It’s been a while since I wrote about my special flavor of Nihilism. But I recently watched a video where Alex O’Connor (who I’m a big fan of) talks about Nihilism and I feel the urge to answer. Feel free to watch the video first if you want, but I’ll try not to assume that you have since it’s half an hour long and you might be too busy for that. It is a good video, though, so if you have the time I recommend watching it.
The biggest problem with Nihilism according to Alex O’Connor is that people have an inherent desire for meaning. He claims that the idea that there is no reason for our existence or that this reason is completely arbitrary is “ludicrous”. He touches on the idea that this desire for reason may be grounded in evolution and that it is quite difficult to grasp what it even is with an analogy of having to explain it to an alien. In the end, he states that the way Nihilism explains our existence is “unsatisfying” which makes it “implausible” and presents Agnosticism as a better alternative. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to criticize him because all of this makes perfect sense in his eidon. I just want to respond because it doesn’t in mine.
To explain this, we first have to recognize that this is all about emotions. As Alex also recognizes in the video, our beliefs are often much more influenced by our emotions than the other way round. He makes a very explicit link between Nihilism and depression and states that many people aren’t depressed because they are Nihilists, but that they are Nihilists because they are depressed. I think all of that is true, as people seem to find Nihilism during times of depression. The thing I don’t agree with, though, is Alex’s proposition that the realisation that there is no meaning only worsens their depression. It may seem true at the surface because it is literally a deficiency. A deficiency for meaning, the thing humans have an inherent desire for. So people do fall into a spiral where they are suffering and realize that their suffering is meaningless which makes them suffer even more as they try to grasp at anything that could provide meaning to their life and see all of it drifting away into meaninglessness.
I have used the metaphor of the abyss before to describe this. It can really feel like falling into an endless abyss as no belief, no life goal, no proposition for meaning can provide enough stability to stop your fall. It all just breaks away under your impact as your mind keeps asking “but why???”. You grow more and more desperate in this search until you finally realize that your suffering due to the meaninglessness of life is just as meaningless as everything else. It’s that epiphany which I had when I finally understood Nihilism and it’s what I mean when I say that I’ve emerged from the other side of the abyss. It’s the realization that you don’t actually need meaning. There are evolutionary drives that you cannot ignore. You can’t go without food or water for too long and you should sleep regularly or else you die. But if your life has no meaning and you stop making any effort to provide this meaning for yourself, you’re just fine.
In fact, I’d say I’m as free as I ever was. It’s an amazing feeling I wish I could share with everyone but, just like the desire for meaning, it is impossible to explain without experiencing it yourself and it comes at the cost of falling into an endless abyss for a long time, potentially years, which I understand not everyone is willing to do. It’s much easier to stick to whatever meaning works. So when Alox O’Connor says that nihilism is “implausible”, the decision to regard it that way is driven by his fear of the abyss, not by actual logic. We don’t have any evidence, no indication at all, that there is anything influencing our reality other than the laws of nature. If you look at the world from a scientific perspective, it’s just common sense to assume that that’s it. It’s just an application of Occam's Razor.
So all I had to do to free myself from the burden of having to look for meaning is to go from “assuming” to “believing”. It was the best decision I ever made and I have never regretted it since. Alex says that he thinks religion was created as a response to nihilism. He is not wrong from a temporal perspective, but the reason religion was created was always to control people. And I think that the need for meaning emerged alongside it. Of course people always wondered why the world existed, why the sky was blue and why everyone had to die at some point. But they could just make up some fun stories about spirits, magic and ghosts.
For most of human evolution, people would sharpen a few sticks, break a few rocks and dig a few holes but none of it would have a real impact on the world they lived in. The world must have seemed like an ocean, doing its thing with or without them. Why would they have the need for meaning in their lives if the idea that any of their actions could have a real impact didn’t even occur to them? It’s only with the dawn of civilization that people suddenly started having a legacy. It’s when people suddenly felt how others that were long dead and that they had never known were connected to them. Someone had built the monumental structures they were passing. Someone had prepared the lands they were farming. And someone had started the work they were continuing. It’s only in an atmosphere like this where the question “what is my purpose” starts to make sense.
But from an evolutionary perspective, the dawn of civilization was so recent that it can’t have had a real impact on our biology. So I think that our desire for purpose is just as artificial as civilization. I don’t have any historical proof to back this up, but somehow I can’t imagine a hominid sitting next to a campfire, eating the prey they just caught and saying “man, I wish my life had more meaning, you know”. Rather, I’d imagine any attempt to explain the concept to these early humans as fruitless as explaining it to the aliens in Alex’s thought experiment.
To conclude, I think the video and this post helped me to explain my understanding of Nihilism a lot better than ever before. I really wish there were more Nihilists like me, although I don’t wish the process of becoming one upon anybody. Trying to convince people who found their “purpose” to go near the abyss is fruitless and mean, so that’s not what I’m trying to do here. But maybe at some point this post will be read by someone who is currently falling. Maybe what I wrote about not finding anything to hold on to resonated with you. In that case, it might give you hope that there is an alternative. Most people who stumble into the abyss find something to pull them out with. Of the remaining few, many commit suicide. But I’m living proof that you can also exit the abyss on the other side and free yourself from the burden of meaning.
