nihilism

[iambiguous]

Abortion would minimize as a moral issue if people minimized sexual appetite by trying to stop exploiting it for pleasure as a means to kill the pain inside.  Abortion largely occurs because people fail to take responsibility for there sexuality.  Now is this all the case?  No.  Is it a large facet of the problem?  Yes.

How does it relate to nihilism?  Because people try to kill the pain by observing meaninglessness and the absence of meaning destroys the responsibility to cultivate a sense of balance in how life is pursued and then the pain magnifies.

That is a short answer.

Again, this might seem entirely reasonable and relevant to you, but I fail to grasp what it has to do with moral nihilism and abortion as I understand the relationship in a No God world. 

For me, there are objective facts applicable to everyone in discussing abortion as a medical procedure. Or the actual empirical, circumstantial facts pertaining to a particular unwanted pregnancy. Don't need God here. But without Him how is it possible to reconcile [philosophically or otherwise] the many, many conflicting moral assessments...or political/legal assessments...that have sustained this moral conflagration for centuries now. 

Your words are foolish, your god is the abyss of the psyche...quite a powerful god. Nihilism is the deification of the abyss.

About what we both expected, let's say.

[Eodnhoj7]

Again, this might seem entirely reasonable and relevant to you, but I fail to grasp what it has to do with moral nihilism and abortion as I understand the relationship in a No God world. 

For me, there are objective facts applicable to everyone in discussing abortion as a medical procedure. Or the actual empirical, circumstantial facts pertaining to a particular unwanted pregnancy. Don't need God here. But without Him how is it possible to reconcile [philosophically or otherwise] the many, many conflicting moral assessments...or political/legal assessments...that have sustained this moral conflagration for centuries now. 

Your words are foolish, your god is the abyss of the psyche...quite a powerful god. Nihilism is the deification of the abyss.

About what we both expected, let's say.

So God exists as nothingness hence the meaning of life is to become pointless...things occur until they reach completion or exhaustion...this is meaning. So nihilism results in a paradox.

[iambiguous]

So God exists as nothingness hence the meaning of life is to become pointless...things occur until they reach completion or exhaustion...this is meaning.  So nihilism results in a paradox.

If a God, the God does exist, and He/She/It is both omniscient and omnipotent, then my own main interests in philosophy  -- meaning, morality and metaphysics --  would become subsumed in whatever Scripture He/She/It was the embodiment of. Otherwise, I risk being punished as an infidel. Oblivion and/or Hell itself.

What "things occur until they reach completion or exhaustion?" How has that manifested experientially in regard to your own interactions with others pertaining to meaning morality and metaphysics.

Moral nihilists of my ilk don't see a paradox so much as a fractured and fragmented jumble of existential factors/variables nudging or yanking us in particular directions morally, politically and spiritually. The Benjamin Button Syndrome in other words.

[Eodnhoj7]

So God exists as nothingness hence the meaning of life is to become pointless...things occur until they reach completion or exhaustion...this is meaning.  So nihilism results in a paradox.

If a God, the God does exist, and He/She/It is both omniscient and omnipotent, then my own main interests in philosophy  -- meaning, morality and metaphysics --  would become subsumed in whatever Scripture He/She/It was the embodiment of. Otherwise, I risk being punished as an infidel. Oblivion and/or Hell itself.

What "things occur until they reach completion or exhaustion?" How has that manifested experientially in regard to your own interactions with others pertaining to meaning morality and metaphysics.

Moral nihilists of my ilk don't see a paradox so much as a fractured and fragmented jumble of existential factors/variables nudging or yanking us in particular directions morally, politically and spiritually. The Benjamin Button Syndrome in other words.

God is merely a term for an experience that guides people as the limits of internal and external experience is the only reality we navigate. God is another term for either a pivotal experience or a series of interwoven experiences that guide us. Given experience drives a person it is not a stretch to say God is omniscient and omnipotent as the pivotal nature of experience is interwoven with how we percieve and approach reality.

Completion is real simple...something keeps changing until it is no longer what it was.

The paradox of your nihilism is that the experience of meaninglessness guides and directs you...if it does not then you are not a nihilist and 'meaninglessness' is not your god by default.

[iambiguous]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

In a BBC interview following the album’s release, West implied that his critics would have been more comfortable with the song if he’d described himself as a ‘n—’, a ‘pimp’, or a ‘gangster’. These latter appellations, even if proclaimed with pride, ultimately denote an acceptance of the lowly and limiting identities that WASP society and the market have assigned to black people.

