What Nihilism Is Not

It has been posted on here before, but since it is relevant and I enjoyed it think it is worth mentioning:

https://meltingasphalt.com/a-nihilists-guide-to-meaning/

I think this article is a waste of time. Rather than using actual sources the author uses scenes from mtv highschool sitcoms to prove their point. Also the author injects their personal bias into everything.

Nihilist: the payoff matrix is zero, people have been brainwashed to perceive a non-zero payoff matrix

Pessimist: the payoff matrix is negative

Cynic: players refuse to cooperate, so we're stuck playing with a net negative result

Apathetic: this game is boring

Huh.

I did maybe a couple decades of applied nihilism, as presented by Landmark Education. It helped me a lot, given that I'm bipolar and prone to pessimism and depression.

So this makes sense to me:

> If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism.

But not this:

> Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it.

As Landmark taught it, it's not so much hiding from despair as cultivating the awareness that despair is an illusion. That is, despair isn't about what happened. It's about our story about what happened. And our stories by default just reflect our programming.

This does, however, but it's too ambiguous:

> But the nihilist has feelings. It’s just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing.

It's not that it's "nothing", exactly. It's that it's indeterminate. By default, it's however we've been programmed. But it can be whatever we choose freely.

Maybe nihilist also says "let's play a different game".