Why I Was a Nihilist

To be real, I am someone who inherently takes life quite seriously. And I don’t mean life in itself, I mean life in all it’s aspects; my achievements, how I conduct everyday tasks, my routine and even simple pleasures. My parents tell me that as a baby, before I could articulate coherent thought or language, I wouldn’t laugh and seemingly wouldn’t externalise any expression, but would rather stare at things. I’m wasn’t devoid of emotion, but probably more curious and introspective, engaging with my surroundings in such an inquisitive way that I would block things out (not that babies know what’s really going down anyway). I think this early behaviour is still telling of how I am now; definitely curious, definitely introspective, and definitely serious. I always want to be the best I can be in a way that hinders the prospect of that. I distract myself with my own perfectionism, and I think the roots lay in that early behaviour – I guess I don’t want to miss a trick, and I know how much that we can learn so I don’t want to feel like I’m missing any of that, whether that’s the efficiency of how I brush my teeth, or how best to feel a sense of achievement in life. I’m always striving for much more than I can actually reach in a mental capacity, and I also probably think that there’s a lot more that’s there than there is. To kill this tangent; if I am inherently so concerned with what I am doing and how I’m doing it, why – when I was 17 (two years ago) – was I completely convinced by the philosophy that life is inherently pointless?

Nihilism, much like any philosophical compass, is fascinating – mostly in how it affects us psychologically. If we sway to nihilism, and purely believe this and conduct our lives wholly around this philosophy, then we feel no obligation in life. We could, in theory, kill all our relatives and feel no consequence. In fact, a pure nihilist would not suffer the consequences that society inflicts when you murder, because, well, what’s the point? A pure nihilist doesn’t commit to any thought or action; he/she simply exists because that is the circumstance. And this is exactly why I was drawn to nihilism. I despised the idea of commitment at this time because I feared failure and I didn’t trust myself to commit. Nihilism was a concept that I stumbled across that allowed me to justify the sense that I had of an inability to commit to my life. I was depressed and typically so; laying in bed all day, sleeping too much or too little, becoming increasingly malnourished, shrinking my social network.  All of these actions matched the behaviours of a depressed person, but also that of a nihilist, and I would much rather romanticise the idea that I am sacrificing my opportunity to follow a philosophical idea, rather than because of my own weak will and mental instability. ‘There’s no point’, is much easier than ‘I have to fight now’. And in a way, I think I became so weak willed as a sort of backlash from the traits I was just describing; to take things way too seriously. I was too tired of trying too hard, so I stopped trying at all.

Funny thing is, this naturally only worsened my situation. Depression, especially in it’s more severe states, has this inherent sense of comfort that only some would understand, and nihilism catalysed that massively. Much like my thoughts on philosophical ideas now, I thought nihilism – and therefore my depression – was acceptable, natural and unquestionable. I was truly convinced that I couldn’t help it, because depression does that. Most depressed people think ‘what’s the point?’ anyway, but now I could do it in a rational sense as well as an irrational one. My depressed state of mind became all encompassing and scarily complex. And the worst thing about nihilism is that it’s so hard to disprove, in fact, this is the nature of philosophy; there are no definitive answers (look at ‘Philosophy: What’s the Point?’). You can’t say that nihilism is definitely true as much as you can’t say that it’s definitely not true, but of course my mind was focused on the latter. As far as I was concerned, life was pointless because you couldn’t prove otherwise; there was no God descending from the heavens to relieve me of my pain and give me answers, and there was no material proof that there is any existential experience following our lives on Earth. So why live at all? Why commit to die inevitably and leave behind our progress?

And the answer is, of course, to enjoy it. But I wasn’t. But if we don’t enjoy it, then the answer is to seek that enjoyment. Purpose is self-invented; the things we enjoy most, such as time with our loved ones, or steps in a positive career progression, to name a couple, don’t have their place in even the most thought out of philosophical texts. This is partially untrue in that even the Bible refers to loved ones and has standing examples of situations with people that are spending time with the people they love, but they’re not our loved ones. The Bible doesn’t know our experience, we do, so we best know how to conduct ourselves within it. Sometimes we become lost, we confuse our priorities and don’t conduct ourselves in a way that makes us happy. But that is all part of our purpose; to discover and make sense of this experience. As conscious thinkers, this is what we do. This is as close to a purpose as we can get. And even without that really being ‘purpose’, we still have our thoughts and feelings. We have life. So let’s make the most of it.

Philosophical ideas that we’re convinced by aren’t there to be proven, they’re there to be interpreted and understood by us. Our philosophies are our inner truths – we can know what we believe to believe what we know. So if life is inherently pointless to anyone, then chances are their life isn’t too great. For years I’ve hated on religion and condescended it, in some of these posts even. But nihilism is far worse. Religion is deriving a sense of purpose and drive, albeit from a relatively small-minded place some of the time, but isn’t that more of a dispositional factor rather than an inherent trait of religion? This is another tangent that’s found itself in my attempt to conclude, but I will conclude now. Purpose is good and we should find it. We should find it because we create it, that’s why we want it all the time. I’m young an I know that I know so little but this I do know. And coming full circle, can you tell I take life seriously yet?