There's the idea that has been getting disseminated lately by the likes of Jordan Peterson that 'Even If God might not actually exist, It is still a good thing to believe into for the welfare of the individual and the society'

Researchers might have concluded that people believing in God are usually found to be happier than atheists or agnostics because of their psychological dependence on them, But they have heavily discounted the fact that the same people get more miserable than an average Atheist or agnostic when Life doesn't exactly go the way they envisaged it to.

Its all fun and games, till Life's running the way you want, You could attribute all your success to the grace of God, But most people lives have predicaments and tough situations that sometimes last for far longer than they could have dreaded and in this case a believer suffers more due to his fears of having fallen from the grace of god, and the fears of abandonment from him.

At this point, Believers are shaken of all the security they had from the God and some even go to the extent of cursing the very metaphysical entity that they sought blessings from not long ago.

Another side of the argument which was also championed by Dostoevsky is about 'Believing in God helps to curtail the evil in the society and encourages people to be more ethical in their demeanour'

Which could be agreeable to some extent, But It is more concerned with the Fear in individuals about the judgement of their deeds than It is with the Faith in any God per se. Those who put this argument are inherently conceding the barbaric nature of humans and that they must be restrained by a higher authority else Society would disintegrate.

In Lord of the Flies, Goldings expressed the similar concern about the inherent savageness in humans but in my opinion as long as this beast is attempted to be tamed by the Fear of a higher authority, there would always be an implicit rebel to return to the beastly ways and their capability to transcend this savagery owing to their higher intellect than any other animal that they have been bestowed with would never be realised.

The character of Simon in Lord of the Flies embodies the same virtuous figure that is capable of driving away the beast inside and be truly compassionate not by the fear of any external authority but by one's own freedom of Volition.

The majority of our fundamental human emotions are negative (..my therapist said, and how it's fine to have them etc), but..wait- isn't that incredibly sad?

I mean, as animals, survivalists, it makes biological sense that we would never quite be happy with what we have. We can never stop wanting something more, idealising something we do not have yet. To aspire to literally ANYTHING, one must first be unhappy with their present, right? And I get that 'happiness is in the small things' but I seriously just don't think or feel much happiness at all in a regular day, and I wouldn't say Im really that depressed either, I just don't think it's in our hardwiring.

For example, Im currently studying at home before my final school exams and I spend the majority of my time atm feeling shit that I haven't studied QUITE enough, even on an amazingly productive day. I just feel unhappy with things. Constantly. It's my default. Does anyone else feel this?

Nihilism is a lens to understand the meaningless of the status quo, the sheer absurdity that life has meaning as the culture portrays it. In other words, Nihilism is the anti-popular-culture. Nihilism is a critique of Moralist Ideologies, much like Marxism is a tool to dissect infantile explanations of social systems.

Nihilism is not a place to wish death to oneself, lament all aspects of life, or otherwise complain about being brought into this world by copulation, gestation, and birth. The chorus of misinformed posts echo that either bots or little boys/girls/they are unable to use even chatGPT.

There are ample subs for depression, sadness, loss, and otherwise crapped-out perspectives.

Don't believe me? Go do some research as the idiotic anti-vaxers state. The inventor or rather the person most associated with Nihilism is Nietzsche... Look him up, and he never says that he wishes he wasn't born! Here's a link to the start of your Internet searches and below is a solid recap for those interested in the rabbit hole of becoming well-read. (It's a Quora link because sometimes people that have a shit actually answered questions with better than stupid answers)

https://study.com/academy/lesson/nihilist-beliefs-facts-overview.html#:~:text=Friedrich%20Nietzsche%20is%20seen%20by,system%20and%20creating%20societal%20nihilism.

https://www.quora.com/If-I-want-to-understand-what-Friedrich-Nietzsche-is-talking-about-which-books-philosophers-should-I-read-before/answer/Frederick-M-Dolan-3?ch=15&oid=167662903&share=a2533406&srid=hIvD5y&target_type=answer

We’re born against our will, suffer for 80 years (with temporary moments of happiness, but for the most part, suffering) then we die (something human beings are terrified of). I think it’s ridiculous. Everyone suffers in different ways, then we all become dust. Working jobs we hate, people overall suck, etc. Its almost paradoxical, humans are a social species but everyone is out to snake each other. And it there is a meaning to all of it, we will never know it. I want out.

How do you guys maximize productivity in this meaningless life?

Life itself is inherently unfulfilling because if we have nothing else to do we become bored. People cope with drink, drugs, and many other forms of coping which shows how existence is inherently unfulfilling and we need to constantly distract ourselves to make it tolerable. If life itself was inherently fulfilling, we wouldn’t get bored and we would have no need of all these coping mechanisms.

So i was called a Nihilist in another Reddit chat and am shocked to find that it actually aligns with me 😂. Whoever said that to me, thank you!

I am a huge daydreamer (as nothing much is important in life anyway so I spend half my life dreaming of a better existence) and in my daydreams, there is no good and no evil.