On the other hand, there are black gangsters who seem more than eager to accommodate them. Black men and women who rankled more mainstream blacks like C Dolores Tucker and Spike Lee. And, before tumbling down into disgrace himself, Bill Cosby.

Thug life. And what is this but yet another font some cling to as a way of grounding themselves in a world that seems hell bent on deconstructing all the One True Paths of yesteryear. And the more "society" rejects them the more many are convinced they ought to earn that rejection.

Then the part where some are just "thugs" in the recording studio?

By not using these terms, West was refusing to confine his self-expression to a lexical ghetto. But this wasn’t all he was doing: to call yourself a god not only resists these terms, it negates them entirely. He did not react to his snub by proclaiming “I am Kanye West”; “I am a man”; or “I am human”. Those statements do not convey the indefatigability of his will, or his immunity to self-loathing and self-pity. “I am Kanye West” is bureaucracy; “I am a man” is desperate; and “I am human” is vapid. By declaring his divinity, West was implying that there is something limiting about being human. In order to express his undying thirst to become who he is, West was compelled to renounce his humanity. ‘I am a god’ is more than self-belief. He is not merely telling us that he’ll survive his self-doubt, that he’ll silence the voice that says “You do not belong here, you are not good enough”. He’s telling us that he has no such voice, that he exists above and beyond the strictures of doubt and shame. Gods do not know how to despise themselves. To say ‘I am a god’ is not a commitment to persevere but a declaration of unassailability. If you are unassailable, lacking all temptation to collapse or hide, then it makes no sense to talk of persevering. Without self-scrutiny there is no self-doubt, and only those who worry they might fail in their endeavours question themselves. And gods do not reflect, they do not question themselves, since their endeavours are without end. If one’s endeavours are without end, then judgment is eternally premature. Failure belongs to the finite.

On the other hand, has anyone ever run this by Kanye himself? It reminds me somewhat of the psychobabble leveled my way by the Stooges here. Or is Kanye merely declaring himself to be at the very least one of Nietzsche's Ubermensch: https://youtu.be/sn1Eh_9j6mI?si=-AKN7Cocj22VpRni

As for what others will make of all this, it still comes down, in my view, to taking out of West what they first put into him...their own moral and political and spiritual prejudices. West is no less the existential embodiment of dasein here. And, as with others of his ilk, it really does not come down to what he believes "in his head" about all this so much as what he is actually able to demonstrate [even to himself] as applicable objectively to all of us.

As for such things as "failure belongs to the finite", it can mean practically anything you need it to mean in order to sustain the illusion of a Self thought to be bigger and better than those of us who are not Gods at all.

[iambiguous]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

Nietzsche’s Post-Human

West’s implication that there is something deficient about mere humanity places him well in the company of Friedrich Nietzsche. Both see themselves as outsiders. Nietzsche felt disconnected from his profession (his work was generally ignored), his nation (he spent much of his life outside of Germany, alternating between Switzerland and Italy) and his epoch (‘a weak age’).

Actually, I don't know enough about West to either grasp or to grapple with his own particular assessment of this deficiency...of his being an outsider. On the other hand, when Forbes lists his net worth as $400,000,000 and West himself claims it's more in the neighborhood of $2,700,000,000, what on earth does being an outsider really mean?

Well, whatever you want it to mean? Whatever you insist that it means?

In other words, money doesn't talk here, it screams. And it screams bloody murder when confronting those who challenge it. West is hardly what Nietzsche would refer to as one of the "last men", but does he qualify in thinking of himself as one of the Übermensch? And what does it really mean to declare that "I'm the God of me"? He was "born again" as a Christian but it seems he has moved on. To what exactly?

Nietzsche, on the other hand, was clearly an outsider the moment he deconstructed God and religion. And then explored the existential implications of a No God world.

As for his net worth...?

But more provocatively, Nietzsche felt disconnected from his species: “Disgust at mankind… has always been my greatest danger” [Ecce Homo].

I hear that. Still, unlike those of my ilk, Nietzsche came up with something he believed was as close as mere mortals in a No God universe can ever hope to come to a "God Complex". Not only that, but the Übermensch may well be able to relive his exalted presence on Earth over and over and over again given eternal recurrence.

Thus...

Like West, he heard no power in the assertion, ‘I am human’. He thought that being human was a state to be overcome; humanity’s finest moment will be the day it becomes something else entirely, something better. The future belongs to this new creature, the Übermensch or ‘overman’ (‘superman’).

Blah, blah, blah?

Nietzsche's been dead now for 125 years. So, you tell me who the Übermensch are among us today. Trump? Putin? Xi? The rich and the powerful around the globe who own and operate the global economy?

