Tuesday, November 26, 2013

my nihilism

I wrote this down several months ago and just now re-read it.  I think it's a good example of how logic can be employed to separate out groundless emotion from the mind, and yet place one back in his original state, but with clearer understanding of the fundamental issue.
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I think my nihilistic streak is very unconventional. For one, I do not hold that the universe is without purpose or that humanity is without purpose within it. I do not deny the reality of objective truth. No, the "nothing" of my nihilism has to do with me: it is I, who seem to serve no purpose, have no function or reason for existing, other than to exist, and to be painfully aware of existing with out purpose. The cosmos is not chaos: I alone am chaos.

The flaw in most nihilistic argument is that X has a feeling of purposelessness and projects this on to the entire universe:  his error is to assume that the truth of the part includes the truth of the whole.  The flaw in my own nihilistic argument is the other way around:  I assert that the universe, and humanity, of which I am a part, have a purpose, and that I am part of this whole, but have no purpose.  But whatever is true of the whole is true of the part.  So, if the world is purposeful, so must I, being a part of it.  I just don't know what that purpose is.

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