“Nihilism is OK” is not OK

Seriously. I couldn't stop hearing The Dude from The Big Lebowski ("Yeah? Well, you know, that's just like uh, your opinion, man") while I was reading this. An astonishing amount of the heavy lifting in this article comes from assertions that we're just mean to accept, even when they aren't even explained, much less proved:

"Unfortunately, existentialism is difficult to maintain, because mostly we can’t choose meanings. Some meanings are nearly impossible to either alter or overlook, and so are some meaninglessnesses."

WUT

I generally consider myself a nihilist, but only because it's the very last stop on the bus ride of my failed attempts at religion and other philosophies.

I grew up very religious and when I lost my faith in my 20s, I tried to replace it w/ absurdism and existentialism, but couldn't shake the notion that lives deep in me that ultimately, even if humanity spreads across the cosmos and we're able to find meaning in our own individual existences, the universe will inevitably suffer heat death, from which there is no eternalistic escape.

These days, my morality entirely stems from the reduction and prevention of suffering, which is ultimately the only moral currency we have.

This led me to veganism and anti-natalism, as the best way to prevent individual suffering is for the individual to never exist in the first place (see: David Benatar's Better Never to Have Been; or Ecclesiastes 4:2-3). Needless to say, these are wildly unpopular philosophies. In light of this, I began to come to the realization that we're all nihilists at our core. We embrace religion or other philosophies to ward it off, because it's a truly uncomfortable sate of mind, as the author notes in this post, and the only alternative is total misery until we die. And then, depending on your philosophy, perhaps a true eternal bliss awaits you in paradise! How convenient! The happy people among us are the best at this practice - lying to ourselves successfully about the true nature of reality. We don't care what gets us there, as long as we get there.

All this to say: I was much happier when I believed in God.

The only alternative to religious thinking is misery? That sounds very much like religion insisting upon itself, like when they claim that without the fear of god we would all be savage and immoral. It's nonsense, really.

But there were a few absurd reductions in what you said, including the idea that the prevention of suffering is tenable yet somehow nihilistic.

Would it not be more sustainable to focus on spreading joy instead of preventing suffering? That way you won't drive yourself crazy focusing on the negative aspects of humanity.

For various reasons. But without our individual reason, the alternative is not misery. We can come up with other reasons. Or just do without reason (such as when we satisfy natural drives).

Reminds me of this passage from The Sea-Wolf by Jack London.

[Wolf Larsen] “Do you know, I sometimes catch myself wishing that I, too, were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They’re wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight, living is a worthless act. To labour at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me.”

He shook his head slowly, pondering.

“I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight; and, besides, you pay for your moments of intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.”

He stopped abruptly, and then on his lips formed one of his strange quizzical smiles, as he added:

“It’s from my brain I envy you, take notice, and not from my heart. My reason dictates it. The envy is an intellectual product. I am like a sober man looking upon drunken men, and, greatly weary, wishing he, too, were drunk.”

“Or like a wise man looking upon fools and wishing he, too, were a fool,” I laughed.

“Quite so,” he said. “You are a blessed, bankrupt pair of fools. You have no facts in your pocketbook.”

“Yet we spend as freely as you,” was Maud Brewster’s contribution.

“More freely, because it costs you nothing.”

“And because we draw upon eternity,” she retorted.

“Whether you do or think you do, it’s the same thing. You spend what you haven’t got, and in return you get greater value from spending what you haven’t got than I get from spending what I have got, and what I have sweated to get.”