My Departure From Nihilism

a reply to: Dark Ghost

The real reason is that I was just being a jerk. I'm sorry. In fact I was in a terrible mood when I logged in and posted that. Funny how that works isn't it?

I stave off "nihilistic doubts" constantly, so I do appreciate what you've been through.

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
Labels... jut how many are you willing to accept? Since when are you a label? When you first learn to come running to your name like some dog? How about when triggered with those dog whistles... or those beliefs you claim to hold when they all originated from someone else?

Let fools carry their own burdens.

Labels are not actually of any significance themselves if we ignore how/why they are being used. If I call you a murderer, it does not make you a murderer or probably won't make you feel annoyed because you know it is untrue. So in a private setting, they are even less insignificant because nobody else is being influenced by what has been said. In a public context, everything changes dramatically. If you use a word with highly negative connotations (such as racist, misogynist or murderer) in a public context to describe somebody else without first providing any reasoning beforehand for using that label, most people will have a seed of doubt planted into their heads about the person you have just labelled.

Once that happens, no matter what they say from now on the witness will always go back to that seed of doubt and say (he is making good points but why should I even listen, he is probably (insert label). There is no smoke without fire. Why would the other person accuse him of something if there was no basis at all?

You can resist the suggestion that making an unwarranted claim about somebody else and a third party agreeing automatically is the fault of the third party not using their critical thinking skills, not either the accuser or the one being accused, but in reality 99.99% of humanity WILL defend themselves from unjust labels when it is important to do so. I am one of those 99.99% and do not apologise for it, and do not see it as a character flaw. There is a massive difference between finding something offensive for the sake of finding offence because it makes you feel good, and choosing to defend your reputation from unjust implications when it is important to do so.

Is there anybody that you know, yourself included, that can literally do anything they want in their professional lives, personal lives and free time without the need to consider how they are perceived by others?

originally posted by: Talorc
The real reason is that I was just being a jerk. I'm sorry. In fact I was in a terrible mood when I logged in and posted that. Funny how that works isn't it?

I stave off "nihilistic doubts" constantly, so I do appreciate what you've been through.

Thank you for being honest. It does mean a lot to me because you and I have had intense disagreements in the past, where I have definitely acted out of line and still do not make excuses for that just because I have experienced those conditions in the past and to a lesser degree, today.

Yes, it is funny how it works. It can usually be put down to not properly expressing high amounts of anger or stress within you that need to come out or you will explode. I have done this myself in the past. I am learning, slowly but importantly that the stress and anger I am experiencing might be justified, but I still do NOT have a right to take that out on anybody else but myself. I must find a healthy way to express those emotions and a public internet forum is not the correct way to do it if I am going to attack anybody else in the process.

Yes, "nihilistic doubts" can be very annoying to deal with, the reason I can personally control my cool (or at least can at present) when discussing them is that I HAVE been at the stage where I was so consumed by them that I almost did commit suicide as a result. Now that I am certain I can come out of that and be in my current mindset, I have faith the vast majority of people who ARE or are close to where I was can turn their lives around. That is why I am being open and honest about these personal details which I don't like to do in public.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

You calling yourself something is accepting food of an excuse others have made for you... personal responsibility says I can take responsibility and not hide behind labels and make believe because it is comfortable.

Horoscopes; they all fit when the dates disappear... because of what? Change, growth, wisdom, understanding. making something living fixed? HA! It was never broken until people allow the programming to fool them.

It's just concept... how many words are here? In this post. Pop them all they are meaningless. nothing a shadow a spectre to go wooooo! They communicate what do they communicate? Nothing. The grasping optional.

Take it as a subject or become a subject... thats all knowledge is good for a tool. When you accept any of that as a self? You become a tool from being a fool.

a reply to: BigBrotherDarkness

I have just read through your reply three times and I don't understand what point you are making. Can you please rephrase so that I have a better opportunity to understand?