[iambiguous]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

Do you, reader, sympathise with Nietzsche’s wish for a species revolution? Do you see some fundamental defect in humanity? If there were a referendum on human nature, would you vote to leave? How would you even describe human nature? Are there words elastic enough to encompass us all? Is there a common thread? A shared bond?

Of course: Cue all of the moral, political, philosophical and religious objectivists. One by one they will inform you of precisely what has to be done to revolutionize society so that all defects give way to their very own One True Path. To what? To whatever they need it to be, to whatever they insist others must subscribe to in turn.

On the other hand, for some of them, there are folks of the wrong race or the wrong gender or the wrong sexual orientation or the wrong religion or the wrong...whatever. They are excluded because inherently they are just not [and can never be] "one of us". They simply embrace one or another dogmatic assessment of "biological imperatives", permitting them [and only them] to determine behaviors deemed either to be Natural or Unnatural.

For Nietzsche, our bond is our sickness, and our sickness is a state he called nihilism. In short, a hatred of life.

Then cue all those who insist that is not at all how one should interpret Nietzsche. Yes, there are aspects of moral nihilism which, in a No God universe, can precipitate "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty". What, perhaps, Kierkegaard called a "sickness unto death"? Then those sociopaths who rationalized any and all behaviors because, in a No God world, everything revolved around me, myself and I.

Nietzsche believed that to be human was to belong to a species-wide endeavour to stunt growth, enervate power, deaden vitality, limit strength, and poison joy; an endeavour impelled by so-called ‘reactive’ attitudes such as envy and the urge to avenge ourselves against the strong and vigorous.

Of course, something along these lines is going to be professed by those in power who fancy themselves to be among the...Ubermensch? Then things like religion and political collectivism that become the true opiates of the people.

And although for Nietzsche there have been great ages – history is punctuated by glorious deviations from the norm – sooner or later the overwhelming weight of nihilism drags us back into the gutter. Greek culture was corrupted by the philosophers; Roman values by the morality of Judaism; Christ’s teachings by St Paul; and Napoleonic aristocracy by democratic ideals. This nihilism ensures that, contra Darwin, the strong and vital will always be defeated by the weak and envious.

That is one way to think about it. But there are plenty of other ways as well. From my own frame of mind "here and now", amoral nihilism revolves largely around the global capitalists for whom almost everything eventually comes back around to "show me the money". And while there was once a time when socialism appeared to be challenging all this, that all collapsed in both the Soviet Union and China. Now, it appears, state capitalism is challenging crony capitalism to "run the world".

[Belinda]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

Do you, reader, sympathise with Nietzsche’s wish for a species revolution? Do you see some fundamental defect in humanity? If there were a referendum on human nature, would you vote to leave? How would you even describe human nature? Are there words elastic enough to encompass us all? Is there a common thread? A shared bond?

Of course: Cue all of the moral, political, philosophical and religious objectivists. One by one they will inform you of precisely what has to be done to revolutionize society so that all defects give way to their very own One True Path. To what? To whatever they need it to be, to whatever they insist others must subscribe to in turn.

On the other hand, for some of them, there are folks of the wrong race or the wrong gender or the wrong sexual orientation or the wrong religion or the wrong...whatever. They are excluded because inherently they are just not [and can never be] "one of us". They simply embrace one or another dogmatic assessment of "biological imperatives", permitting them [and only them] to determine behaviors deemed either to be Natural or Unnatural.

For Nietzsche, our bond is our sickness, and our sickness is a state he called nihilism. In short, a hatred of life.

Then cue all those who insist that is not at all how one should interpret Nietzsche. Yes, there are aspects of moral nihilism which, in a No God universe, can precipitate "the agony of choice in the face of uncertainty". What, perhaps, Kierkegaard called a "sickness unto death"? Then those sociopaths who rationalized any and all behaviors because, in a No God world, everything revolved around me, myself and I.

Nietzsche believed that to be human was to belong to a species-wide endeavour to stunt growth, enervate power, deaden vitality, limit strength, and poison joy; an endeavour impelled by so-called ‘reactive’ attitudes such as envy and the urge to avenge ourselves against the strong and vigorous.

Of course, something along these lines is going to be professed by those in power who fancy themselves to be among the...Ubermensch? Then things like religion and political collectivism that become the true opiates of the people.

And although for Nietzsche there have been great ages – history is punctuated by glorious deviations from the norm – sooner or later the overwhelming weight of nihilism drags us back into the gutter. Greek culture was corrupted by the philosophers; Roman values by the morality of Judaism; Christ’s teachings by St Paul; and Napoleonic aristocracy by democratic ideals. This nihilism ensures that, contra Darwin, the strong and vital will always be defeated by the weak and envious.

