nihilism

[Immanuel Can]

If not, then why, exactly, were you making your personal business public here? Why didn't you go to a friend, a clergyman, a therapist, a suicide hotline, a doctor...somebody who was actually relevant to your needs, and with whom you could have retained an expectation of personal privacy and confidentiality? Why splash your misery out upon strange people, many of whom don't even live in your country?

All good stories are about individuals. Also, when individual stories stimulate philosophical discussion, they make it more interesting. Who doesn't like that kind of thing?

I don't deny that watching Fairy and Harbal may have entertained some folks. People are entertained by all kinds of things. But it's not philosophy. And it has very dubious status as a contribution to the search for "wisdom," which is putatively what "philo-" "-sophia" is supposedly about.

But I suppose you must have known from the start that Fairy was lying about the homicide/suicide threat, and that may have allowed the distance from the event to make a mild amusement, instead of concern, the proper response. Let me suppose so, for the sake of charity. For me, it was best to be careful not to incite any possibility of it becoming a crisis. So I did not share the sense of amusement, and afterward, was annoyed by the manipulative, selfish and narcissistic nature of the performance. Maybe we had different experiences of that. But maybe both were legit, let's say.

What's relevant philosophically is the claim that there are no objective values. Fairy's dramatic performance presupposed agreement. In other words, it clearly took for granted that all right-thinking people would be drawn to sympathize. So Fairy was leaning on the assumption that her appeals would invoke a sense of moral compulsion. But why should she think so, since she also claims that there can be no moral duties, no moral rightness, no moral obligations, no moral consensus, not even a set of stable moral criteria of judgment...just total subjectivism?

Philosophically, that just doesn't add up.

[Fairy]

So you were feeling narcissistic, and wanted to use us (the forum) to hurt H.?

And that wasn't "vile" and "spiteful," but somebody trying to help you was?

Yes it was vile and spiteful I take all accountability for my despicable behaviour.

I used this forum to hurt him because I said sorry to him for something we’d previously gone through that night ..but he ghosted me, I was furious why he was acting like that towards me after I’d said sorry to him for something we’d been through earlier.

I totally flipped out when he ignored me straight after I’d reached out to him with sincere and genuine apologies…so I used this forum as the perfect weapon to get revenge. We met and courted on this forum. He even told me how much this forum meant to him…so I wanted to ruin things for him just as he ruined me with his awful emotionally unintelligent behaviour towards me.

I did not care about anyone’s concern for me on that night I was unstable with my outrageous outpourings of negative emotions… I would have preferred it if everyone had ignored me. All I wanted to do was hurt Harbal, and this forum was the perfect weapon.


I just thought it was all over but then you had to drag it all up again when you didn’t need to do that. You could have used something else as an example ..but you chose to use Harbal….it’s really disrespectful to keep dragging up the painful past like that.

[Fairy]

Why splash your misery out upon strange people, many of whom don't even live in your country? What was the good of that?

Are you fucking deaf?

How many more times do you want me to say to you why I used this forum deliberately to hurt Harbal?

I used this forum because I know he would have been reading that night.

Why are you so dumb when it comes to understanding the reason why I did what I did that night?

[Fairy]

If not, then why, exactly, were you making your personal business public here? Why didn't you go to a friend, a clergyman, a therapist, a suicide hotline, a doctor...somebody who was actually relevant to your needs, and with whom you could have retained an expectation of personal privacy and confidentiality? Why splash your misery out upon strange people, many of whom don't even live in your country?

All good stories are about individuals. Also, when individual stories stimulate philosophical discussion, they make it more interesting. Who doesn't like that kind of thing?

I don't deny that watching Fairy and Harbal may have entertained some folks. People are entertained by all kinds of things. But it's not philosophy. And it has very dubious status as a contribution to the search for "wisdom," which is putatively what "philo-" "-sophia" is supposedly about.

But I suppose you must have known from the start that Fairy was lying about the homicide/suicide threat, and that may have allowed the distance from the event to make a mild amusement, instead of concern, the proper response. Let me suppose so, for the sake of charity. For me, it was best to be careful not to incite any possibility of it becoming a crisis. So I did not share the sense of amusement, and afterward, was annoyed by the manipulative, selfish and narcissistic nature of the performance. Maybe we had different experiences of that. But maybe both were legit, let's say.

What's relevant philosophically is the claim that there are no objective values. Fairy's dramatic performance presupposed agreement. In other words, it clearly took for granted that all right-thinking people would be drawn to sympathize. So Fairy was leaning on the assumption that her appeals would invoke a sense of moral compulsion. But why should she think so, since she also claims that there can be no moral duties, no moral rightness, no moral obligations, no moral consensus, not even a set of stable moral criteria of judgment...just total subjectivism?