Interesting thread to read through, especially now that I find myself on the border of nihilistic thinking (perhaps more inland than border really). I'm not one to go searching for these philosophical ideas of our existence. I always preferred to experience what I can and run in trough my own filters of thought/interpretation/reflection, coming to conclusions without letting myself be too influenced by other peoples doctrines (don't mistake this with not communicating/debating or thinking of other people's perspectives, just not dwelling deep into literature on these matters).

After years of soldiering on through hardships, with ups and downs like everyone else (even thought I saw more downs than ups - perhaps a psychological thing), moving to another country for a fresh start and a better life, I find myself in a fairly miserable period. The greatest influencing factor I believe is emotional. Adding to that is the outlook on global/political events, the direction in which this world of ours seems to be going (not a good one if you ask me), the "robotisation" of humans where it seems like nobody cares for anybody anymore and even if they do the reasons behind it may very well be selfish ones, consciously or subconsciously. I have become that as well. I care very little for anyone and anything. I do have empathy left for nature and wildlife and I pity the suffering they endure, but believe the destructive processes we have started are irreversible and in the end I just feel like an observer who wants to let the dice fall with a mild curiosity of the outcome.

So far this thinking doesn't seem to affect my professional work/life nor my disciplined "soldier" mentality too much. I still try to do my tasks to the best of my abilities (not 100% sure if the mood has diminished the quality of that or not), I take care of myself physically through exercise and good diet, even though I question whats the point of it all. My personal and social life are the most affected. I care less and less about interacting with people. I find it harder and harder to have a forced smile and my trust in anyone and everyone has waned from little to nearly zilch. I used to believe the previously mentioned concept of everything is connected and we all influence the greater existence through or thoughts and actions, but now I find it more and more to be a bad joke. Another grand invention of man to give meaning or reason to that which has none. To justify morality and ethics. To give an appearance of selflessness where in fact it is just an act of denying a part of ones true nature.

I will go and try to bury myself in work now and cling on to the one good trait I believe I have: a drive for productivity. Thank you for this tread and enlightened replies would be very welcome.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

If looking for a light to your darkness must i blow out the sun?

a reply to: Dark Ghost

It's great! I love the honesty!

If people only knew how we 'scaffold' a higher-level regulatory logic into our brain-mind when we actually talk about what we feel, then we wouldn't be operating in the dark - in "mystery", as it were, to one anothers emotions. It is precisely because were so shame-prone - and so fearful of that emotion (within our minds) that this dynamic keeps going.

Fact is, were all the same. We all deal with shame - and in a society which values competition, strength, and power, shame will necessarily be the hidden 'shadow' that operates within our brain/mind as an unconscious referent i.e. something feared because of its destabilizing power. Because of the unconscious consigning of shame to the darkness, everything which emerges from its shadow is literally a fantasy - unreal, because the mind is forming its perception of reality without reference to the motivational-dynamics that function as the original cause. Shames significance is alluded to at the end of Genesis chapter 2- the very last phrase, following a description of the reality that Humanity existed within - "clinging together as one".

Consider, for example, the concept of idolatry. When people hear this term, it immediately activates images of "judaism", "moses", "the old testament", all of which, at least in the Christian west, possesses a dysregulating potential because of a still-latent antisemitism.

And yet there are secular philosophers with a spiritual orientation (the physicist Arthur Zajonc comes to mind) who use this word freely to describe what happens when Humans begin to abstract from materially enacted processes, and come to elevate the idea-form they perceive to be "more real' than the actual material conditions which enact that phenomenon. Consider morality, and the basis of an "antirealistic" attitude towards how we relate to one another. Philosophy for a long time, long before Kant, Hume, and Spinoza, and before Plato/Aristotle and the hellinistic tradition itself. Idolatry is always - ALWAYS - an emergent property of traumatizing cultures, and we see it appear again and again in imperialistic civilizations. Why is that? Is it possible - as it seems obvious to me - that the way-of-being, and the effects generated by war-mongering cultures, necessarily entails some defense against the trauma-affects-images that follow upon the execution of evil actions i.e. killing, raping - the cries, the screams the images of suffering faces, etc? It has clearly been long forgotten among Human being's that we are dynamically constituted beings: imperialism is EVIDENCE of idiocy - ignorance - not understanding the necessary consequences of violating physical principles.

