Issues with Nihilism

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Lately I've seen a lot of people resort to Nihilism; the belief that life has no meaning at all.

I beg to disagree.

Y'know who else believes that life has no meaning at all? Murderers.

Many people still to this day ask themselves why is there so much murderer, rape and violence, yet they never bother to throw the blame to these aformentioned Nihilists.

Why should we blame them for all the death happening in the world? Because someone who believes that life has no meaning at all is someone who is willing to take it away causally.

You want stop the humans from killing each other? End Nihilism!

To say murderers believe life has no meaning is a huge generalisation, I think, as it isn't always the case.

ISIS, for example, kills people because they say their God told them to. I would not think in that case, they find life to be meaningless.

ah, the old "hitler ate sugar" argument.

i imagine that people who are pushed to commit serious acts of violence believe that their intent is a cause worthy enough (to them) that it justifies whatever negative repercussions that may follow. it need not always be "my life has no purpose, so f**k it".

for some it is, though.

nihilism, in my view seems to be belief in a lack of INHERENT meaning of things, life being just one of those things. one can make up their own as they see fit. when one looks at our world from a celestial perspective, it really does make some sense.

a lack of belief in conventions and lots of skepticism can be useful for inflicting positive change, too. i'd like to see it.

IMO, the statement in the OP is an unbelievably broad generalization, and seemingly not well-thought-out, at ALL.

IMO, most people who kill (whether they kill a single person, or it's a mass-murder), have ONE target whose life they do not value ("has no meaning at all"). If a woman kills her husband, does that mean she doesn't value the lives of her children, parents, siblings? No. If a Muslim kills Christians, does that mean he doesn't value the lives of other Muslims? No. If a white kid kills a bunch of black people, does that mean he doesn't value the lives of whites? No.

So..... ?????

Some people murder because the victim can give them something, thrill, revenge, money, DRUGS, thier own safety or life if the other person was a threat etc.

Paradoxically, even Nihilism is a belief in SOMETHING.....

Just becouse life has no inherent meaning doesn't mean you can end it without remorse.
Don't forget that many murderers are religious in one way or another (christian, muslim, jew, ...), so blaming nihilists isn't entirely fair.

I am a nihilist.
It's true, I don't see a real reason not to kill people - but I don't see a reason to kill them, either.
Don't blame nihilism for violence.
A perceived lack of consequence might enable one to do what they want. But it is not responsible for what they want to do.

The suggestion that life has no meaning is a confusion of scaling.

Are you an animal in a circular ecosystem? If you're human you can check that meaning box as 'yes'. Bees, bats, birds, and other flying pollinators might have a more direct line into our thinking with that but there are things that would go haywire without any given species. One can argue too many of anything is a bad thing - that's a slightly different issue.

Are you a person in a political and sociological ecosystem with some sort of belief that's part of the blend? If so you can check yet another box of meaning as 'yes'. Your opinion could be woefully ignorant or misinformed but it's one tick in an ocean of many ticks that democracies rise and fall on.

Do you interact with other people and affect their lives? Yet another box to check 'yes' for meaning.

Can you feel physical anguish, emotional anguish, or both? If so that's yet a third meaning box you can check as 'yes'. If you're in a situation where pain is being inflicted on you directly by what's happening around you or to you - life gets really meaningful really fast.

The cosmos might go on just like it ever has if Earth looked like Mars within 1,000 years but again - scaling.


On a different note, with murderers, some of them indeed did have nihilism in their variety basket of reasons why they did what they did. Most of them also had a lot of other things in there too - ie. abused as children, ostracized by peer groups, mental illness, brain damage from abusing the right drugs, brain-eating STD's, etc. etc. You have people who've either been treated so badly or who've been so disaffected by what they've seen that they want to not just watch the world burn but do what they can to participate in it burning sooner rather than later. In a way they've found a purpose, a diabolical one, and it doesn't quite map on to nihilism in the usual sense.

So nihilism is clearly destabilizing and unhealthy, also on it's own its more likely to just make people less happy, less healthy, eat away at reason and common sense (eg. post-modernism), and make the background energy of society more sluggish rather than raising the murder rate a whole lot. That said we have lots of reasons to beat nihilism for its vampiric effects on happiness, reason, and common-sense before we get to the issue of murder.