Philosophically, that just doesn't add up.

Why do you keep repeating over and over again the same old rhetoric about me using this forum to expect sympathy when I’ve repeatedly told you I didn’t care about that and all I cared about was hurting Harbal knowing he’d be reading.

Seriously stop acting like you were just being the hero of the year.

[Immanuel Can]

So you were feeling narcissistic, and wanted to use us (the forum) to hurt H.?

And that wasn't "vile" and "spiteful," but somebody trying to help you was?

Yes it was vile and spiteful I take all accountability for my despicable behaviour.

I used this forum to hurt him because I said sorry to him for something we’d previously gone through that night ..but he ghosted me, I was furious why he was acting like that towards me after I’d said sorry to him for something we’d been through earlier.

I totally flipped out when he ignored me straight after I’d reached out to him with sincere and genuine apologies…so I used this forum as the perfect weapon to get revenge. We met and courted on this forum. He even told me how much this forum meant to him…so I wanted to ruin things for him just as he ruined me with his awful emotionally unintelligent behaviour towards me.

At this point in the message, my respect for you is growing a bit. You're taking warranted responsibility for what you did. That's a mature decision. Well done.

I did not care about anyone’s concern for me on that night I was unstable with my outrageous outpourings of negative emotions… I would have preferred it if everyone had ignored me. All I wanted to do was hurt Harbal, and this forum was the perfect weapon.

This, I do not believe at all. There was nothing "perfect," or even mildly appropriate about using this forum for that display. And you obviously were, at that time, seeking to elicit support for your revenge, or at least support for your "outpourings," by your own admitted account here.

I just thought it was all over but then you had to drag it all up again when you didn’t need to do that.

It was already public. You made it so. And so, when you denied the possibility of objective morality, and when you became contemptuous that I could show you a case, I pointed you to a case you could not deny -- your own.

Now you have seen that you are not actually a moral subjectivist. In regard to yourself, you depend on objective moralizing when you find it convenient to do so.

[Immanuel Can]

All good stories are about individuals. Also, when individual stories stimulate philosophical discussion, they make it more interesting. Who doesn't like that kind of thing?

I don't deny that watching Fairy and Harbal may have entertained some folks. People are entertained by all kinds of things. But it's not philosophy. And it has very dubious status as a contribution to the search for "wisdom," which is putatively what "philo-" "-sophia" is supposedly about.

But I suppose you must have known from the start that Fairy was lying about the homicide/suicide threat, and that may have allowed the distance from the event to make a mild amusement, instead of concern, the proper response. Let me suppose so, for the sake of charity. For me, it was best to be careful not to incite any possibility of it becoming a crisis. So I did not share the sense of amusement, and afterward, was annoyed by the manipulative, selfish and narcissistic nature of the performance. Maybe we had different experiences of that. But maybe both were legit, let's say.

What's relevant philosophically is the claim that there are no objective values. Fairy's dramatic performance presupposed agreement. In other words, it clearly took for granted that all right-thinking people would be drawn to sympathize. So Fairy was leaning on the assumption that her appeals would invoke a sense of moral compulsion. But why should she think so, since she also claims that there can be no moral duties, no moral rightness, no moral obligations, no moral consensus, not even a set of stable moral criteria of judgment...just total subjectivism?

Philosophically, that just doesn't add up.

Why do you keep repeating over and over again the same old rhetoric about me using this forum to expect sympathy when I’ve repeatedly told you I didn’t care about that and all I cared about was hurting Harbal knowing he’d be reading.

Seriously stop acting like you were just being the hero of the year.

it's not about me. It's about you, and your derisive claim that nobody can demonstrate objective morality. You are faced with your own case.

And what are you assuming, when you attempt to make me feel bad for bringing it up? Are you assuming that I, and everybody else reading, has a moral duty to agree with that? Or are you just gassing?

[Fairy]

“it's not about me. It's about you, and your derisive claim that nobody can demonstrate objective morality. You are faced with your own case.”

————

Why involve Harbal that was what I thought was dead and buried?


Why?

When you could have used another example to demonstrate my claim there is no objective morality.


We weren’t even talking about morality…. We were talking about the concept of evil not being a real objective truth.

[Immanuel Can]

“it's not about me. It's about you, and your derisive claim that nobody can demonstrate objective morality. You are faced with your own case.”