Dualism is the result of an imperialistically oriented culture - and for good reasons: memory hurts the mind, and the individual members of the idealizing group responsible for genocide and other Human suffering simply cannot metabolize what they have don to other peoplee: so they "hide" from their own awareness of things. Does the Bible not also describe this dynamic: God 'searching' the Garden of the unconscious i.e. as the pang of conscience (our biophysical dynamical orientation to affirm our gratitude/care for one another) and Adam/Eve (mind/body) "hiding" i.e. dissociating, the presence of the 'afflicting' conscience?

It is precisely the absence of a scientific, physics-based "bottom-up" orientation that makes dualism plausible to people - but no doubt modern science must be deeply subversive for those various elites of European/Arab origin who have relied upon lies/delusions to perpetuate their power in the world. This deeply deranged, anti-ecological orientation which emphasizes only the "now" at the expense of past-future, is nothing but a traumatological consciousness masquerading as 'real'. It is an illusion - a deeply disconcerting one, from my perspective, because it seems like Humans are mindlessly unaware of the complementarity of the world we inhabit: life and death are also "complementary" - which implicates the other parties whom our existence becomes entangled with, as somehow 'essential' to our agency in this world, and thus, functionally relevant to my own experience of being/consciousness. In other words, I am skeptical that death is the end: we may just get to see how we've 'enlivened'/'disenlivened' the others we've impacted in our living: the other side, hidden from our egotistical perspective while moving through the "emergent world" as Human beings.

A horrible habit that needs to end is demonization: provoking people by representing them in a negative way to themselves/others is a retarded practice that offers no resolution. If people are where they are, theres a reason for that. Consider the German children who grew up in the shadow of WWI, and ended up becoming the vanguard of the Nazi movement. Here's what Vamik Volkan, professor of psychiatry and founder of the center for the study of mind and Human interaction at the university of Virginia describes the dynamic:

“Under the influence of Nazi propaganda, German youngsters could no longer imagine their parents as loving caregivers. The idealized image of Hitler and his representatives devalued any old image they might have had of their parents. Therefore, they had no internal motivation to mourn; we do not struggle with giving up valueless images. Of course, many parents became Nazi’s themselves; under these conditions, youngsters “loved” their parents as members of the idealized group, but could not mourn or feel remorseful about losing the images of their parents simply as parents.” – Vamik Volkan, Blind Trust, pg. 78, 2004, Pitchstone

Volkan is describing the psychodynamic difficulty that Germans who were Nazi's or sympathized with Nazis had with mourning: it was because their values had been "reordered" towards Nazi idealizations of grandeur - and away from normal mother-child and family dynamics - that they were both able to do what they did (sadistic treatment of "others") and not feel or experience any remorse for it. Again:

“Because parents were taught to ignore their children’s cries and desires, children were forced to experience the sense that there was no benevolent power in their surroundings and robbed of the opportunity to identify with a nurturing parent. Further, frustrated by their parent’s behavior, children projected their own angry feelings onto the parents, imagining the elders to be more aggressive than they might actually be in reality. In turn, they felt the only way to protect themselves was to become aggressors, tough kids. Indeed, they were “taught” that the whole world was populated with aggressors and grew up under an injunction to show no sign of weakness. Hitler himself called upon them: “We ask you to be hard, German youth, and to make yourself hard! We cannot use a generation of ‘mother boys’, of spoiled children.” Those children who exhibited such supposed self-assurance and self-reliance, in turn, received official approval as valued citizens through the party organization for children and youth. They were to be “above” being hurt, omnipotent beings who would inflict aggression on others perceived to be weak. Their own dependency needs as seen in “undesirable” groups and individuals would become their targets. They did not know that their self-assurance was defensive and false.”

