Nihilism

Baudrillard, Jean wrote:

The liberated man is not the one who is freed in his ideal reality, his inner truth, or his transparency; he is the man who changes spaces, who circulates, who changes sex, clothes, and habits according to fashion, rather than morality, and who changes opinions not as his conscience dictates but in response to opinion polls.

Description of the modern Liberal.

Vidal, Gore wrote:

A current pejorative adjective is narcissistic. Generally, a narcissist is anyone better looking than you are, but lately the adjective is often applied to those ‘liberals’ who prefer to improve the lives of others rather than exploit them.
Apparently, a concern for others is self-love at its least attractive, while greed is now a sign of the highest altruism. But then to reverse, periodically, the meanings of words is a very small price to pay for our vast freedom not only to conform but to consume.

To “consume” is to enjoy the benevolence of the divine – which now has come to be redefined as “humanity,” i.e., the one-god is overcome the new god’s name is humanity, and to be aligned with fashion, with popularity, is to be in agreement with the sacred; and to be concerned with the welfare of the others is to love “god” – loving one’s self via the inter-subjective collective, for every individual is made in the image of “the one-god”.

Heisman, Mitchell wrote:

Tolerance is as a last gasp of liberal belief that lives on the cusp of nihilism. Tolerance is resolving differences by failing to resolve differences. It is a pragmatic peace for and by the diversity of incompatibilities. It promotes the demotion of the value of thinking through learning to not rationally question blatant contradictions.

“Tolerance” of contradictions for the sake of “survival,” via inclusion. A self-imposed compartmentalization, or Orwellian “newspeak”. The herd’s welfare guarantees the herd member’s survival – nothing else matters but the harmonious, all-inclusivity, and survival, of the herd. Not truth, not integrity, not sanity – no-thing, power of nil. [ MANifesto: Nihilism – Power of Nil]

Yockey, Francis Parker wrote:

When Authority resurges once more against the forces of Rationalism and Economics, it proceeds at once to show that the complex of transcendental ideals with which Liberalism equipped itself is as valid as the Legitimism of the era of Absolute Monarchy, and no more. The Monarchs were the strongest protagonists of Legitimism, the financiers of Liberalism. But the monarch was tied to the organism with his whole existence, he was responsible organically even where he was not responsible in fact. Thus Louis XVI and Charles I. Countless other monarchs and absolute rulers have had to flee because of their symbolic responsibility. But the financier has only power, no responsibility, not even symbolic, for, as often as not, his name is not generally known.
History, Destiny, organic continuity, Fame, all exert their powerful influence on an absolute political ruler, and in addition his position places him entirely outside the sphere of base corruptibility.
The financier, however, is private, anonymous, purely economic, irresponsible. In nothing can he be altruistic; his very existence is the apotheosis of egoism. He does not think of History, of Fame, of the furtherance of the life of the organism, of Destiny, and furthermore he is eminently corruptible by base means, as his ruling desire is for money and ever more money.

Yes, because money is modern man’s messiah: offering salvation from the experience of existence, form the limitations of the body, from a poor genetic/memetic inheritance. Salvation is a personal matter, and for the modern a private relationship with the divine – with money all is erased, made less important, and pleasure is guaranteed, even if it cannot be made enduring. An individual approaches Paradise’s gates, waiting to be permanently returned to what he was cast out of, due to no fault of his own.

Camus, Albert wrote:

That is the answer to the question which is always being asked: why has the revolutionary movement identified itself with materialism rather than with idealism? Because to conquer God, to make Him a slave, amounts to abolishing the transcendence that kept the former masters in power and to preparing, with the ascendency of the new tyrants, the advent of the man-king. When poverty is abolished, when the contradictions of history are resolved, ‘the real god, the human god, will be the State.’ Then homo homini lupus becomes homo homini deus. This concept is at the root of the contemporary world. With Feuerbach, we assist at the birth of a terrible form of optimism which we can still observe at work today and which seems to be the very antithesis of nihilist despair. But this only in appearance. We must know Feuerbach’s final conclusion in this Theogony to perceive the profoundly nihilistic derivation of his inflamed imagination. In effect, Feuerbach affirms, in the face of Hegel, that man is only what he eats, and thus recapitulates his ideas and predicts the future in the following phrase:

Feuerbach wrote:

The true philosophy is the negation of philosophy. No religion is my religion. No philosophy is my philosophy.

The formidably seductive power of nil.

The source of all nihilistic dogmas and ideologies is the opinion of others, or knowing how others perceive you - objectively - necessitating a defensive reaction.
"Caring too much" is subjective for a social species, such as man, but it can be defined as caring more about what others think than what you think.
Cynicism and narcissism are but extreme psychosis founded on the opinion of others, or creating a defensive image and attitude to deal with it.
Nihilism is a linguistic sheltering of the ego.

No other animal can experience this form of suffering - not even other social animals - because no other has the ability to begin on the subjective path towards increasing objectivity - third person perspective; the closer one advances the more he exposes his ego to what can become intolerable.

Would not a god not show his disdain through his creations?
Would not his creations not be a revelation of his self-critique, his self-cosnciousness exposed through his art?

Only in this case the creator creates a proxy to stand in and confuse himself.
What if man's greatest scapegoat was in the guise of a creator that had crafted him as a scapegoat?
Double fake.

Nihilism is ideological medication - intoxication - that defends the ego form existential and biological angst, multiplied by the emergence and increase of self-cosnciuosness.
Of course such a source of ideological defence would be popular in a world of sheltering, and accumulating genetic mutations.

Nihilism is how a neurotic ego copes with its inescapable condition, manufacturing alternate realities with words/symbols that refer to nothing tangible.

It will never bring words down to earth - especially words referring to experiential abstractions, such as morality, love, human, male/female, race, sex...

By studying what definitions are criminalized you gains insight into what the particular nihilistic strain is defending the ego against.
Currently in the Americanized sphere it is biology, altogether, which is prevented from being brought down to the tangible and the experienced.
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What is not permitted is to perceive patterns - an effort to preserve peace, among heterogenous populations, through the process of decreasing consciousness - or making certain kinds of awareness shameful or criminal.