That is one way to think about it. But there are plenty of other ways as well. From my own frame of mind "here and now", amoral nihilism revolves largely around the global capitalists for whom almost everything eventually comes back around to "show me the money". And while there was once a time when socialism appeared to be challenging all this, that all collapsed in both the Soviet Union and China. Now, it appears, state capitalism is challenging crony capitalism to "run the world".

The Ubermensch may look like a physically twisted, black -skinned aged female but she might be Ubermensch while the strong tall young white man fails the test. The test is ordinary human kindness not adherence to a belief.

Sure there is a bond, it's common biological humanity, but they fuck you up your mum and dad.

Remember George Floyd.

[Gary Childress]

Books
All Things are Nothing To Me by Jacob Blumenfeld
Douglas Groothuis thinks nothing of Max Stirner’s nihilism.

...Stirner’s quest for absolute autonomy alienates him from any moral truths outside of his own subjective property-making. Yet to deny objective moral truths is both counterintuitive and counterfactual. It is morally wrong to torture the innocent for pleasure, full stop. Female genital mutilation is an offense against women wherever and whenever it occurs, full stop. Human trafficking is wrong, full stop.

On the other hand, in the absence of God, as has been noted by some, "all things are permitted". And, for the sociopath, who starts with the presumption that right and wrong revolves solely around that which sustains his or her own self-gratification, any behavior can be rationalized.

And where is the philosophical argument that refutes this?

Also, there are those who argue that clitorectomies are inherently immoral while sanctioning the right of women to abort the unborn. Half of which will be female.

Full stop? How exactly would that be demonstrated...deontologically? Again, its not for nothing that those like Kant eventually came around to God as a necessary component for objective morality.

That most are repulsed by certain behaviors does not establish that these behaviors are necessarily immoral. Or, in fact, can this be established?

Humans have certain ‘inalienable rights’, as The American Declaration of Independence puts it. The United Nations Declaration on Human Rights (1948) agrees when it affirms “the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world.” These ideas are not ‘spooks’, they are truths.

Okay, take particular examples of moral conflagrations that have rent the species down through the ages...abortion, capital punishment, animal rights, homosexuality, gun ownership, social justice, economic equality, the role of government, conscription, just wars...and on and on and on.

"Inalienable rights" from whose point of view? Based on what set of political prejudices that evolve over time historically and culturally.

Stirner’s paltry – if big-talking – ego is helpless to falsify or relativize them. There is such a thing as intrinsic moral meaning. The best I can say about Stirner here, is that at least he recognized that if there is no God and no objective moral values, then the unique one had to be ‘self-referentially confined’ – have no external reference point for its judgements – and thus have no recourse to anything beyond its arbitrary positing of value. If this is not nihilism, then nihilism does not exist. But nihilism does exist, and nihilism is false, given the objective existence of the moral truths just mentioned, and many more.

It's not completely arbitrary of course. It's not like in the absence of God and objective moral values, an individual just plucks a moral narrative or political agenda out of thin air. Instead, he or she is "thrown" at birth into a particular historical and cultural context, is indoctrinated as a child to believe certain things and then has a series of uniquely personal experiences that predispose them to believe this and not that.

And, again, to the extent that someone insist that there is "the objective existence of the moral truths", I'd be interested in how they actually go about demonstrating that in a No God world.



FYI: this is the latest post on a thread I started at ILP: https://www.ilovephilosophy.com/viewtop ... 1&t=195600

If no God = everything is permitted, then does that mean that living a life being kind, compassionate, generous, and charitable is permitted also? And if it is why should one not be kind, compassionate, generous, and charitable?

[iambiguous]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

To overcome this eventuality [that "the strong and vital will always be defeated by the weak and envious"], Nietzsche proposed we overcome humanity. Humanity is not an endpoint, but a transition – a rope between the beasts and the Übermensch.

The part where, in my view, Nietzsche blinked. But that's no less a philosophical assumption -- prejudice -- on my part. God is dead. And for most mere mortals God is the font for meaning, morality and metaphysics. 

Once He is out of the picture, then what? Who among mere mortals is qualified to be the...shot callers? 

Whereas humans are the animal for whom life is too much, the Übermensch is the animal that says ‘Yes’ to life – to the whole of life: Yes to pleasure. Yes to pain. Yes to the past. Yes to the future. Yes to chaos. Yes to death. Yes to war. Yes to the body. Yes to the earth. Yes to longing. Yes to hardship. Yes to struggle. Yes to beauty. Yes to change. Yes to now. Yes to eternity.

