John Altmann

5/23/13

The Diary Of An Active Nihilist

The date was May 21st, that was the day that I had a philosophical epiphany. I had come to the realization that I was a Nihilist. What’s even more ironic is that two days prior to this realization my ignorance of this very philosophy was abundant to say the least. It all started with a thread I created on a Philosophy forum titled the Nihilist Paradox. The gist of my thread was that if Nihilists believe in nothing then is it not contradictory that they uphold Nihilism? A friend of mine from the forums was quick to point out that this was a common misconception that people held about Nihilism which consequently would become a stereotype ascribed to all Nihilists. He stated that Nihilists (He was referring specifically to Existential Nihilists as he debated me & others in the thread.) do not believe in nothing but rather, believe that life has no objective meaning, purpose, or value. Needless to say that the thread gained much momentum and an intense discourse ensued. This ultimately led to my friend urging me and every other participant in the thread to do the appropriate research and to empower ourselves.

The first source I referenced was the website: www.nihil.org which is a website fully dedicated to the philosophy of Nihilism. Upon reading the site’s definition of Nihilism it was as if I had opened a door and a blinding light had greeted me on the other side. Nihilists were not people drowning in oceans of their own despair and agony while they bitterly contemplated the nothingness of life. On the contrary, Nihilists are people that believe that life does in fact have meaning but just as my friend said; it was not an objective one. Rather, the Nihilist believes that the meaning of life is one that the self creates through their own life experience with reality to serve as their canvas. I would come to find that reality was the only thing that Nihilists seemed to accept for they refuted all human constructs including such things as belief, ideology, socialization, and other human projections. To put it succinctly, I had come to find that Nihilism in actuality was the exalting of individual freedom to the highest level. It was the power of free will completely uninhibited by God or the institutions of man. Every choice and thus every consequence fell upon the shoulders of the individual alone. Nihilism then is the greatest liberation a person could feel, or the worst prison one could be confined to depending on their vantage point.

I found myself in limbo between the two sentiments. Then I read about Nietzsche in The Rebel: An Essay On Man In Revolt which was written by Albert Camus and my mind was emotionally and intellectually gripped. Reading Camus’ depiction of the vigor Nietzsche seemed to exude as he pushed his skepticism beyond the boundaries of the Earth and perhaps even human sanity itself left me in turmoil. Nietzsche had created a desert. He had killed God and subsequently his design. All that resided in this desert was the individual and their freedom. What sprung from this freedom were both truths and moral values as decided by the individual whose sum would ultimately lead to the individual taking the place of God itself. Nietzsche’s vision of such an individual would be personified in one of his most famous works Thus Spake Zarathustra as an entity known as the Ubermensch.

I lied awake that night as the words of Camus and Nietzsche reverberated throughout my being. Until my encounter with Nihilist thought the furthest I had pushed my skepticism was the refutation of God. I had been an Atheist for many years so I had already exiled God from my being. The question then became was I willing to take my skepticism to the extreme and reject all human constructs? Was I willing to join Nietzsche in the desert and start my being over from scratch? Or would I be a passive Nihilist and attach myself like a leech to some movement or institution adopting their causes and values as my own so as not to confront the world with a mind naked of ideology and vulnerable? The quandary swam through my head violently and ceaselessly throughout the night to the point where I awoke by falling to the floor. The very conflict that was causing me mental anguish had now physicalized itself. The conflict continued to plague me throughout the day when I decided that I would take a walk and clear my head so as to be able to come to a resolution on the issue.

As I walked my brain was playing ping pong with my present conflict and both the active and passive approach to Nihilism seemed to possess great acumen when it came to wielding the paddle.

“Abandon all human constructs are you crazy?” Part of me inquired incredulously. “What about your Libertarian beliefs? What about your assertions of limited government and the decriminalization of marijuana? Are you really going to be a hypocrite and abandon those ideals?”

The other part of me was just as aggressive in its sales pitch. Nihilism was freedom in its purest possible form. Being an active Nihilist only meant emancipating myself from society and all of its manifestations in the name of pursuing the truth as well as the best possible self I could conceive. This desert, a word so often associated with barrenness and hopelessness was a Utopia whose doors had beckoned me to enter and forever reside. Why was I so hesitant? I was hesitant because I did not know if I truly was good enough or worthy enough to afford myself such freedom. Deep down, I was scared that the truths I would pursue would amount to nil thus engulfing my journey through the desert in futility. I felt I was better submitting my mind to the teachings of Sartre, Kierkegaard, and others. I was on the verge of resigning my search and allowing myself to embrace passive nihilism when I saw something across the street that eased my mind and demonstrated to me in its entire splendor, the beauty that was active Nihilism.

What I saw was a child riding his bike as his parents followed close behind him. It was then that a muse struck me. Is not the child themselves a Nihilist? I mean, they interact with the world around them at a very young age creating their very own experiences almost immediately after birth. Furthermore, all the while the child is creating their own experiences they remain completely aloof to the constructs of both nature and their society. What consequence does such a fact pose to the child? The answer is absolutely no consequence whatsoever. For when the sun sets, all that will matter to the child is how they rode their bike down the sidewalk, or the distinction they made between hot and cold by accidentally burning their hand and then having their mother soothe it with an ice pack. In short, all that will matter to the child is the experiences they created through their own freewill and what truths they derived from such experiences. It was then that the realization struck me like a lightning bolt. The child has a better grasp of freewill than any scholar or Philosopher debating the very concept of it. Children were and continue to be active Nihilists and they were and continue to be blissfully ignorant of it. It was then that I knew that active Nihilism was my true path. It was then that I knew that exalting my

freedom and liberating myself from my society was not some arduous endeavor but rather it was as easy as the child pursuing the sun down the sidewalk on their bicycle. I will continue pursuing the truth and the morals that define me until either I touch the sun or my legs give way in the desert and the sands bury me alongside Nietzsche and every being who attempted ascension towards the Ubermensch ideal. I have never felt more free or hungry to find truth. I may have put myself in a prison wandering my cell aimlessly for truth and identity until death but in the end it is a life sentence I am more than willing to serve.