Amerika

by Lance Otwell

Nihilism, as used here, rejects the belief that any institution, ideology, social authority, or societal belief is inherently universal or binding. Such things must be tested against practical reality, finite human limits, and realistic sustainability. Practical reality constrains moral demands.

We live in a time when we need to reevaluate our values. One of the major problems we face as a species is calcified thinking: a kind of intellectual tunnel vision rooted partly in our tendency toward solipsism, in which we mistake our own assumptions, perceptions, and interests for something universally applicable.

There are those that say we have an inherent moral sense within us. To that I say it is a fact that we have evolved the characteristics of altruism, empathy, and compassion which aid in our survival. But these are merely characteristics, not universal values or nonvalues. We have also evolved the characteristics of sociopathy, aggression, and ferocity which have also aided and still aid in our survival. It is either relative culture and practical purpose that determine which of these characteristics is a value or nonvalue.

What we need is a way to poison the delusions of power, stripping away everything that cannot withstand practical scrutiny and retaining only what is realistic, sustainable, and relevant. Nihilism, as I use the term, means reducing established systems of value and authority to their foundations — or to nothing at all — and rebuilding without automatically restoring the assumptions that were discarded. It means challenging societal systems sustained by social pretense, including religious doctrines and political ideologies, rather than granting them unquestionable authority.

Consider the assertion that might makes right. An apex nihilist would recognize that this statement is only half true and refine it accordingly: What works determines what is viable; what is declared right does not guarantee that it will work.

Human beings are often their own worst enemies. The human mind generates reasons, illusions, impulses, feelings, assumptions, and judgments that we then attempt to impose on others through social pressure, as though our conclusions were absolute and universally binding. We mistake our own interpretations for objective necessities, and we frequently mistake the power to enforce an idea for proof that the idea is justified.

These assumptions can mislead us, undermine our objectives, and produce demands that cannot be sustained in practice. Miasmal Nihilism is an antidote to this tendency: a pervasive atmosphere of negation that challenges inherited certainties, poisons delusions of authority, and exposes the gap between what people claim ought to be and what practical reality permits.

Miasmal Nihilism is the recognition that practical reality constrains all morals, values, ideologies, and beliefs. No declaration of righteousness, universal authority, or moral necessity can exempt itself from scrutiny. Critics sometimes reduce nihilism to juvenile anarchism or the assertion that nothing matters. They argue that if someone were truly nihilistic, that person would supposedly have no reason to participate in life, discuss philosophy, or care about anything. Others ask: Why is practicality a value?

Miasmal Nihilism is not simply the claim that nothing matters. It is a rejection of social pretense, whether religious, political, or otherwise, and a recognition that human beings are susceptible to illusion, self-deception, and the imposition of their own assumptions upon others.

The objection about practicality confuses the assertion of an objective value with the recognition of a practical constraint. I do not need to establish practicality as an absolute moral value to recognize that practical reality determines whether a particular objective, demand, or arrangement is achievable and sustainable. A person can question the supposed universal authority of values while still examining the real-world consequences of acting on them.

The purpose is to enact a miasma of negation: to challenge anthropocentric assumptions, undermine claims of inherent arbitrary social authority, and subject human systems of meaning to the conditions of practical reality.

No ideology becomes universally binding merely because human beings declare it so. The declarations of humanity are subject to the constraints of reality; reality is not subject to the declarations of humanity. Everything, everyone, and every worldview is ultimately constrained by practical reality.

Tags: apex nihilism, nihilism, solipsism