————

Why involve Harbal that was what I thought was dead and buried?

Because you said it was impossible to show objective morality. And now you're trying to convince me, and everybody else who reads this, that it would objectively immoral for me to bring up the same business you so blithely trotted out here earlier.

You now can see for sure that you never believed morality was subjective at all.

[Fairy]

So you were feeling narcissistic, and wanted to use us (the forum) to hurt H.?

And that wasn't "vile" and "spiteful," but somebody trying to help you was?

Yes it was vile and spiteful I take all accountability for my despicable behaviour.

I used this forum to hurt him because I said sorry to him for something we’d previously gone through that night ..but he ghosted me, I was furious why he was acting like that towards me after I’d said sorry to him for something we’d been through earlier.

I totally flipped out when he ignored me straight after I’d reached out to him with sincere and genuine apologies…so I used this forum as the perfect weapon to get revenge. We met and courted on this forum. He even told me how much this forum meant to him…so I wanted to ruin things for him just as he ruined me with his awful emotionally unintelligent behaviour towards me.

At this point in the message, my respect for you is growing a bit. You're taking warranted responsibility for what you did. That's a mature decision. Well done.

I did not care about anyone’s concern for me on that night I was unstable with my outrageous outpourings of negative emotions… I would have preferred it if everyone had ignored me. All I wanted to do was hurt Harbal, and this forum was the perfect weapon.

This, I do not believe at all. There was nothing "perfect," or even mildly appropriate about using this forum for that display. And you obviously were, at that time, seeking to elicit support for your revenge, or at least support for your "outpourings," by your own admitted account here.

I just thought it was all over but then you had to drag it all up again when you didn’t need to do that.

It was already public. You made it so. And so, when you denied the possibility of objective morality, and when you became contemptuous that I could show you a case, I pointed you to a case you could not deny -- your own.

Now you have seen that you are not actually a moral subjectivist. In regard to yourself, you depend on objective moralizing when you find it convenient to do so.

What did me wanting to hurt Harbal that night have anything at all to do with moral subjectism or morality objectism for that matter?

Harbal never was evil … I wasn’t reacting to him because I thought he was being evil and that I was looking for support from others to validate to me that I was only reacting to something I thought was evil…when evil issues hadn’t even crossed my mind. It was you that made this situation an “evil” issue…not me.

[Fairy]

“it's not about me. It's about you, and your derisive claim that nobody can demonstrate objective morality. You are faced with your own case.”

————

Why involve Harbal that was what I thought was dead and buried?

Because you said it was impossible to show objective morality. And now you're trying to convince me, and everybody else who reads this, that it would objectively immoral for me to bring up the same business you so blithely trotted out here earlier.

You now can see for sure that you never believed morality was subjective at all.

I believe there is no such thing as “evil” as a real objective truth in the external world.

What had that belief got anything to do with what happened on that night?

What are you even talking about?

[Fairy]

IC…. Can we just get back to the actual point, and leave Harbal out of this discussion?

[iambiguous]

Ethics explainer: Nihilism
An infamous example [of an anarchic character] is the Joker from the Batman franchise. Especially in renditions like The Dark Knight (2008) and Joker (2019), the Joker is portrayed as someone whose expectations of the world have failed him, whose tortuous existence has led him to believe that nothing matters, the world doesn’t care, and that in the face of that, we shouldn’t care about anything or anyone either. In his words, “everything burns” in the end, so he sees no problem in hastening that destruction and ultimately the destruction of himself.

On the other hand, to what extent then might Joker be seen as either a sociopath or a psychopath? Sociopaths center everything around their own narcissistic wants and needs.

On the other hand? How is what you are saying opposed to what you quoted?

And psychopaths in particular are problematic here because how can they be held responsible for something that is largely "beyond their control"?

Are you suggesting that psychopaths are less in control than other people? Are other people more autonomous? Is this in a deterministic universe?

Further, they are held responsible. I think you probably know the how of them being held responsible. They get arrested if they commit crimes. Some people hit them (and not someone else, for example), people blame them, fire them and so on.

And because he is a cartoon character inhabiting a cartoon character world, how seriously can we take him?

Well, in the article he is introduced as

We normally see this kind of nihilism embodied by anarchic characters in media.

and then

The Joker epitomises the populist understanding of nihilism and one of the primary ethical risks of this philosophical world view.

So, the author is suggesting that The Joker reflects a common belief about nihilism. Do you disagree?

You're joking, right?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I believe there is no such thing as “evil” as a real objective truth in the external world.

