[MBTI General] Dealing with nihilism.

[Perch420]

In the last year I've found myself becoming more and more of a nihilist.

One reason for this is the problem of arbitrariness. I can't pay chess because it just seems so, well, arbitrary; why can the rook do this and the bishop do this? There's no reason for these things. It's just made up.

Not just chess, but everything. I'm watching a movie and it's pretty good as far as movies go, but then I realize that, just like chess, the movie is arbitrary and imperfect.

I'm reading a book, Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond. It's well-written and informative, but then it hits me that he could be totally wrong about what he's saying and I'm wasting my time. Sure, Guns, Germs, and Steel uses empirical facts to support its conclusions, but so did The Passing of the Great Race, or the Racial Basis of European History, but they both come to wildly different conclusions. So how do you know what to believe? Both seem correct when you read them, at least logically. Information, data, goes straight to conclusions in both books. So, again, who is right? How do you know what to believe in general if all belief is based on improvable information.

I'm reading about the Bosnian genocide and come across an internet link where a Serbian nationalist talks about how the Bosnians initiated the war by poisoning Serbian water supplies and raiding villages. Dammit! Even though there's much more data supporting the idea that the Serbs (Or at least their generals) were the ones mostly to blame, I can't discount what that guy said completely. The U.S. government has lied to people in the past, and it's possible that the truth about the Bosnian genocide isn't being told. I'm not saying I think that, but it's possible. So you can never be sure of anything at all??? The link between empirical data and inductive opinion-forming and conclusion-coming doesn't exist.

 

[Perch420]

My type is either INTJ or INTP, by the way. ( http://www.typologycentral.com/forums/what-s-my-type/41035-xxxx.html )

 

[Shimmy]

Does it even really matter what is true and what isn't? 99% of the stuff that's going on in the world isn't even relevant to you as an individual. The Bosnian genocide for instance only had a very marginal effect on my life, hence, while the truth is nice, it is also irrelevant to my life.

 

[Nicodemus]

http://www.suicidenote.info/ebook/suicide_note.pdf

 

[Neutralpov]

wow I started the book but realized it was almost 2,000 pages

Cliffsnotes?

 

[Nicodemus]

It's a nihilist's suicide note. There are no cliffnotes yet, I'm afraid.

 

[Neutralpov]

go figure. Speaking of arbitrary do you ever watch Nick at Night?

 

[Nicodemus]

No.

 

[gps]

The problem with running a nihilistic program on a computer designed to steer us towards goals has been made painfully obvious to me through many clinical depressions.
Though it may be arguably true that all value IS subjective, it's arguably stupid and self-defeating to thwart one's subjective values and instead to (mis)use the psychodynamics of self-fulfilling prophecy towards the ends your psyche automagically strives towards.
Personally I'd rather steer towards happiness as SOMETHING than nothingness which results in a future version of me not being able to get there from here in way in which no-ONE ends up smack dab in the middle of No-PLACE (EG Utopia).
Given nihilism or bliss to steer towards, I'll steer towards Bliss.
I suggest you do the same.

 

[eternal recurrence]

I thought INTP's just took in information for the sake of taking it in ...

But it seems like you are talking less about nihilism then with being frustrated at not being able to form a solid picture of the world and thus evolving a general skepticism which results in a sort of relativism? I don't feel like this leads to the conclusion (or feeling) that life and its aspects are meaningless.

 

[EcK]

What's the point...
Is there even such a thing as nihilism
People and so their brains are separate, language is not meaning but correlations, words have no true meaning, human relations are meaningless and by inference our brains are not unitary, neurons themselves are disconnected and meaningless isles, articulating meaningless data in intangible networks
It'S ALL A LIE! Let's wear goth clothes!

On a more serious tone, there's no such thing as a nihilist, everything in life is based on belief. The belief that the door will open, the belief that your hand is yours etc, that what we experience is reliable, that walls are 'solid' (even though quantum physics wouldn't aggree, but that doesn't matter to a macro scale being with a life span under 10 to the power of a gazillion years that'd have nothing better to do than get into walls all day)

Nihilistic philosophers are oxymoronic, they shouldn't believe in their own philosophy enough to bother defining it or want to promote it.

The difference between relativistic thinking and nihilism is that while neither claim any absolute, the former can work for you and broaden you while nihilism is self defeating. You work with what you have, we have imperfect information, limited computing abilities and evolutionary biases in our perception of the world.
That's not a bad thing, because that's also what allows you to enjoy a milk shake, sex, or maths.