Inverting Nihilism
When an apex is attained, all turned on its head, on the way down.
Strength becomes a weakness, intelligence a vice, and nobility a severe handicap.

Nihilism fails only if it is applied in the real world.
If it remains theoretical - externalized only semiotically, linguistically - then it remains eternally superior, because the ideal always trumps the real, in theory, and the real trumps the ideal in practice.
If it dares to apply itself in reality it exposes itself to the consequences of its own delusions - its detachments from reality.
Reality always wins.
See Marxism. It remains "perfect" in theory, where its ideal conditions are taken advantage by its ideal populations. In reality it fails whenever it dares to be applied in the real world, and then makes excuses by always blaming everything and everyone but itself.
In fact Marxism is inapplicable in the real world because it only exists in a theoretical realm - forever imminent.

Why do some nihilistic dogmas survive over long periods of time - see Abrahamism? Because they contradict themselves, if and when they dare to apply themselves in the real world; they must contradict their own principles if they hope to survive a reality they reject or nullify theoretically - in part (arbitrarily) or completely (absolutely).
How does it conceal its own self-cotnradictions?
Via obscurantism - mysticism, vagueness, magic, occultism - and excuses - victimhood: it is always an evil other that is to blame, code for reality given an anthropic (subjective) cause. Obscurantism conceals its self-ctradictinos in a haze of semiotic nonsense, pretending to be saying something profound and powerful.

Nihilistic spiritual and ideological dogmas if they hope to remain successful, must be written in ambiguous prose and allegorical form so as to never speak clearly - allowing minds, across space/time, to reinterpret them in accordance with altering real conditions.

In short:
Nihilism: any dogma, world view, spirituality, ideology which contradicts sensually experienced reality - empiricism - using linguistics (semiotics) with no external referents.
Pure Nihilism: non-apologetic world an d self abnegation. self-negation proposed as a universal ideal, couched in rational skepticism.
Positive Nihilism: apologetic world negation proposing an alternative - occult, hidden, - world for the one it negates. Usually couching it in grand themes and extraordinary promises concerning pleasure and power - seducing mediocre minds to gather a following which serve to compensate for the absence of external referents.

Obscurantism and mysticism are methods of concealing nihilistic contradictions of their own principles and beliefs.
Successful nihilistic spiritual dogmas are successful precisely because they never say something clearly and precisely - their words never referring to anything real but never saying anything clearly, so as to remain flexible to altering circumstances in the real world.
It is why nihilism must speak allegorically, mystically, using poetics, alluding to what it can never speak of clearly, because if it did it would expose itself to the paradoxes its own self-contradictions produce linguistically; exposing itself to the unforgiving indifference of the real world.
It words must always remain vague, mysterious, open to multiple interpretations, preserving the benefit of doubt.

The light is its enemy. It is where tis lies are exposed to the harshness of reality. It prefers the dark where all mixes and mingles and nothing is ever clear - it is where ghosts roam and all sorts of extraordinary things occur; where everything is possible when the heart is gripped by anxiety and sleep does not differ from the world of the awake.

Consequences is the enemy for the nihilist. Tangible, physical, consequences, it cannot deny nor dismiss as readily as it does theory.
The act precedes the word. The physical organism - body - precedes the evolution of the mind.
Consequence is what theory can never evade in the real world.
As long as it remains theoretical - idealistic - it need not face real consequences. It is what separates the ideal from the real - the world of the dreamer from the world of the lucid; the subjective from the objective.

It is consequence leftist want to intervene in as a collective, adjusting consequences by sharing the negative costs, so as to preserve their ideals.
But, consequences accumulate over time; they cannot be evaded, they can only be postponed.
If evenly distributed and the costs if erroneous judgments are shared - Marxism, postmodernism - they simply multiply because individuals need not learn from their mistakes, nor adjust their choices, so they repeat the same errors in judgment, and are then imitated by their fellow desperate degenerate who are made bold by this collectivization of consequences, until the consequences accumulate to a level where not even sharing them collectively minimizes the severity of their impact.

Collectivization, from spiritual/religious to secular/political forms

Abrahamism = collectivization of guilt/shame - denied to the non-Jews, the "injustice" was corrected by Jesus, or Saul, making salvation the redemption of this collectivized shame/guilt.

Marxism= collectivization of resources.

Postmodernism = collectivization of identity and of consequences. Parity of outcomes, the ideal.
Collectivization of consequences: positive & negative, primarily the latter.
Parity achieved by equally distributing the consequences of judgments, and the choices based on said judgments.
Free-will is denied because it emphasizes individual roles in the determination of consequences which would only heighten the sense of injustice among the collective - denial of personal culpability deflects it to an external agency - not the one-god of Abraham, from whence sin comes from, but the abstraction of universal order - from whence negative consequences come from.
The masses of "sinners" are replaced by masses of victims; ubiquitous guilt/shame is replaced by ubiquitous innocence.
The Church/Synagogue becomes the collective, where all are one and the same beneath god/universal order - absolutism.

Wikipedia wrote:

Pinker argues that modern science has challenged three ‘linked dogmas’ that constitute the dominant view of human nature in intellectual life:
-The Blank Slate (the mind has no innate traits) — empiricism.
-The Noble Savage (people are born good and corrupted by society) — romanticism.
-The Ghost in the Machine (each of us has a soul that makes choices free from biology) — mind/body dualism

Pinker, Steven wrote:

The Blank Slate had, and has, a dark side. The vacuum that it posited in human nature was eagerly filled by totalitarian regimes, and it did nothing to prevent their genocides.

Pinker, Steven wrote:

[The Blank Slate doctrine] implies that [people] could be conditioned to enjoy servitude or degradation.

Lockean delusions.

Mencken, H.L. wrote:

The effort to reconcile science and religion is almost always made, not by theologians, but by scientists unable to shake off altogether the piety absorbed with their mother's milk.

Much of modern scientific inquiry is still dominated by the same underlying prejudices concerning "beginnings/ends" and the knowability of everything - the myth of omniscience underlying the Alexandrian psychology addicted to the conviction of absolute order, i.e., absolute authoritarianism.
The anthropomorphic one-god replaced by a faceless formless, yet no less totalitarian, ideal\/ideal - nature, if not god, or universe or simply all-determining order: repeating, consistent, predictable, immutable.