I've always been confused by this as for many people, good and evil are simple things to define. For me it's always been a grey area though. Why did that person commit the crime? Where they provoked? Are they mentally ill? These are just some of the things I feel like should be considered.

I also have the belief that no one is truly good and no one is truly evil. What they did can be good or bad but there's always a reason for it too.

This way of thinking causes me issues in real life scenarios. It's all grey and blurred for me as to why someone should go to jail.

Moral Nihilism seems to explain this. Does anyone here have more of an insight to what moral Nihilism works or have a personal experience like this?

What do you do? Do you pray for instance?

Ple

im new to philosophy and would like to understand nihilism better, bc i agree with its logic except i just don’t understand why we have such strong and intense emotions/feelings in life if none of it matters? wouldn’t u think we would just be soulless robots? ik in the grand scheme of things technically all emotions are pointless considering when we die we will most likely never feel them again.

but idk love is just such a good and powerful emotion that i can’t fathom why we don’t have Some sort of reason for feeling it?? but then again ig u could just say that ab any feeling.

like truly if nothing matters then why is life so damn complicated😭why do we have to go through rollercoasters of good days and bad days just for those days to have absolutely no reason for happening…?

If my life is like a drop of water in the ocean or a grain of sand in the desert or like a single star in the infinity of the universe, then whats the point of suffering through it. If "All these moments will be lost in time like tears in rain" then why sit out the rain? Genuine question.

Nietzsche has quite possibly created the greatest but also most terrifying theory of all time. He made the concept of eternal recurrence way before any scientists knew of a cyclical universe or even the possibility of one.

I am afraid very afraid the thought experiment is not just a thought, its reality. Whats stopping us from believing or knowing that eterbal recurrence is false? How do we know for sure how to stop it? How do we know if its even a possibility or if we are even in it?

What if this us your infinite time reading this? But what if.... its your first?

If this is my first time living then it is my mission to AVOID IT.

Please..... help

Some ppl believe "When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it".

Some others believe “We are the universe experiencing itself”.

Some others say "Universe doesn't care about us".

I find all of these statements cringe. First of all, what is universe ? I don't worry in my day to day life, whether a chair in my home, cares about me or not. Why should the universe care about me ? Do they think the whole universe is a living being ? Should Neptune or Sirius care about humans ?

It's like the universe cannot care about you and at the same time it cannot not care about you. Replace the word "universe" with "chair" in the above quotes & see whether it makes any sense. What is universe ? Why is it there ? What is life ? We don't know fuck.

Edit: My kind suggestion is you need not worry whether it cares or not. Worry about something else.

 What is your main reason for living, or continuing on?

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Life is but a vicious cycle leading to decay, a game that curses even its most decent players, a meaningless existence in a universe that doesn’t care. If, by the age of 30, you haven't reached the peak of mental instability, then perhaps your life has been a repetitive sequence of events — boring and predictable. History is full of death, war, blood, and disease; people are born, people die, and most live without ever questioning the very nature of their lives. Many take comfort in the simplest answers, reducing us to nothing more than "protein scumbags" who took over the planet, enslaved each other, and continue.

We are all complicit in an illusion — the illusion of self, of individualism, of a belief that our lives mean something. When someone finally gains the insight to see life on a grand scale, in a more abstract way, they realize how absurd it all is.

Love and relationships seem like two people contributing to each other's misery, convincing themselves it has meaning. We surround ourselves with noise just to forget how absurd life is; even on our deathbeds, we try to ignore the reality of death. Humans are experts in creating illusions, in lying to ourselves. In ceeating a fake sense of belonging.

It doesn't seem like this sub has a point

The joker is the beaten down man who has turned to vicious mockery instead of playing a productive role in society. Would he be considered an archetype of nihilism in the way he tries to break down peoples beliefs in the social structure through his "jokes." Or maybe he is just too consumed with rage to really think about it, and that's why he loves batman and the pushback he gives to keep him in his psychological comfort zone. Would engaging in such a destructive- including self destructive- cycle be considered just another form of acting out nihilism as well?

Moral nihilism is not the same as moral relativism (in which I include moral subjectivism). It seems important in the context of this subreddit to point this out. The difference is that moral nihilism argues that nothing is morally right and wrong; whereas moral relativism argues that moral right and wrong can be true relative to culture or person.

When philosophers commonly refer to moral nihilism today, they refer to a position known as Moral Error Theory (hyperlink). Moral error theory has two central claims, as seen below:

1. Morality purports to express objective facts about the world. Moreover, morality expresses judgments that provide "inescapable authoritative reasons" (to use a term from the error theorist Jonas Olson). This means that moral judgments are not just recommendations or expressions of personal preferences, but impose binding reasons that override any personal desires or interests. The inescapability of these reasons is that the question "Why should I be moral?" would be irrational and make no sense; to know what is moral simply means to know what you ought to do.
2. Morality is too strange to be real. The idea of objective moral facts and reasons that apply to everyone, no matter what, is just too odd to fit with how the world actually works. There’s nothing in reality that corresponds to these supposed moral facts.