Also, fractal dynamics - when paid attention to - can reveal much about the deep-relations between things.

Take the modern fear of 'cancer', and the fantasized experience of it being a profound and implaccable existential threat.

Many oncologists and biologists who study the molecular dynamics of cancer cannot help but notice an odd similarity (really, self-similarity, i.e. fractal dynamics) between the dynamics of the mind and the dynamics of the body.

Cancerous cells actually display a 'centrifugal' type dynamic, whereby the cancerous properties of a tumorous cell 'spreads outwards' from the cell towards neighboring cells, as if to "spread their message". This "pulling apart" - one cell acting out-of-step with the whole-body, contrasts with the centripetal dynamics of normal genetic regulation of cell behavior, as well as mitosis (cell division). These processes are profoundly integrated-inter-related with neighboring cells, as well as the body-at-large.

The philosopher Henri Bergson spoke of a state of "pure duration", in describing the irreducible dynamics that give rise to a living organism. This idea has been extended by the biophysicist Mae Wan Ho to describe how very small-scale dynamics (small-cycles like the TCA cycle) that occur at very very short intervals are 'concatenated' (i.e. linked) with larger spatial-scale dynamics with longer time-intervals. If you follow this logic further, ultimately, one "percept" of consciousness - occurring every 200-300 milliseconds in the brain, includes within it's "structure" the entire spatial/temporal dynamism that leads towards its "expression" as a conscious percept.

If you follow this logic further, the entire expression of personality in a person includes within it - and regulates within its dynamics - all the events within the body, which includes tumorogenesis.

Do you see where I'm getting at? Cancer is a function of an individualist philosophy. The philosophy itself is functioning as a "ordering principle" in the regulation of energy through your body, and so, just as the mind delusionally imagines itself to be ineluctably "separate" from the world around it, so too the body.

This is not a mere theory, but an obvious fact of reality. It acknowledges normal/pathological cell behavior in the body, and normal/pathological behavior in the mind. A mind which dissociates/disavows its relatedness and dependence on others puts its own cells into an incoherent relationship with one another: why should this be at all surprising?

Cancer is easily resolvable and not nearly as horrifying as the media/culture wants people to believe. The sheer cynicism of what these elites have drummed up - from individualism as a metaphysical philosophy, to the idiotic/reductionist approach to cancer treatment, engendering a doctor-patient dynamic where doctors feel the need to cynically prime their patients for death if certain statistics suggest a "realistic approach" - this is just a vicious positive feedback loop, with individualism as an ordering philosophy shaping mind-brain-body to not understand or relate to things in a systematic way, and by refusing a holistic approach, the person essentially condemns themselves to death

How many people die because they do not understand themselves or how they work? How much do they suffer because a fear of shame is experienced as more real than death-itself?

originally posted by: BigBrotherDarkness
If looking for a light to your darkness must i blow out the sun?

If you are implying that I ought not be making my own problems the problems of others, and instead of trying to change my own problems to cope better with reality, that I am instead trying to change reality in a way that significantly harms others and probably by extension myself as well (expecting them to accommodate a change in reality for my own benefit and not a mutual benefit), then I 100% agree with you and won't argue against what you are saying.

The question I now have for you is this: are you implying that I am personally doing or attempting to do what I described just above? If so, then no, I will not agree that I am doing that and will ague with you until you can convince me that is what I am actually doing.

a reply to: Dark Ghost

Freewill, it is a choice to collude to a reality as flawed as it is to either accept your excuses as a problem, or accept no excuses and become medicine to not only oneself in that conspiracy and collusion of "reality" to to be that medicine also for others.

Much more difficult... to choose the latter, than it is to just hang on some ladder of concept. Thinking that ladder actually goes anywhere other than round and round like Escher's staircase.

As futile as that pointing may seem once one has unraveled all of their own sickness; it helps. As weighted as the world can seem on one persons shoulders... it isn't just one doing the same.