 

[Shimmy]

I thought INTP's just took in information for the sake of taking it in ...

But it seems like you are talking less about nihilism then with being frustrated at not being able to form a solid picture of the world and thus evolving a general skepticism which results in a sort of relativism? I don't feel like this leads to the conclusion (or feeling) that life and its aspects are meaningless.

Yeah, the OP is dealing with a feeling of weltschmerz rather than nihilism.

 

[EcK]

The same uncertainty and imperfection that bothers you is what allows for differencials, and so work in the universe, and so time. And the universe itself as far as we know, given the unlikely prerequisites for a life bearing universe, seems to have emerged from randomness.
If the many worlds interpretation derived from quantum uncertainty is right, then we're part of an ever expanding tree and will ever only have access to the parts that are congruent with our history.
There's no such thing as perfect information, but if there was, there wouldn't BE information.
As I said, no time, no space, no differencial, no life, no thinker to think it's all unperfect data.

It's not that the world doesn't measure up to what the intelligence want, it's that intelligence has to expand to the point where it can really understand the applicable parameters instead of pulling them out of a hat. And then keep doing that, and questioning and enjoying all of it.
Perfection just doesn't work, perfection is not complexity but simplicity, perfection is lacking. Look around you for people with all the perfect answers.
Fundamentalists, religious zealots and other potentially 1st or 3rd degree murderous bores.

Uncertainty is what makes me, and fuels my growth and allows for every kind of evolution and process in the known universe.
Bottom line, the limits give us shapes, patterns, beauty.

 

[Perch420]

bump

 

[xisnotx]

Nihilism: The belief that ultimately life has no meaning.

When I was younger I asked myself.."Is god true?" I didn't have an answer.
I then asked myself "What is truth?" I didn't have an answer.
I then asked "Is anything true?" I still didn't have an answer.
Which then lead me to.."If I can't find truth..if I can't find god..what the hell is the purpose of continuing to even exist?"
Then I found a truth. But just as soon as I found it...I lost it.
And losing it...losing that truth...was one of the most challenging experiences of my life.
I thought I knew what I had to do.
But I didn't want to do it.
But I felt like I was being forced to do it. The world demanded it.
And it was at that point I decided that despite the world demanding it...despite it being the most logical thing to do..I was going to do it.
I had no reason not to.
There was absolutely no logical reason why I shouldn't.
But all I knew is I didn't want to.
I examined why.
I came up with my own answer.
I suppose that that answer will be different for everyone.
But I can assure you that at least one person has found it.

You have to answer that question yourself. I could never give you a satisfactory answer.

 

[Jonny]

I too struggled with nihilism a couple of years ago. In retrospect, I think the attitude was born of a depression, which latched itself onto those beliefs as a way of self justifying. Coincidentally, I have also read and enjoyed Guns, Germs and Steel. Hit me up if you'd ever like to discuss either of these things.

 

[Nicodemus]

I too struggled with nihilism a couple of years ago. In retrospect, I think the attitude was born of a depression, which latched itself onto those beliefs as a way of self justifying.

Why do you no longer struggle with nihilism?

 

[ZPowers]

wow I started the book (the nihilist's suicide 'note') but realized it was almost 2,000 pages

Cliffsnotes?

May I suggest viewing or reading the Sunset Limited? It's a play by Cormac McCarthy (the novels The Road, Blood Meridian, No Country For Old Men) featuring a conversation between two characters, one of whom is a nihilist who wants to kill himself. Recently produced as an HBO program starring Tommy Lee Jones (the nihilist) and Samuel L Jackson (a Christian/theistic optimist trying to talk him out of suicide)

No offense* to that rambling, probably repetitious and wholly overlong note, but I imagine the Sunset Limited is better written (its author being a Pulitizer Prize winner and one of the most prolific writers around today) and probably more to the point.

*though I guess wether there is offense or not is irrelevant, particularly for a dead nihilist.

 

[Ginkgo]

Anyone here who's interested in a good rebuttal of Nihilism, read The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus.

 

[knight]

Nothing is ever what we think, hear or read, you are either learning half the story, small part of something or something completely different then what you learned, or maybe something small and less pertinent to the story was omitted that carries significance in its own right. pluto was a planet and now its something else. there was a small debate what is was, I think. will you test what you learn now?