My Philosophy: Nihilism

Readers familiar to my blog may get a composite view of my philosophy by piecing together the general idea of all of my posts, but I thought I would sum it up as neatly as possible right now:

1. There is no god, creator, supernatural, soul or mystical power. (Materialism)
2. There is no intrinsic purpose or meaning to anything. (Nihilism)
3. We decide our purpose and meaning for ourselves. (Existentialism)
4. I recognize pleasure as a biologically-intrinsic motivating factor, so I pursue things that give me it: friends, family, community, fun, enrichment, positivity, and helping others. (Humanism)

Now, let’s expand each point to make it all a bit easier to understand:

1. I can’t debunk a supreme being in a single paragraph, but my reasoning is simple. There is no physical evidence for one, it is not necessary to invoke one to explain the workings of the universe, and the typical description of one is identifiably a human construct. There are well-documented psychological phenomenon that explain first-hand experiences, group experiences, and other delusions that usually are enough to convince people of a supreme being’s existence, but there is never any evidence, nor does any falsifiable statement about a supreme being hold up under scrutiny.

The same holds true for any supernatural claim. If supernatural forces exist, they either have a measurable effect on reality or they don’t. If they have a measurable effect on reality, we’d be able to scientifically prove they exist. If they don’t have an effect, then what’s the point of even considering that they exist?

2. In man’s search for meaning, we typically look to a supreme creator, an originator, to give us purpose. Knowing now that there is no intelligence or motivation behind our origin, it logically follows that we also have no intrinsic purpose or meaning. The very fact that we can think and assign meaning to our lives and other things means nothing on the cosmic sense. Carl Sagan’s comment about us being a way for the cosmos to know itself is romantic to think about, but it is an afterthought 14 billion years in the making. As are all justifications for why we are here.

3. Without any meaning or purpose assigned to the human race by a higher order of intelligence, we are left as the sole proprietors of our definition and identity. As long as we understand that our existence has no meaning or goal, we get to decide what we are going to do with our time here. This point gets especially important when you consider that, as a mammal species, our expected survival time is about a couple million years.

4. Individually, without any purpose or meaning, what is the point of getting out of bed in the morning? Well, that question is asked from the perspective of someone who thinks that we’re infused with motivation to live by a creator. But why does any animal wake up and go about their thing every morning (or night)? We are all internally driven by our DNA to do something: survive. That at least gets our eyes open. Humans have a slightly different situation, though. Since we have the ability to analyze our place in the greater universe, we are able to think about more than just survival. This is a self-defeating attribute sometimes because a lot of people figure that we’re just part of a greater plan when we’re really not.

Knowing that we’re on our own, on a tiny rock hurtling through space, begets a sense of urgency to really discover how to cope with our reality. So, knowing that we’re not here for any reason, but we are here none the less, how would we like to spend our time? Well, we happen to have these nifty things called serotonin receptors that give us good feelings when we do the right things. Luckily, there are lots of things we can do to ensure that we get a constant reward from them throughout our lives.

Let’s think positivity. When you’re good to someone, it feels good for you, too. That makes them likely to return the favor. This is a positive feedback loop. Sometimes it gets broken when someone hesitates, but it’s a better bet to perpetuate it than it is to let it drop. Individual pleasure also matters, but we must remind ourselves that pleasure must be earned in a communal society. Extrapolating these ideas to the larger population, it makes sense that a world where everyone is kind and giving to each other is one where the serotonin flows in abundance.

Unfortunately, many people are more determined to see the differences in others than the similarities. They have philosophies that set them apart from others in principle, mainly because their premises aren’t based on stark reality but instead on intuition that is evolutionarily tuned for survival in the wild. We must understand that the same thought processes that brought us down from the trees and out of the jungle are not the processes that are going to help us beat the trend and survive beyond our expected extinction. We now know enough about our world to abandon superstition and prejudice because there is no intrinsic justification for it.

I think that the sooner everyone thinks this way, the better.