So many clamoring for joy? Pain quickly follows... embrace that pain, see to become truth on all action of body, speech, and mind and then how could deceit arise?

Well, what is truth? Expression of being, logic is flawed without rationality(emotion) in such an extreme of logic emotion seems insane, in an extreme of emotion it all seems senseless, pointless nihilism surfaces... in balance of logic and ration then only reason that the great philosophers arises where the energies of both are balanced. When logic forgets ration then it becomes unreasonable unconscionable in action... machine like not considerate, but yet driven and with purpose. When such goes around then pain is caused emotion arises in that mindless self indulgence, and others are hurt... such is the nature of ego without conscience self serving, power hungry climbing over others to get really nowhere to be sincerely proud of...

Humility, knowing it takes a village... that all these roads and objects have had countless hands and lives touching them to get around you and get you around. Most just wander around oblivious inconsiderate not even caring about life underfoot... life they may think below them in some manner not even just "insects" but other people they think of as "insects" no one is an island.

So seeing one is fundamentally sick... then one does not say yeah thats just how it is and then march on... they don't accept labels as excuses for personal responsibility and then march on. They say the contents of ones mind that they grasp as reality is the sickness; question that look where it arose from... none of that is a self. All words that come out of any all all mouths are not theirs... they may be twisted to paint a meaning in the moment but then after the moment is gone? Poof. Even when the moment of such is occurring? Where you being the words, being the sounds or was the mind discriminating between self and other... creating that division that duality?

Just words, they only mean what someone ever takes from them to mean exactly what they personally want them to mean to begin with. But feeling and just knowing? Then blah blah blah anyway, in a tell me something I dont already know fashion... if what? Trite purposeless, but yet sometimes a break from that is needed into the trite from the serious... because it gets to be too much of a burden, a pain, a struggle... so a vacation.

The ego and self is people on permanent holiday to any responsibility to anyone except their own desire, cravings and needs... forcing everything and everyone to suit them, and when it doesn't? YaRRRR!!!! emotional, because it is extreme... no balance. No one owes anyone anything not even the life they are holding... but giving back is an expected duty, how one gives back? Choice, freewill.

But hey... some are just take take take in toxicity and control desire want, and do not really need... thats when to draw the line. Youve had enough, let others eat, experience, be, have, do... they are not and can never be you. Sure others try to force who they are in expectation on someone... like family, you must be me, do as I do, say as I say. No sorry your job is to guide people to who they already are with encouragement... if they were meant to be you? They wouldn't even exist... it would just be you.

Life is suffering, difficult and painful... so thats my advice, be the medicine to yourself... being the medicine to the world first? Can make one nihilist especially when egos reign. In such a manner, as you said... tired of it; shrug. Take time for yourself; treat yourself nice, when the world gets better? Lol the problems come back... then treat them. Give and take in balance... no give? Yeah just the taking, no taking? Then the giving hmmm, sometimes that is just out of guilt for all of the taking.

I cant convince you of what you are doing, no need too... you already know. If not? Be mindful, mind running off somewhere? Drag that asshole back and say right here right now... stay on task. Eventually it gives up becomes a tool stops causing oneself and others so much problems. Then after so much practice the mind just dies... and then all life bursts forth through as an expression of being... no self and yet a self, an awareness but also a personality from having been blind by seeing something and then the mind hurling nonsense at it. Seeing is seeing the mind should not move in the seeing unless it is to a future of something that needs doing.

I think the "universe" is kinda the opposite of EN, it exists because of infinite possibilities and their outcomes and therefore does not remain static.

The can see how the meaning of life can be seen as meaningless by an individual human. I think if we were more hive like without emotions rather than tribal, we would function better as part of the creative function of the universe. But that would make us another species !

The universe is infinite in possibilities/opportunities and outcomes. Humans by being a component of the universe are also just outcomes of 'opportunities /possibilities' that keep everything from being static.