The very concept of a uni-verse necessitates a sleight-of-thought technique, projecting mind "outside space/time - existence - so as to then conceptualize it as a singular whole, from this "external" to tis multiplicity vantage point. This produces the paradox of multiplicities encompassed by a singularity, or imperfections as parts of perfection; the mutable, divisible, creating an indivisible immutable idea/ideal.

Conor, Cunningham wrote:

The Nothing as Something
Being is by nature what-is-not (das Nichtseyende). (F. Schelling)
[A]ll that exists lives only in the lack of being (manque-à-être).  (Jacques Lacan)

It is possible to argue that the logic of nihilism is made manifest in the age-old metaphysical (ontotheological) question: why something rather than nothing? The logic of nihilism reads this question with a particular intonation. That is, why something? Why not nothing? Why can the nothing not do the job of the something? This leads me to define the logic of nihilism as a sundering of the something, rendering it nothing, and then having the nothing be after all as something.

[Genealogy of Nihilism]

A question that begins with experience of existing – as a 'something' that requires explaining gradually realizing that it is, in fact, nothing, in that it is forever 'falling away', perceived after-the-fact as already determined.
Existing as a 'thing' which is a no-thing at all... but not nothingness.
Modern minds use illusion to make the counter-intuitive intuitive, implying that life is a ruse, some kind of test, or a trick.
The dichotomy of mind (incorporeal, intangible) conscious interpreter and the body, physical, (interpreted as corporeal, tangible). Past made present/presence made apparent (phenomena) reduced to noumena.
In Abrahamism "logos" becomes the divine representation of universal consciousness, i.e., the word. All begins with the word/symbol.
In fact what precedes the word/symbol is the deed, the active, dynamic interactive existing - becoming not being.
A mental absolute reducing dynamic multiplicity to a manageable singularity.
Without this reduction, standing apart, there is no consciousness, no life.
Interpreted – expanding outward – interpreting interpreter – imploding inward.
Interpreter is a participant in that which is being interpreted, just as an audience is part of a theatre play.
Performance and Audience all part of the same event – something.
‘Thing' exists only in minds – idea, concept, abstraction – and is how the existing is interpreted, reacted to, perceived. There is no 'thing' other than in the mind, and so it is forever 'some-thing' which is 'no-thing' at all, but a process, a continuum exhibiting a perceptible pattern.

Conor, Cunningham wrote:

Audacity: to be without being
For both Plotinus and Heidegger, the Nothing is the
impetus of our approach to what is most real in the world,
although beyond essence and existence: the One, or Being.
This is also an important point in Derrida’s analysis.
(Eli Diamond)

In Hesiod’s Theogony we are told the tale of a divine drama involving tolmatic patricide and mutilation, which is the very advent of the world.
Ouranos, the highest god, fathers wild children whom he hates. Because of this hate, Ouranos buries these children in the bosom of the earth, where they lie like seeds. The earth sets out to free these children. She encourages Kronos, ‘a most terrible child’, who is the first son, to attack his ‘lecherous’ father. Kronos does so, castrating Ouranos in the process. In this way Kronos takes his father’s place, and he in turn fathers
sons with Rheia after forcing himself upon her. These children are ‘glorious’, yet Kronos fears them for they might avenge Ouranos their grandfather. As a result Kronos swallows all the children, keeping them within himself. But Rheia hides one of these sons, who is called Zeus.
Zeus is allowed to grow in strength and resolve, until the time when he attacks his father, binding Kronos with chains and emancipating his brothers.
Plotinus utilises this myth to explain the eternal procession of all from the One. For Plotinus Ouranos is the One, while Kronos is Intellect and Zeus is Soul. The myth encapsulates, in Plotinus’ rather sanitised version, the movement of emanation, which arises contra the Gnostics by way of contemplation, and not discursive and agonistic activity. The One produces Kronos without need, but instead out of a plenitude which overflows. This mode of ‘making’ is external to the progenitor. When Kronos in turn gives birth to a ‘beautiful progeny’ he does so within himself, but for Plotinus this is not, as for Hesiod, a result of hate. For Kronos is said to love and adore his sons. Indeed, it is this love which causes Kronos to swallow them – thought remains inside the mind. But one ‘stands apart’: this is Zeus (Soul). And it is this standing forth which makes manifest the external world. Furthermore, this last child, who brings about the corporeal world, imitates his grandfather (Ouranos) since his generation is apparently external. For Plotinus the One would flow forever were it not for the castration carried out by Kronos. This castration restricts the flow of the One which in turn allows for the advent of the intelligible. It is this ‘calling halt’ that enables the dualism of subject–object, which is the basis of thought per se. If there was no cessation, then there would be no possible conceptualisation or noesis. But because this occurs within the belly of Kronos (‘fullness’; Saturn) there would still fail to arise any visible world. Plotinus has Zeus perform this task by ‘standing forth’ in the most audacious of manners. Yet here again there is no internecine strife. For Plotinus, Kronos hands over the governance of the world to Zeus in a most willing manner. Nonetheless it will be argued that this myth epitomises the immanence involved in nihilism. For what proceeds from the One, which is beyond being and beyond preceding, must in a sense remain within its placeless providing.
Thus since Non-being is the father of all that is, there is a sense in which the reditus (to non-being) precedes the exitus (to being). In other words, that which comes from the One ‘follows’ a (me)ontological return which ensures that its necessity does not infringe the simple, autarchical, supremacy of the One. This means that what emanates from the One, being, is not, in so far as to be is an inferior mode of existence compared to Non-being which is the only entity that really is (the really real). It is for this reason that Non-being can necessarily produce being without infringing simplicity, because to be is nothing. And as comparatively nothing, being does not actually escape the One, but remains immanent to it; being is in this sense an internal production. This is made possible by the protective negations which Plotinus employs at a methodological level throughout the Enneads.

[Genealogy of Nihilism]

A theatrical narrative where the audience (Mankind)reduces the performance to its shared level of comprehension - bridging the "insufferable distances" of existing consciously.
An Orphic theogony which inspired Gnosticism and subsequently stole by Kabbalists.

