Hi Thoughtful bloggers, it's Abeegail, it has been a while. Welcome to my blog. I was researching random things and came about this philosophical view of life, called nihilism. I told my very good friend about this and he immediately launched into an argument and as we went back and forth, I saw cracks and leaks in my knowledge about this, since I only got surface-level knowledge. I decided to do a deep dive and I found out that nihilism is the belief that life has no built-in meaning. No grand purpose written in the sky. No universal rulebook explaining why we’re here or what we must become. This means that values, societal norms and construct are created by humans to establish order and are not necessarily true or to be followed.
This stance state that life has no meaning. Human make meaning out of the world, nothing really matters and that many of the things you were told mattered absolutely only matter because humans agreed they do. When I said this to my friend he immediately launched at me a said, "that's a depressing outlook on life. There's meaning in everything, life is short so make it count, experience things and live." This was where I saw a crack, because like everyone reading this I thought if nothing mattered why do anything at all, why get of bed? Why work? Why chase dreams? Does that mean no one has to be good or bad? Why be kind or mean? Won't that put the world into total anarchy?
As an overthinker the concept of nihilism is freeing, as there's no meaning, nothing mattered. Nothing matter, if I say the wrong thing or act out person. It didn't matter if I did something embarrassing. It didn't matter if I achieve my dream, if I don't get to find my person and for a moment I felt free in my mind until I realised that I was practicing this stance wrongly. I can't go uncaring forever, I'm human, I'm meant to care, maybe not obsessively but I can't go cold completely.
Then I started researching to find the answers and settle this conflict in my mind. My question came from the fact that nihilism was made to look cruel, nonchalant, empty, unreachable, and untouchable. Nihilism is not sad or depressing, neither is it unresponsive, it depends on how you look at it. Yes, societal norms are only meaningful because we as humans decided that it was but nihilism is honesty. Since, norms are meaningless I can decide to create my own meaning of things I care about, not necessarily following the meaning others put in things. You don't care about things because the world said you should but because you want to. Not quietly forced on you but choosing with you own hand what you decide to care about.
Nihilism doesn't have to be bad because it's actually freeing. It makes you lighter knowing that you can choose to do the things you enjoy without letting the pressure of the world get to you. You don’t have to lose it or become cold to be a nihilist, neither do you have to give up joy or hope. You just stop pretending that life comes pre-packaged with rulebooks.
Meaning is man made.
Purpose is personal.
It's Abeegail ✨💗
Thanks for Reading
The first image is sourced, while the second one is mine.