Is our yearning on 'what is the meaning of life' just a natural extension of universal order? When we question we are creating possibilities, and this is the very thing that propels the universe and our part in it from being static. Everything in the known universe is an outcome to a condition. All outcomes propel existence from being static.

Humans simply exist within the universes function of opportunity and outcome.

Don't over think it. Just don't be static
Future generations (if we don't kill ourselves off) will become ' godling' creative universal forces themselves.

a reply to: zazzafrazz

That would just devolve back into apes... holding onto a self, that is the static or time period the group tries to keep when that is just relative... an hour can be moments an aeon seconds not grasped.

letting go of the idea of control lol is like the big bang; but how can a universe cease to exist cosmic inlfation and deflation? Silly concepts all of everything touches the end of your nose right now... no way it couldn't.

originally posted by: zazzafrazz
I think the "universe" is kinda the opposite of EN, it exists because of infinite possibilities and their outcomes and therefore does not remain static.

Infinity is not an easy concept to understand, even for the the most intelligent, knowledgeable and imaginative people in existence. (That is NOT to imply that you, zazzafrazz, do not meet the criteria above, I just cannot confirm that you do). I really do think 99.99% of people have the wrong idea about the concept of infinity means. (Not that I am in the 0.1% of people that use it correctly, that too I do not know. However, I do believe I see a problem with how others are using it at the very least.)

To give an example, whenever the topic of overpopulation on Earth comes up, one of the "givens" in support of the idea that the planet is NOT overpopulated is that quantity of breathable air is limitless (or in a sense infinite). If a total number could be devised to quantify the amount of breathable air on Earth, while that number would be so breathtakingly high to even imagine, it does not technically mean breathable air is an infinite resource.

Similarly with the popular multiverse theory. Many people will say that the potential to conceive of every possible reality is virtually infinite in scope. However, would the fact that the number of realities able to be fathomed being incomprehensible to the thinker truly mean they are infinite in nature? I do not believe that is the case.

The point I am trying to make is don't get too caught up on the concept of infinity. Just because something is impossible to imagine using the capacity of our own human brains, does not mean it can be explained by "infinity".

The can see how the meaning of life can be seen as meaningless by an individual human. I think if we were more hive like without emotions rather than tribal, we would function better as part of the creative function of the universe. But that would make us another species !

Even if we were better suited to function with hive-like mindsets, how does this confirm or disprove that there is an ultimate purpose or sense of meaning within the universe as a whole?

The universe is infinite in possibilities/opportunities and outcomes. Humans by being a component of the universe are also just outcomes of 'opportunities /possibilities' that keep everything from being static.

Why do you believe the Universe functions so well to escape being static? Is the Universe truly infinite in possibilities and opportunities,or is the number of possibilities and opportunities so staggeringly high that the human mind cannot process it even in the realms of the imagination?

Is our yearning on 'what is the meaning of life' just a natural extension of universal order? When we question we are creating possibilities, and this is the very thing that propels the universe and our part in it from being static. Everything in the known universe is an outcome to a condition. All outcomes propel existence from being static.

It's hard to tell if we are unique in our tendency to ponder the meaning of life. However, that would be significant in helping us determine if our role has a purpose or not. I don't believe there exists any strong evidence, at present, that any other creature that we are aware of has an innate tendency to question why they are here, why they are doing what they are doing, and is there any purpose or meaning to explain why we ponder such things?

Humans simply exist within the universes function of opportunity and outcome.

Does this mean that some type of entity/force exists independent of our universe? If not, how could opportunity and outcome even exist? How could anything exist? How can absolute nothingness or a complete state of static ever transform into something that can move?

Don't over think it. Just don't be static

Future generations (if we don't kill ourselves off) will become ' godling' creative universal forces themselves.

I think it is far more useful to avoid being static than it is to succumb to being static. However, how does that relate to questions about meaning and purpose? It's almost like you are suggesting "go with the flow, even if the flow leads you to unknown territory" which is not advice I would recommend personally.