"Non-Existence is presumed into 'existence' as the antithesis of existence.
Mind stands apart from the expriences and conceptualizes it as a finite, singular, whole. It cannot but conceptualize it by projecting itself 'outside' it...like the concept of 'universe'.
And this is the beginning of paradox, as the mind's reactions, conceptualizations of that which is now begin to contradict what is - multiplicity contradicting the noetic singularity (thing, one, absolute).
Unable to think of existence without contradicting that which exist, the expriences contradicting the thought that attempts to make sense of it.

Conor, Cunningham wrote:

One: Audacity

Let us take a closer look at the idea of the One. We know that what is outside the One, in tolmatic terms, is by way of a certain audacity, a wish to be apart from all else: To ‘desire to exist independently. It wearies of dwelling with another and withdraws into itself.’ These are, as Torchia points out, ‘illegitimate acts of self-assertion’. This audacity is usually interpreted from the perspective of the One. But the positioning of the One as opposed to all else below is more ambiguous. The One (like Avicenna’s God) cannot be alone. The One cannot be alone because that which proceeds from its plenitude does so necessarily. Furthermore, the One may well require that which emanates so that it can itself be the One.
For Plotinus the One is self-sufficient, yet this autarchical status may be achieved only by default. If there were no emanations there would be the nihilism of pure undifferentiated ‘being’ which may threaten the possibility of the One. As Plotinus says, ‘something besides unity (the One) there must be or all would be indiscernibly buried, shapeless within that unbroken whole’. If there was only the One it might be unable to be the One, for we know for certain it must produce. But if the One requires company, that which accompanies it must be nothing because of this necessity, if simplicity is to be protected. In being nothing the One and the many are equivalent; this many is but the one that comes from the One. In this way the one that is produced is nothing. The One needs this one which is nothing. But in needing nothing it needs nothing but itself (for the One is non-being).
From this it may well be possible to consider the One as the first audacity. For the One endeavours to be apart from all else as the One. The One is this desire to be within itself and apart from all else.
Furthermore, it is the desire to be without being. The One endeavours to be apart from all else but within the presence of a necessarily produced other from which it seeks to withdraw. If this is true, then the One may curiously be the idea of finitude: a finite immanent reality. The One is its unity, the many its difference (in the same way that Spinoza’s God is the unity of Nature’s many).
If the One is the first audacious unity, then we can think of this unity as the idea of a reality, a given, about and from which nihilism can speak.
The One is, then, by way of a foundational circumscription that is definitive or absolute. As the finite leaves the One, standing apart from it, the One leaves the finite, standing apart from it. We must consider the One as the formation of the finite in an absolute sense. Finitude projects itself, becoming something it is not. What it becomes is indeed the finite, the idea of a stable place, fully present, viz., immanent to itself. This finitude must be ‘One’ if it is to sustain its self-identity and so exclude appeals to a transcendent source.
To accomplish this, the ‘finite’ must become nothing, for only in becoming nothing will it avoid transcendence. If it is nothing, about what would transcendence speak? If finitude were something it would also be ‘nothing’ (as gift). But in being nothing, being nothing in being at all, it can speak itself utterly and completely. If this is the case, then the flight from the One is also the flight of the ‘One’. The audacious standing apart of the finite from the One is the constitution of the finite as ‘One’. We must remember that the Greeks used the term ‘one’ because they did not have a figure for zero. Plotinus’ One can be beneficially considered as zero. For example, Plotinus argues that ‘the One is not one of the units which make up the number two’; Avicenna will later follow this lead in saying that ‘the smallest number is two’. The One and the finite are both within the belly of the other, each generated by way of contemplative provision. The fall away from the One is a fall within the One. This fall is designed to recall that which is fallen before it falls. So it is always a fall within immanence.
If all that is comes by way of the One’s non-being, then this One is possible only because of the world’s ‘non-being’ (in this way the world, like Zeus, imitates the One). The One needs company, the world needs unicity. The nothingness of the world allows the Plotinian God to be accompanied, but to be accompanied by nothing, so protecting the supremacy and simplicity of this divinity. Likewise, the non-being of the One generates the world. There is a mutual constitution (Deus sive natura).
There is, then, in Plotinus an inverted monism: what is other than the One is nothing, while the One is non-being. So there is in effect a univocity of non-being, one which is developed by Avicenna before being passed on to others. It has been argued by a number of commentators that Plotinus is not monistic. For example, Gilson calls the accusation of monism an ‘enormous mistake’. But this is because Gilson fails to realise that what is other than the One, because of the nature of this alterity, cannot offer any ontological difference. The world slides towards the approaching God who is unable to be alone. Furthermore, the One can only produce one. In this way Plotinus’ One remains very much within ontotheology’s being. Plotinus replaces ontotheology’s being (the something) with non-being (the nothing): different letters making the same word. This is his meontotheology, which is why we can agree with Cornelio Fabro when he asserts that the ‘Neoplatonist idea of God . . . vanishes in the swamp of pantheistic monism’. For monism is, it seems, the correct expression of pantheism. Likewise, Anton Pegis argues that ‘God and the world so penetrate one another in the philosophy of Plotinus . . . that the famous flight of the One from being is the only way in which God can find freedom from the world’. But in fleeing so, the world must inevitably follow. Indeed, it must be there waiting. For this return is its very beginning, its inception (exitus). In this sense, the pantheistic monism we can find in Plotinus is best thought of as a pan(a)theism. The henological, in this sense, leads to the meontological. It seems we are to have a god and a world within the foundational absence of both (dreams of which Spinoza is made). The nothing as something has become everything.

[Genealogy of Nihilism]

One-ness is how the no-thingness can be reduced to 'thingness' as a ambiguous 'some-thing'.
Taken literally one negates existence no less than nil - both contradict the experience of existing by standing apart and against.
Representationally -no-thing- simply describes an absence - absent absolute; a state of continuous dynamic interactivity expriences as a eternal falling away; an absence of a static, complete, whole contrasting with life's desire to find completion in tis incomplete striving - an end to need/suffering (expriences of existing - an experience that is only possible by standing apart, distinct, separate).
An audience can only expriences a performance - objectively - by standing away from it - outside, separate, beyond the stage, as if they are not part of the performance - the determined experiencing the determining as if it were other than themselves. Two simultaneous performances one conscious, on the world's stage, and the other off-stage, unconsciously participating by consciously being unaware that they are also performing and part of the performance; an audience is absorbed by the stage performance of otherness, losing awareness of its own participation in what it collectively believes is remains separate from.