I think I largely agree with you. Subtract man from our world. Now mediate on that world: the world of nature, of material processes, of unceasing movement and the cycling of matter and energy: you find nothing evil there. It just is. And even if terrible …

[Middle English, from Old French, from Latin terribilis, from terrēre, to frighten.]

… no one would say there is evil at work. The truly catastrophic is rather beautiful and even awesome.

Only in man’s world is evilness a viable category. But only when man has been infused with idea-concepts that are ‘metaphysically apprehended”.

Now, all men infused with metaphysically apprehended concepts — values — make judgments about The World and about Man.

IC has been infused with rigorous and rigid metaphysical concepts. His God “lords it over” the world … and man. That God has certainly established sets of objectively apprehend-able values.

We are Christians or more realistically post-Christians in a now unstable value-World carved out over centuries by value-apprehending men.

The issue, for us, is the degree to which we are still held within a previously determined value-system and the degree to which we have been extruded from it.

But you (a theoretical you) cannot get out of value- and meaning-definitions! You cannot get out of value judgments. You pretend that you can to the degree that you have become alienated from …

From what exactly? An aspect of Self in my view. Or a fullness of self.

But you cannot really take it to the limit. You’d have to become nearly inhuman, a monster, a pathological nihilist.

It simply cannot be pulled off. Because we are metaphysical beings and something in that Order really does have a claim on us.

[Alexiev]

. Fairy's dramatic performance presupposed agreement. In other words, it clearly took for granted that all right-thinking people would be drawn to sympathize. So Fairy was leaning on the assumption that her appeals would invoke a sense of moral compulsion. But why should she think so, since she also claims that there can be no moral duties, no moral rightness, no moral obligations, no moral consensus, not even a set of stable moral criteria of judgment...just total subjectivism?

Philosophically, that just doesn't add up.

This is blatantly illogical. Why would a desire for sympathy assume moral agreement, let alone moral compulsion? We can sympathize with those with whom we disagree, and even with those we despise. "Right-thinking people" sympathize with murderers placing their necks under the guillotine.

What doesn't add up is your analysis.

[Immanuel Can]

Yes it was vile and spiteful I take all accountability for my despicable behaviour.

I used this forum to hurt him because I said sorry to him for something we’d previously gone through that night ..but he ghosted me, I was furious why he was acting like that towards me after I’d said sorry to him for something we’d been through earlier.

I totally flipped out when he ignored me straight after I’d reached out to him with sincere and genuine apologies…so I used this forum as the perfect weapon to get revenge. We met and courted on this forum. He even told me how much this forum meant to him…so I wanted to ruin things for him just as he ruined me with his awful emotionally unintelligent behaviour towards me.

At this point in the message, my respect for you is growing a bit. You're taking warranted responsibility for what you did. That's a mature decision. Well done.

I did not care about anyone’s concern for me on that night I was unstable with my outrageous outpourings of negative emotions… I would have preferred it if everyone had ignored me. All I wanted to do was hurt Harbal, and this forum was the perfect weapon.

This, I do not believe at all. There was nothing "perfect," or even mildly appropriate about using this forum for that display. And you obviously were, at that time, seeking to elicit support for your revenge, or at least support for your "outpourings," by your own admitted account here.

I just thought it was all over but then you had to drag it all up again when you didn’t need to do that.

It was already public. You made it so. And so, when you denied the possibility of objective morality, and when you became contemptuous that I could show you a case, I pointed you to a case you could not deny -- your own.

Now you have seen that you are not actually a moral subjectivist. In regard to yourself, you depend on objective moralizing when you find it convenient to do so.

What did me wanting to hurt Harbal that night have anything at all to do with moral subjectism or morality objectism for that matter?

If you could get your head out of self-pity for ten seconds, you'd know.

Wow. Do I seriously have to break it down that small for you? Well, you say you're super intelligent, so I'll assume you can get it. But just in case, I'll make it so simple that even a kid could get it.

Is any of the following things things "bad"?

1. What H. did to you (allegedly).
2. Your threat to kill yourself and your daughter.
3. Your exhibitionism in putting on the elaborate show of suicidal intent.
4. My mentioning of your behaviour.

If none of those are bad, then you have absolutely no basis for complaining about 1 or 4, or apologizing for the middle one, 2 and 3 (which I have to note, by the way, you have already done, and in elaborate, theatrical terms). If any of them is "bad," then you are a moral objectivist. If they're all not "bad," then stop whining: nothing bad's been done to you, either by H. or me, and you've done nothing bad. And you get to be a subjectivist.

Take your pick.