Thoughts on Nihilism

De Sade said: "Nihilists, one more effort if you would become revolutionaries!"

I say:
"Revolutionaries, one more effort if you would become nihilists!"

Is the concept the same for people who say "nee-yil-ist" and "nie-yil-ist"?

What if you called it "David Grahams"?

"Nihilism to me is the removal of all preconception and emotional response to objects and events in reality; another method of doing this is to focus only on what is, through a logical chain of events which one can observe or derive, "real." It is a very simple philosophy. Nietzsche differentiated between active and passive nihilism, and I would have to say mine is of the active kind; it is not a passive nihilism, which is a shrugging statement that "nothing has any value" and a consequent loss of preference for achievement over degeneration, honor over convenience, etc. I think we see passive nihilism in both Judeo-Christian religions and global consumer society.

In my personal life, Nihilism means that I worry less about what others think and more about what I want to achieve. It means that I let taboo and morality and social fear fall by the wayside in my quest for truth. It means that I recognize life outside the boundaries of my own mortality, and my own existence. It means that I can stop fearing nature, and can embrace it, "warts and all," as they say, for how it functions and the ongoing beauty it produces, in which is much horror. I see nihilism ultimately as a way to gain intelligence by gaining a power of concentration unavailable to others, and for me, it means a loss of the neurosis, hysteria, fear and advertising/television-induced mental stupor in which most exist."
- Spinoza Ray Prozak

Nihilism is not just scientific atheism. Scientism requires faith - in the unassailable power of measurement to determine the nature of reality. The human mind can only comprehend so much - infinity is impossible to grasp. The mind needs limits. However, absolute finity is also impossible to grasp - where there is a limit, there has to be something behind it. Measurement, too, has it's limits.

"Nihilists! Fuck me. I mean, say what you like about the tenets of National Socialism, Dude, at least it's an ethos."
-Walter Sobchak, The Big Lebowski

Found here