'One' is no less negating of existence than 'nil'.

Conor, Cunningham wrote:

To need: Nothing

The One cannot be alone (this is also the case with Avicenna’s God, Henry of Ghent’s, Duns Scotus’, William of Ockham’s, Suarez’, Spinoza’s, Kant’s and Hegel’s). If this is true, how will Plotinus account for that which is ‘produced’ without reducing the status of the One? In other words, how can the One remain One? This ancient problematic here gives rise to certain philosophical moves which predispose the generation of the aforementioned nihilistic logic. Plotinus develops a meontological philosophy in which non-being is the highest principle. The One is beyond or otherwise than being. This will, it is hoped, protect its simplicity. The consequence of such a move is a series of negations which will give rise to a fully immanentised realm, one that may accommodate the nihilistic logic of nothing as something.
We can identify at least four prophylactic negations. The first is that of ‘tolmatic’ language, which is to say, language that implies a fall from a state of grace: to be is to be fallen. Although Plotinus sets himself against the Gnostics on just this point he cannot, it seems, help but utilise their logic of creation as a fallen state. By so doing, he ensures that that which is becomes subordinate to that which is not, a consequence to be continually repeated. The second negation arises because in simply not being the One that which is is not: to be is not to be. So all that which emanates from the One is nothing, because it has being. The third negation is the ‘negation of negation’: the ineluctable return to the One. This return, as has been said, in a sense precedes every exit. The fourth negation concerns a series of repetitions of the original negation of the One itself.
At some point each hypostasis imitates the One in its contemplative nonproduction of that which is. Plotinus, contra the Gnostics, relies on contemplation to engender production. But the nature of this contemplation is, in a sense, non-production, since being consults nothing (the One) and repeats nothing in the innermost core of everything.
Thus that which proceeds from the One returns to the One – is always already returning. This desiring return is the contemplation of each emanation’s nothingness. In this way the return precedes every departure, for every departure is but the ‘embodiment’ of a return. But this provision will be incomprehensible unless we remember Hesiod. For it was in recalling the Theogony that we learnt of Kronos giving birth to sons within himself. Now we have also learnt that it is characteristic of both the One and the Soul to produce externally. Yet I have argued that
we can only understand the emanation from the One as that which, in a sense, takes place within its cavernous belly. How is this reconcilable with the idea of external generation?
The One’s differentiation from all else cannot be spatial, for that would set something over and against it. So difference must, it seems, take place within and through the One: ‘The One does not sever itself from it [all else], although it is not identical with it.’ (Hegel argues for a similar understanding in relation to the infinite and the finite.) Plotinus is unable to posit an ontological difference: we see this to the degree that the One can produce only one effect, doing so necessarily. That is to say, the One re-produces itself in every emanation: the One is non-being and being is not. In this way the One produces nothing ontologically different from itself. For all difference, that is, being, fails to register a real distinction between itself and its cause. Why? Because any reality a being might be said to have would be its non-being, for only the One’s nonbeing is truly real (or really real). Difference between the One and what falls beneath it is noticed only by an aspectual differentiation: like the aforementioned Gestalt effect of the duck-rabbit; but it must be remembered that both aspects manifest themselves on one picture.
Plotinus does hint strongly at the notion of a ‘cavernous’ – internal – provision, as he states that the universe is in the soul and that the soul is in the intelligible. For each causes only one effect which must remain immanent to the cause as a result of causation’s merely ontic logic. What is meant by this is that the One must look to an external logic, or rubric, which dictates and explains what difference is. In this way the One does not create, for the One cannot create difference, but must, instead, be protected from it. (It is argued in Part II that this is not the case for the Trinitarian God of Christian theology, for the Trinity creates difference from divine sameness.) Furthermore, Plotinus asserts that the ‘authentic [all] is contained within the nothing’. Bréhier comments on this idea by speaking of the reabsorption of all into ‘undifferentiated being’. So too does Bouyer. We know that for Plotinus the One is otherwise than being, and that every addition is from non-being.
Indeed, we have only been as persons because of non-being. This does suggest that the place of being is within the cavernous belly of non-being.
Plotinus calls the world the soul’s cave, and more pertinently he suggests that ‘to depart does not consist in leaving in order to go elsewhere’. It seems that the many which flows from the fecundity of the One does so only within the One. Indeed, as Gilson suggests, that which is provided ‘loses itself in the darkness of some supreme non-being and of some supreme unintelligibility’.

[Genealogy of Nihilism]

Non-Being and no-thingness is chaos - a state of existence that can remain incomprehensible and imperceptible.
That which lacks order cannot be believed nor comprehended by an organism that feeds and collects order (patterns = interactive energies that remain consistent, repeating and predictable)
Chaos, not complexity but randomness, is life's and man's - as the highest form of life - deepest anxieties/fears, and must be made comprehensible, ordered first by 'naming it' and then by presuming order where nothing is perceived.
Denying free-will is a way of implying absolute order, substituting for the Abrahamic version of god - a way of preserving an external will, an external purpose, meaning, without the anthropomorphic baggage. Through this linguistic mechanization man preserves his 'innocence' and non-being belonging to a higher Being - parity through nil.
All is illusory implying race sex/gender are meaningless and all is one, founded on nil.
Power of Nil
All is meaningless, all is illuory, therefore nothing done, chosen, perceived matters - all is determined, inevitable, so no error is possible - all is as it could have ever been, so no shame, no guilt, all is good. No culpubility.
Salvation is achieved without god, or a redeemer. A colelctive of like-minded Woke repalce the messiagh.
God is repalced by an inter-subjective colelctive - marxism - that brings about Heaven on Earth (Utopia) through a colelctive creation of an alternate reality - an external (projected) one founded on an internal (esoteric) nil.
All is no-thing so let's create our own some-thing from no-thing.

