Nihilism is a contradiction 🫥

Nihilism feels like a feeling. (Nihilism: Life is meaningless). I’ve felt it, I’ve been with others in it. You probably have too. The sense that there’s no purpose. Life is pointless. There’s often a blackness, an accompanying kind of body depression and lack of energy, a despairing quality of giving up, strangely paired with a maniacal sense of unboundedness. It can be terrifying—what does this mean about everything I hold dear? What does this mean about my life and future? Often the self-sense reacts by avoiding the feeling, thereby ensuring it will persist. 

The sense that life is meaningless demands a felt sense of life being meaningful. You can’t have the sense of meaninglessness without knowing meaning, in your bones. Even fear is built on the sense of threat to something meaningful. So In the experiential, phenomenological reality, nihilism is a contradiction. Knowing this, I know it can’t threaten goodness, meaning, purpose. I feel confident fully exploring the sense in me, and fully diving into it with others.

“Can’t you say the same in the opposite direction? That meaning also demands meaninglessness?”, you might cleverly ask. No, it’s not reciprocal: Nihilism claims only that life is meaningless, denying meaning (the contradiction). Meaning is more all-inclusive—it doesn’t deny the existence of meaninglessness. Nihilism: M N; meaning: M & N.)

So what? What does knowing this help you do? It helps you get more intimate with reality. It makes nihilism a path toward more meaning. Like sunlight eradicating the darkness of night, but in your soul. You can fully allow the experience of nihilism, noticing infinite nuances: A sense of existential dread. A collection of thoughts. All of these reveal a meaning that stubbornly persists in our experience. If you look closely enough, and patiently wait, you might start to see love suffusing it all.

With love, Jordan