On Overcoming Nihilism - the view that nothing matters
- rogerthisdell
- 6 days ago
- 6 min read
Updated: 5 days ago
To suffer the pangs of nihilism can literally be a despair beyond belief. To admit nihilism and feign acceptance of it is cope. Nihilism is to be integrated, not neglected or rejected. It is then to be moved past. That means familiarising oneself with it and contending with it, to see its inadequacy.
One who lives an examined life will inevitably come into view of that great abyss of nihilism. How deep into its depth you dare to stare depends upon how unwilling you are to be fooled.
Nihilism comes about when one's sense of relative meaning, that is, the sense of significance of their mundane day-to-day actions, does not align with their sense of ultimate meaning, that is their sense of what the great purpose of the whole, the cosmos, is about.
The extreme of nihilism is when no ultimate meaning is found, only relative, which can never amass to anything more significant than its short-lived, culture, context-bound moment. This realisation leads to the daunting sentiment of utter meaninglessness. However, actual complete meaninglessness is never realised, because even if there is a mismatch between the relative and projection of the whole, one's suffering, even just of this moment, is always meaningful - always coming with a call (a will) to not suffer. It is always meaningful to the individual and if one is entrenched in an nihilistic mindset, they are suffering. Finding this modicum of meaning in an otherwise teleologically barren landscape can be enough to keep one hanging on, but not enough to surrender and surpass this samsara.
Attachment to meaning can keep you addicted to suffering. You may even deem it a worthy price to pay, until you don't.
The existential agony from nihilistic-based suffering can make you feel depressed, apathetic, hopeless; with nowhere to go, nothing to do and no one to be, all in a non-benign way. The void is consuming, isolating yet open, too open, a gaping hole in the heart of reality.
Nihilism lies at one end of a spectrum, with eternalism at the other. If nihilism is when relative meaning and ultimate meaning are so divorced from one another that ultimate meaning is totally lost, then eternalism is when relative meaning and ultimate meaning are so married together, but in such a way that the sense of the ultimate totally obscures the relative; where all quotidian action are seen as part of the great, grand divine plan. Everything follows God's master mission, as we all march in lockstep to the holier than holy Omega Point. The presumed purpose-filled promised land at the end of time. Though this sounds initially better than nihilism, eternalism comes with its own suffering and is the cause of much wanton misery among humans.
To be eternalistic is to be in a perpetual state of longing, of never quite arriving. It renders one feeling incomplete, though provides hope rather than despair, it is a hope that never delivers. It is a psychological numbing cream, keeping the mind ensnared in fantasy unable to face reality.
Many and much is sacrificed at the altar of perfectionism, but what's better than perfect? What's real.
Both nihilism and eternalism are born of improper relation between the sense of the relative and the sense of the absolute. A mind leaning too hard towards the relative slips into nihilism, a mind leaning too hard towards the absolute, eternalism. Freedom from this plightful pendulum lies in mending a compartmentalisation many of us didn't know we had. We must then find the right way of relating the two, the right view, but first by identifying and ruling out the wrong views.
I recommend being able to recognise when you are apprehending the sense of the relative and the sense of the whole (the absolute, the ultimate) each in turn and individually. So catch yourself when you are conceiving of something - it could be anything: a thought, an object, quality, whatever - as being only true of, or occurring within relative specific circumstances, and without these conditions, then this relative thing is not upheld. On the other hand, catch yourself when you are referring to something as true or always the case for all time and space, no matter what else changes. First, track and map when you do either.
Then, starting to connect the two, notice how the relative implies the absolute and vice versa. The two concepts tacitly and mutually suggest the existence of one another. Make this connection. Then, and now a more advanced step, implement a figure-ground reversal by coming to see that what you initially took for the relative to be the absolute, and what you initially took for the absolute to be the relative.
What you think is the unconditioned is also conditioned and what you think is conditioned is also the unconditioned. Even if this inverted perspective is difficult to grok, you can start by simply asking yourself: ‘What if things were opposite?’. Making the unknown the known and the known the unknown. As you come to see, they really are quite interchangeable, quite the same.
How we relate to anything - it being of a relative or an absolute ontology - is very subjective, and so ironically it's all conditional. ‘All things are conditioned’ as an understanding that unites the relative and the absolute.
Nihilism arises when you see that your relative meaning doesn't correspond to absolute meaning and absolute meaning isn't found in the relative. So long as the absolute and the relative remain ununited, nihilism awaits you. But even after uniting we need to go a step further.
You see, if two sides of this dichotomy can truly come to represent one another, then like a tautological ouroboros, eating its own tail, the two consume each other and cancel out their own respective meanings. Meaning, neither the descriptor of this, that, or everything as relative, nor as not relativistic (a.k.a. absolute), is sufficient for describing how reality is. And without reifying this new ‘neither/nor’ relation into its own attempted immutable, objective stance, the mind sees through the guise of the following four extreme, deluded views:
Absolute truth exists.
Absolute truth does not exist (only relative)
Absolute truth and relative truth exist.
Neither absolute nor relative truth exist.
Upon realising each and upon realising each as empty, the middle way is found and freedom from this suffering is achieved. You see, the way out of nihilism is to understand nihilism, is to go through nihilism, is to contextualise the supporting conditions of nihilism. It is to go meta on nihilism. It is to transcend nihilism. Nihilism doesn't go far enough, for even nihilism is ultimately meaningless.
Now, do I hope all of you understood all of this? No. Better only partial aspects of your psyche get this gradually over time. That would be much more conducive to a smoother journey. However, at some point you'll have no option but to really get this.
What comes after nihilism and eternalism? I'll leave that for you to discover yourself; but as best as I can put into words at this moment: it is simply the continued movement of life as it always has been, except the absence of one kind of internal conflict.
Addendum
I will add that a seeming hallmark feature of this phase shift in life, to the post-existential, is that one’s main conscious operating system is no longer linguistic thoughts. So instead of making meaning and interpreting reality predominately through structured propositions and explicit narratives, one comes to find the world more intelligible through the other sense bases.
So the sights, sounds and feelings speak for themselves. A reintegration of thinking back into the senses occurs, as opposed to a disconnected mind. All phenomena have a message to give and if you are acutely sensitive enough, that will guide your life - it can’t not.
For the heady-incessant-thinker types (of which I was one most of my life), this will be such a radical change in way of being, that most will only want to double down in their thinking ways - to think their way out of the meaning crisis. After all, it is one of our most heavily ingrained habits; done almost every second of every waking moment.
But the good news is the way out is through! By thinking so much and adding ever more complexity to one’s understanding of reality, while training and heightening sensory clarity in the other senses (seeing, feeling, hearing and smelling/tasting), eventually the thinking mind itself will realise its futility in trying to accurately model ‘objective’ reality. It will concede epistemic bankruptcy and be forced to merge with the other senses.
So, I say: "think until you exhaust thinking, WHILE training the other senses!" Do not worry about trying to give up linguistic thinking. Do not worry that you will miss linguistic thinking. If those are your concerns then you are not currently ready and so it won’t happen for you. You will always only ever try to go where makes sense for you, until no other options seem available.