No-thing is not nothingness. It simply describes existence as what lacks 'thingness' or an absolute participle, singularity - an immutable, indivisible absolute.
In conventional use nothing means an absence, and so it may be confused with non-existence, but nothingness exists, even fi as a mental abstraction, an idea, in organic brains.
No-thingness describes an absence of thingness that is fabricated in organic brains to make sense of existence. It correctly corrects simpletons who take thingness literally, and observes that the thing is not in existence outside the mind but is necessary for the mind to make sense of existing.

The most we can say of existing is that it is dynamic, multiplicity - energy, keeping in mind that even this concept is the mind reducing multiplicity to a singularity.
As I've noted paradoxes are the confusion of a representation of the existing with the unknowable represented - choosing to consider abstractions literally - represented by words/symbols - rather than what they are: representations.
Language is a representation of a representation - of what can never be entirely known, in the case of order, and what remains entirely incomprehensible, in the case of chaos.
Order can be known, over time, but the chaotic can never be known but only experienced via its effect (interaction) on the known - as the unforeseeable, the novel, the unpredictable.
Chaotic energise necessitate free-will as an overriding of determined (evolved) automated reactions to dynamic existence.
Choice is the manifestation of free-will. Without it there is no natural selection, and with no natural selection we return to creation Theory to explain variety of life and of matter/energy.
Evolution Theory is "debunked" if all is determined (immutable past) and no individual agency participates in determining (dynamic presence - existence).
If all is determined the selected are fated to be selected for no reason, since survival of the fittest loses its meaning. Here w have 'survival of the fortunate'.
Why the farce of pretending to have agency, of making choices, and of naturally selecting good choices from bad ones?
Nature is frugal....what loses utility is gradually filtered out....why would choice and judgement be necessary if all were determined and inevitable?
There would be no science, no philosophy...unless these morons want to imply - without admitting it - that there's a god at work, a universal intentionality/will, absolute order - omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, and that nobody can break god's rules.

What morons mean - without realizing it - is that there "ought not be free-will" because, as it is said in the Matrix "choice is the problem".
There ought to be no individual will, only a collective will - replacing the Abrahamic god: two believing the one-god exists, and one that the one-god ought to exist and that they've been chosen to make it happen so as to "correct" the world form tis multiplicity, i.e., to make existence non-existent.
Islam and Christianity already believe the world doesn't really exist but is god's foyer, his testing ground to weed out the worthy from the unworthy...but Judaism claim the one-god ought to exist, because he doesn't...and they will "heal the world" by bringing about this singularity of multiplicities.
Messianism - two have third messiahs, one is waiting for him/her/it.

But 'fortune' is the point for nihilists. You'll find that most of them are Marxists and recovering Abrahamics.
Fortune and the fortunate must share their fortunes with the unfortunate....but if all is determined wouldn't this sharing also be?
What guilt do Capitalists suffer - those fortunate ones that that exploit the unfortunate - if all has been determined, and inevitable, and nobody has any agency and therefore no responsibility for anything?

Here we must bring in this repeated phrase: "on the right side of history"
What is implied is that the universe - as absolute order - is good, and therefore rational and benevolent and in time all injustices will be "corrected".
So these morons secretly believe they were "chosen" to work for the goodness to come about and finally return it to a state of justice and goodness. They are the collectivized sanctified noes, the christened ones, whoa re burdened with the work to "heal" the world from its current state of multiplicity and injustice and suffering. The world will be 'righted' in time.

Keep in mind what I've said about words and postmoderns.
World = Humanity; Humanity = world....so "to heal the world" means to "heal mankind" of its evilness, its state of fallen grace.
Theocracy - the priestly class (chosen by the determining universe to be 'burdened' with this task) will use/manipulable the military class (Holy Paladins fighting for the divine) to save the masses (rabble, goy) from their need/suffering and their state of moral and intellectual decrepitude.
Within this world=humanity Abrahamic/Marxist paradigm, logos can change the world, viz., words, symbols can affect human minds and the collective to create a perfect world.

>Conor Cunningham

Interesting.
I'm not entirely sure that guy is saying what you are saying though:



He seems to be a theologian lamenting negative nihilism (as you define it) whereas he himself is a positive nihilist (as you define it). As such what he means when he uses these words may not be what you mean.
His problem with Spinoza may be that it's the wrong kind of nihilism?

If a person is reduced to biological functions then there is no 'person' existing, he claims.
Isn't he presupposing this 'person-ness'? Isn't his complaint that material reductionists saying there is no special Thingness/Form, no metaphysical Self really just a demand for something absurd?
A kind of metaphysical idea of self that encapsulates the biological process but is somehow existing beyond and above it?
The Form: Self?
It's Plato stuff again. Confusion of the representation for what it attempts to describe. Like thinking the map is the land you're going to walk on: if there's no map the land doesn't exist!
Or there's a presupposition of a purple teapot orbiting Mars but when some guy sends a probe up there to check it out nothing is found. They then complain that everything is meaningless because they lost their fantasies. Knowledge de-mystifies and for these minds it seems to just spoil everything. Mystery and magic are requirements.
Why wouldn't something mean more if one understands it better? Shouldn't the Self be more valuable, significant because we understand it better as an effect of biological processes? Apparently not.

I will think about this though, I've never even read Spinoza.

apaosha wrote:

>Conor Cunningham

Interesting.

I'm currently reading his book Genealogy of Nihilism.
I'm only a third way into it and posted some interesting parts.

I don't post only those that agree with me.

apaosha wrote:

I'm not entirely sure that guy is saying what you are saying though:

Doesn't matter.

apaosha wrote:

He seems to be a theologian lamenting negative nihilism (as you define it) whereas he himself is a positive nihilist (as you define it). As such what he means when he uses these words may not be what you mean.
His problem with Spinoza may be that it's the wrong kind of nihilism?

Nihilism dominates human thinking.
It seems to be a necessary step, or phase for the development of consciousness into self-consciuosness and the realization that the representations are not the represented, and that there is nothing static, not complete, nor whole, nor perfect...

apaosha wrote:

If a person is reduced to biological functions then there is no 'person' existing, he claims.
Isn't he presupposing this 'person-ness'? Isn't his complaint that material reductionists saying there is no special Thingness/Form, no metaphysical Self really just a demand for something absurd?