Then the extent to which Übermensch became just another rendition of God. In other words, those Übermensch who come to assume that yes is the answer, but only their own assessment of it. Some then appending their own rendition of "or else" here historically and culturally.

Yes that is said to revolve more around right makes might, rather than might makes right.
In fact, fiercely conflicting yeses [and noes] prevail even to this day regarding any number of value judgments.

The life of the Übermensch is constituted by affirmation. They live bravely, laugh heartily, dancing and singing while they destroy and create, showing us, a scathing herd of envious onlookers, the true complexion of health.

There's no getting around this frame of mind for any number of us right here. And, once again, arguments can be made that embrace the Übermensch enthusiastically, while other arguments are just as fierce in rejecting it. 

[boyjohn]

" absence of God " " all things are permitted "
Who gives God things to permit, us!

[popeye1945]

" absence of God " " all things are permitted "
Who gives God things to permit, us!

In the absence of god and our other delusions means we are on our own, leaving us little choice but to grow up. We give god the things we are permitted. Biology is the measure and the meaning of all things; there is no other source of meaning in the world. Religion and god/s are biological extensions of the nature and knowledge of humanity. We have come a long way in the past three thousand years or more, in some cases, in the way of knowledge. It is time to grow up and know we are on our own, that all we have is each other and all of creation. In the absence of consciousness, the world is meaningless; we are the sole creators of meaning in the world.

[Martin Peter Clarke]

" absence of God " " all things are permitted "
Who gives God things to permit, us!

Quite. We make it all up. And when in a shadow of a doubt we forbid that which is not permitted. And we make compulsory that which is. Funny buggers aren't we?

But the things the Godless make up in open full care-ful fair community discourse are of no account compared with the things the Goddy or beGodded make up above.

[Belinda]

" absence of God " " all things are permitted "
Who gives God things to permit, us!

Quite. We make it all up. And when in a shadow of a doubt we forbid that which is not permitted. And we make compulsory that which is. Funny buggers aren't we?

But the things the Godless make up in open full care-ful fair community discourse are of no account compared with the things the Goddy or beGodded make up above.

I understand that what Martin claims is that God is a human construct.

The human construct of supernatural authority is a heuristic device that is politically necessary for an elite of priests, or kings ,or priestkings to keep order in a society.

[iambiguous]

‘I Am A God’: On Becoming More Than Human
David Birch compares the attitudes of Friedrich Nietzsche and Kanye West.

Although Übermensch is sometimes translated ‘superman’, it would be a mistake to think that Nietzsche’s superman bears any relation to a comic book hero. When Nietzsche talks of the Übermensch in terms of power, he is not referring to Superman’s powers. Superman uses his powers to help. He therefore reflects and enshrines the helpless rabble’s servile dependence and manifold limitations. The hero-victim dynamic is one of pity; but to Nietzsche, “Pity makes suffering contagious”. Unlike the Übermensch, superheroes cannot overcome humanity, as they are locked into this defining dynamic: their pity infects them with human suffering.

Über as in "right makes might" more so than "might makes right", let's say. And for some, no doubt, considerably more so than for others.

They are in power because they deserve to be. And they deserve to be because they are simply superior men. In other words, they weren't like those who accumulated their wealth and power by inheriting it from Mom and Dad. Or just fortuitously by being in the right place at the right time when money was to be made.

The Übermensch is far removed from flapping capes and weeping maidens, devoid of humility, averse to pity, uninterested in duty. When picturing the Übermensch, do not think of an awe-inspiring caped vigilante – think instead of a naked Dionysus trailed by a merry band of drunken maenads and lascivious satyrs.

Again, however, who among us gets to say what this actually means...given what set of assumptions, resulting existentially in what particular assessments precipitating what particular prescriptions and proscriptions politically?

On the other hand, with Nietzsche, given eternal recurrence, you have all of eternity to grapple with it.

And just as no one would think to direct their prayers to Kanye West, nor would we project a distress call into the sky to beckon the help of the Übermensch. Nietzsche’s superman is not our saviour.

And neither our shepherd nor our slave master. Instead, for many, he becomes whoever and whatever they need him to be in order to sustain their own assessment of reality.

In other words, if they believe X or Y or Z about Nietzsche, to what extent does that impact on the actual behaviors that they choose? Thus those who insist that, as with a God, the God, my God, there is an Übermensch, the Übermensch, my Übermensch.

Same for...godot.