but many are important to how we build our lives. We go to school to learn, but also to socialize. We play pickup basketball at the local park to exercise, but also to socialize. We go to places of worship to perform our religious practices, but also, you guessed it, to socialize. Because at the end of the day, we're social animals, and community is one of the most important things in living a long and healthy life. These actions that we use to bond with others are also teaching us empathy.
Humans are the only species that are able to understand and experience without living it; we have empathy for others. If nihilism asks us to get rid of that empathy, it is not only asking us to let go of a vital part of ourselves, but it's also creating cracks in our social cohesion. This is the destruction that Nietzsche was worried about. He dedicated his life to understanding nihilism. He saw it as the result of people's frustrations while searching for meaning and purpose in religion. Nietzsche was writing about this after the Enlightenment when people started questioning the religious principles that had guided society for so long.
Suddenly, the age-old purpose of living for God didn't hold meaning anymore, because people stopped believing in God. The collapse in meaning also meant a collapse in purpose. Whether we like it or not, purpose in our life often comes from suffering and pain—things Nietzsche felt were essential to experience to live a profound life. He told us it was out of the deepest death that the highest must come to its height.
Nietzsche wanted to turn nihilism around. He believed that if we survived a takeover of nihilistic principles, we could discover the correct course for humankind. In this sense, nihilism is a transitional stage of life that needs to be overcome to find meaning in why we suffer. However, Nietzsche also believed that not everyone has it in them to overcome nihilism. Passive nihilists, as he called them, would never find meaning in the world. Their approach to life embraces a feeling of nothingness and despair.
This, unfortunately, often leads people towards mass movements that like to tell them what to believe. Cults, political parties, and religious groups give passive nihilists an easy way out. On the other hand, active nihilists might recognize their purposeless existence and strive to work their way out of it. This can look like destroying old values and constructing new ones that are meaningful.
How you see the world in your own personal evolution is important. Think of a piece of stone: meaningless when it is just plopped in front of you. But if you start chiseling away at it day after day, you can create a spear, a statue, or jewelry and give it purpose and meaning. Of course, we don't always get the stone plopped in front of us; it can be hard to figure out where to start looking for that meaning. We might not be born with a single passion or life purpose, but if we allow ourselves to feel our suffering, difficulty, and pain, we can get an idea of what we want from life.
If we envy a friend who's been practicing tennis day after day and finally wins the competition, maybe that's a sign we should try tennis or even just pick up a new hobby. If we see people suffering in our community, we can turn our sadness into action by volunteering at a local soup kitchen. When we study our emotions, we find meaning and we can overcome the despair that nihilism might cause us.
But how do we know when we've overcome it? Well, imagine you were told you had to live your exact life repeatedly. If you're okay with that, despite the hardship, you're not viewing your life or the world in a nihilistic way. You've learned to celebrate life as a miracle and embrace every piece of it, even when it doesn't seem great.
Nietzsche has a metaphor of a shepherd and a snake. The snake had crawled into the shepherd's throat, and at first, he's choking on the snake. Then he bites its head off to save his own life. He spits out the head and allows the pain to be a part of him so that he can continue living. He takes control of the despair and the pain.
When we allow others to dictate things for us, it doesn't feel good. We want to be in touch with our feelings and tackle our problems from a place of purpose. Nihilism doesn't let us do that; it leaves us instead susceptible to being controlled by others. The good news is that although Nietzsche thought that once the Enlightenment happened and God became less relevant, people would spiral into a catatonic nihilistic state, they didn't.
So now, even if nihilism feels like an enticing philosophy to embrace, it won't be the end of society as we know it. In fact, if we play our cards right, it might help us by removing something like God or government from being a central figure in our existence. We take attention off the so-meaning of our life and put it on something bigger. Maybe our one life doesn't hold all the meaning we thought it would, and maybe that's okay.
The author Wendy Seet wrote a book arguing that a meaningless life could make us happy. Some principles of nihilism can be a savior for the current state of hyper-individualism—a cure for our obsession to find meaning in everything, from what job you have to what you eat for dinner. She coined the term "sunny nihilism," which suggests a chance to enjoy the moment, even if it's chaotic and even if it doesn't feel meaningful. The odds of us just being alive are worth making the most of it.