It presupposes the non-existent and then declares existence nothing when it does not find it.
A psychological disappointment that resorts to the other extreme to help it cope - or replace what never existed with tis opposite.

apaosha wrote:

Why wouldn't something mean more if one understands it better? Shouldn't the Self be more valuable, significant because we understand it better as an effect of biological processes? Apparently not.

When you demystify you lose the magic.
If you understand what dancing is, and what it symbolizes, then you cannot abandon yourself to it.
This is what self-consciousness does.
It clarifies and empowers but then it can become trapped in self-doubt and procrastination.

Understanding has a price.
When you see too much you may not sleep well at night.

apaosha wrote:

I will think about this though, I've never even read Spinoza.

I read some of his work, over ten years ago.
He didn't do anything for me.

After watching the vid...
This is what happens when generations upon generations are raised on lies, on linguistic mind-games.
It's the same thing as what is happening with the decline of the American Empire of Lies.

Those mesmerized, indoctrinated, convinced, finally realize that it was all linguistic based lies, and they react by dismissing all linguistics.
Similarly, when the American world order declines it is for those generations born and raised within its premises and principles an "end of the world" - an existential event. Disillusionment follows. All is now meaningless because what once considered profoundly meaningful is exposed as a lie.
All is in doubt because once they held things to be certain - absolutely true.
Their wake-up call goes to the other extreme, as a kind of vengeance towards a world that failed them; that could not be what it promised.
The mind begins to lose trust in itself, and to protect itself from the implications it projects this loss of trust outward.
It is the cosmos which is nothing, because ti failed to be something - there is no free-will - all is a social construct, implying that the error is shared and not personalized. We were ALL fooled and 'they' fooled us....there must be a 'they' or a 'that' to accuse.
Hard-detemrinism unloads responsibility upon nothing, literally. Nothing determined me to do and think as I did and do...
It was inevitable because 'nothing' determined it.

Philosophy is similarly infected by Platonism and Agnosticism - nihilism - which was adopted and popularized via Abrahamism, and the entire structure is now being doubted.
Despair is a reaction to losing something you held as sacred and certain.
We are entering such a phase.
Desperate Degenerates.
Despair which, having lost trust in its own beliefs and its own reasoning and its own judgments, begins to doubt the validity of its own body...of its own presence.

You cannot fully separate reason from emotion....psychology is part of philosophy.
Objectivity must be approached through subjectivity, never to be fully attained.

As I've said, nihilism - to whatever degree - is entirely linguistic.
The more nihilistic it is the more language based it becomes.
A retreat into the mind (esotericism) and a denial of the body, the physical, the tangible.

So, when the words, representing the concepts, are exposed as lacking substance, as being non-existent other than as concepts, the mind declares all existence void of meaning - nothing.
Instead of correcting its definitions and its application of words, along with tis conceptions of existence, it denies it all as null and void.
Modern minds can't let go of what they took for granted and considered the final answer (telos), the certain, the eternal...the absolute: immutable, indivisible,...
They can't let go so they replace it with its inversion, its opposite - binary.
Opposite of one is nil.
Opposite of something is nothing.

Like an existential temper tantrum. Like I said above...a kind of vengeance against a world that failed to be what they thought it was; what they needed it to be.
Skepticism becomes a tool to arbitrarily reject what did not encompass and include them.
Even the term "matter" is misconstrued as a immutable, indivisible thing, so they use it with "materialism" - a derogatory remark, an insult, dismissive.

Two ways to approach nihilism - bane of modern western man for over 20 centuries.

Satyr wrote:

Two direction to approach nothingness – from the mind (idea/ideal) and/or from the body (physical/apparent): the first as a nullification of the existent – as antithesis negating and offering nothing in its place; the second as an affirmation of the existent – literally no-thing, lacking thingness – exposing world as other than the mind’s subjective interpretations of it, producing paradoxical contradictions between what is and how it is experienced and linguistically expressed.

No-thingness is literally existence, since thingness is a mental construct.
No-thingness is not nothing.
Existence presents itself as a some-thing we can dismiss but cannot escape.
There is no Being, only be-coming - a movement towards what the mind projects as 'to be' - a movement towards the absolute, i.e. god, order, oneness, chaos; a movement that never finalizes, and so it can be said to be eternal, infinite.

ΕΝΕΡΓΕΙΑ - Energy - a state of agitation, a state of "work, struggle, war".
Patterned energy = order - repeating, consistent, predictable...
Non-patterned energies = chaos - non-repeating, inconsistent, unpredictable - random.
In the void of absolute chaos/order man participates willfully, as a intentional agency - choosing and with every choice participating in the determination of his fate.
Some to a greater and other sot a lesser degree.

"Magic" is an inappropriate term because it inserts a component that can and sill be sued to justify any absurdity.
The choice of words exposes the individual's intent.

Will it be clarity or obscurity.
Will it be 'yes' to existence, or selectively 'no', with every 'yes & no' revealing the individual's motive - his objective.
And so nihilism is a revelation of human psychology, reacting to existence that lacks what it demands....that does not provide what it needs.

All secular dogmas, i.e., ideologies entail some degree of negation, since they are propositions of human interventions to alter, or sublimate natural processes.
What differentiates nihilistic dogmas/ideologies is the degree of human intervention and the objective being proposed – it is usually a complete contradiction, i.e., inversion, of natural order, with unforeseeable consequences. Furthermore, the degree of nihilism will express the level of its idealized objective’s unattainability, resulting in inevitable failure.
For this reason, I’ve said that nihilism must contradicts its own principles if it is to survive in a world it contradicts ideologically/dogmatically, and it always must find the causes of tis failures in everything, and anything other than itself because it doesn’t want to adapt to what is, i.e., natural order, but to adjust what is to itself.
The degree to which it contradicts, i.e., inverts, natural order, corresponds to the probability of tis failure and its defensive refusal to adjust itself to the world.
If and when it manages some degree of self-critique it is always in the form of an accusation towards other humans, since it considers all relent subjects, like race, sex, gender, and power, as being socially determined and cannot admit any natural underlying factor – one is unsettled by coercion, seduction and bribery whereas the second is not swayed by such linguistically transmitted emotionally triggering forces.

Abrahamism developed some clever methods to preserve its nihilistic dogma's purity.
It adopted obscurantism so as to maintain tis sacred scripture as eternally adjustable to changing circumstances and to all possible threats.
It invented a weekly cleansing rituals to absolve its members from their inability to adhere to its tenets.
It invented primordial sin, to both cast the blame on its members and absolve them from its burden if they surrender.
It, originally, slaughtered millions, accusing them of not following its sacred rules - later converted to eternal damnation.

Marxism didn't have the time to develop such mechanics. It remains stuck in the last method of accusing others of failing to abide by its rules and standards.
Marxism is currently experiencing schisms, similar to those in Abrahamism, each developing its own self-purifying, self-preserving strategies.
We see in postmodernism the self-purifying, genital mutilations that mark a "true believer" - chosen - distinguishing them from those who reject this self-cleansing method.
The parallels are obvious.
The body is mutilated as a sign that it, the mind channeling some cosmic will (determinism), no longer represents identity - identity is "liberated" from the corporeal, the material, and is made pure idea existing only in the mind, which is externalized as a cosmic mind, a universal consciousness.
Subjectivity mirrors this idea of being a distinct representation of an underlying singularity; creator of tis own world, chosen to act on the behalf of a mysterious first cause.
There is no 'self'...self is outsourced, and what we perceive as an individual is but a manifestation of this singular divinity, choosing to manifest differently through every illusory individuation.
A charade of masks.

Judaism sees in its failures divine retribution, divine will - the people's failure to abide by the creator's will expressing disapproval through their suffering.
Islam practices self-flagellation, self-repression, self-sacrifice, as a way to self-purify. Individuals punishing themselves, and others, for failing to be ideal Muslims.

Nihilism inverts everything that threatens, under the pretence of skepticism.

Health is now "sick" and mental illness is the new "health".

The consequence?
Systemic collapse which will be blamed on anything and everything other than their own psychosis.
They never do anything, these "innocent" ones.
Their motives are benign. They are well-meaning and "misunderstood."

Recovering Abrahamics unable to let go of the consequences of their progressive "atheism".
They thought the 'death of the one-god of Abraham" would be all-good, so they went all-in.
Then they realized what it meant.

Esoteric Journey into the Depths of Oneself
As nihilism ascends and humans begin to detach from reality – zombified – symbols become increasingly subjective, esoteric.
No longer connected to external phenomena – phenomenon being the interpretation of what is present/presence (interactive) – they invert because nihilism always inverts, and reconnect to internal processes, e.g., cellular, organic interactions that must become conscious by drawing from already interpreted phenomena, stored in memory, where they can be reprocessed and resynthesized at will – similar to how the mind dreams. Everything becomes dream-like.
Symbols become emotionally founded – emotions triggered by external stimuli are now triggered by internal, physical, organic, stimuli. Need/Desire is still at work.
Mind immerses itself internally. A monk like demeanour is cultivated.
But, it must survive in the world it has now detached from. To remain detached from reality it must first deal with reality; it needs collectives to maintain itself in a state of detachment, and so it must convince others to protect, and nourish, and hydrate it, so as to remain detached – meditative state – immersed in its subjectivity. To the degree it can find such external sheltering support will determine the degree of its continuing detachment, falling deeper and deeper into itself, like a self-induced hypnosis.
It must present itself as a wise shaman, a sacred priest, delving into what is more real than the real world so as to guarantee this external sheltering and providing support, otherwise the spell will be broken – promising to bring back profound insights to all those gullible enough, needy enough, to volunteer their services; those that cannot detach, or lack the creative imagination to reconnect internally to dreamscapes triggering emotions; those who cannot enter the self-deceptive state of a trance.
Simpler minds cannot make the reconnections between symbols to recreate meanings - meaning being how phenomena are connected, now replace phenomena with noumena – mysticism.
As external meanings are severed the mind must replace them with internal meanings, requiring an artistic mind to recreate them.
Language loses its place as mediator between phenomena and noumena, constructing matrices of meaning, and now must turn in on itself and find matrices of patterns connecting noumena alone – it finds them in the method of organic interpretation and its underlying order.
Words replace actions, and meaning reflect how organic minds have evolved to interpret an interactive, fluctuating, world of order/chaos – all is reduced to order, as the mind is an ordering organ, and the esoteric becomes divine.
All is guided by an unseen will, and it is the organism itself, with all its conscious and subconscious ordering processes; all becomes intentional, positive, empowering, mirroring the organism's motives.
The mind perceives itself as a divine other and is inspired by its own creativity.
Unknown memories rise up to consciousness, as if coming from a strange alien mind communicating to it its secrets; ancient memories, stored in strange algorithms, are made known to the mind that is seeing itself for the first time – recalling itself from an unknown, mysterious past, its own past.

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Quote :

The history of liberalism is the history of an idea taking itself ever more seriously. It is the history not of the abandonment of freedom, but of the devolution of the oppressor—at each stage we are freed from what is closer and closer to us. Revolutionary liberalism aims to free us from tradition, aristocratic liberalism from ignorance, and on it goes through the state to inauthenticity to biology, and finally to free us from our own selves. In this long march from Kant to Kurzweil, nobody forgot to carry the one and nobody made a mistake, except perhaps certain shall we say, “mid-century ideologies” that then provided a foil for the orthodox to double down on this expanding freedom-from.

It's going to get much, much worse.

Want to see nihilism in action, follow iamretarded, on ILP for as long as you can stomach his linguistic anti-phuilosophy antics, pretending to be interpreted in philosophy.
That is what nihilism does to the mind.

There are many others, with varying levels of infection and different ways the same infection manifests in schizophrenia.
This is not theoretical....it is theory in action.
It is meme having an impact on genetics, or finding a genetic weakness to exploit and express itself outwardly.
This is its 'context' as the cunt is obsessed in saying, when she wants to evade being exposed as what she is.

ILP is what happens when you have an open border policy, allowing anyone and everyone into your area.
For me it is a microcosm of Americanism macrocosmic expressions.
iamastupidcunt must be the perfect specimen of nihilistic disease, not because she is clever but because she's a moron and cannot help but reveal the nihilistic mind minus the subtlety - she's in your face obvious about her methods, and admits them - "fractured and fragmented" she calls her schizophrenia or the mind/body dissonance her disease has imposed upon her.