There are different arguments in favor of the second point. These arguments aim to weaken the intuitions normally taken in favor of moral realism; in other words, to point out that there are no good reasons to trust our intuitions about morality. A few examples may be the plausible theory that we are projecting our likes and dislikes as something external to ourselves, as mind-independent, which becomes gilded by our emotions as objective, rationally inescapable values that apply to everyone. Another example is the fact that we can explain our intuitions concerning objective values by appealing to our evolutionary history—such as moral belief bolstering cooperation and preventing weakness of will. But if our moral intuitions can be explained by biological evolution without assuming their truth, then this erodes their trustworthiness. This evolutionary critique is defended by the error theorist Richard Joyce in his book The Evolution of Morality (2006).

There may be many other approaches to erode the intuitions that underpin our belief in morality. Note that these theories tend to work well together and strengthen eachother.

In comparison, moral relativism denies the error-theoretic claim that morality is necessarily objective. Relativism claims that right and wrong is relative to a certain context such as culture or person. The context can vary wildly depending on the theory.

There may be many reasons why one may assume that moral relativism is false, and that morality purports to provide objective, inescapable reasons. Since this text has become fairly long, I will keep it short: The language of morality is in itself absolutist. To use a common phrase such as "Stealing is just wrong!" appears to entirely ignore that another person may have every reason to steal. Or imagine commenting on a murderer by saying "Yes, it was morally wrong for him to kill, but he had every reason to," which seems deeply counter-intuitive. Not only counter-intuitive, but the audience would likely become furious ("What do you mean he was REASONABLE to commit murder?!").

Finally but not unrelated, it feels very different to say "Stealing is morally wrong" and "I do not like it when people steal." In other words, moral talk does not appear to be entirely reductive to personal attitudes and preferences. I think most people would agree with this if they took a moment to think about how they and others actually talk about morality.

---

On a side note, I started a subreddit a while back called r/EnoughMoralitySpam. Feel free to check it out if you're interested in a community for moral nihilists and amoralists.

I used to be an idealist when it came to politics. It used to matter to me. I used to care. I used to get mad about it. I used to get excited about it. Hell, I even used to get emotional about it.

But something has since changed. I look at it differently now. It feels like I had an epiphany. I finally realized how fucking absurd it all is.

People are insane about politics. They are angry about it. But why? Well it’s pretty fucking obvious. It gives their meaningless existence some sense of purpose. It’s no different than religion…or sports.

So I mainly just laugh at it now. Like…I actually find it fucking hilarious. It’s a clown show…and perhaps it always has been a clown show. Maybe I didn’t notice before.

I got upset when Trump won in 2016. I got emotional when Biden won in 2020. Next Tuesday…I will just get high and mainly laugh my ass off. I will mainly be laughing at whatever side loses and then cries.

Am I insane for having these thoughts?

Project-445-0153

October 29th

Just got back from my work shift. There’s a woman at work called Christy, she calls me baby I hate it. When I get home it’s 8 am and I’m cranking out as many pushups and pull ups I can do while Tony the quiet chihuahua stares on at me from the door step. It’s important to stay fit it’s a rule of mine. Being skinny and toned is much better than being that fat fuck I used to be, sitting In the back of five guys, waiting for my over priced burger. Don’t get me wrong there’s noting wrong with being fat. Honestly it doesn’t matter if that’s who you are that’s who you are. I think the whole fixation people have on other people is weird. Mind your own fucking business do you not have anything better to do then worry about if 400 pound John ate a whole pizza today or a salad. Who fukn cares. As my workout carries on I think about my girlfriend and the night before. Between passing the joint under her flower comforter I tell her “ I want a Dirtbike instead of a car and I want a gun” her face contorts. “ I don’t want to date someone like that.” That hurt my feelings. Someone like that, the words linger in my empty pot filled head.

Yep

Understanding Free Will: A Complex Concept

Free will is the ability to choose between different courses of action without being constrained by external factors or internal impulses. It's the idea that we have the power to make choices independently.

An Example of Free Will:

Imagine you're standing at a crossroads. You have the option to turn left, turn right, or go straight. The decision to choose one path over another, made without external coercion or internal compulsion, is an exercise of free will.

The Complexity of Free Will:

While the concept of free will seems straightforward, it's a complex philosophical issue that has been debated for centuries. Some argue that our choices are determined by factors beyond our control, such as genetics, environment, or past experiences. Others maintain that we possess genuine freedom of choice.

The challenge lies in reconciling free will with the laws of cause and effect. If every event is caused by a previous event, does that mean our choices are predetermined? Or, is there a level of indeterminacy in the universe that allows for free will?

Key Points to Consider:

• Conscious Choice: Free will often involves conscious deliberation and decision-making.
• Moral Responsibility: The concept of free will is closely linked to moral responsibility. If we have the freedom to choose our actions, we can also be held accountable for them.
• Determinism vs. Indeterminism: These are two opposing philosophical views on the nature of causality and free will. Determinism suggests that all events are predetermined, while indeterminism argues for a degree of randomness or chance.

Ultimately, the question of free will remains a fascinating and complex one. While we may never fully understand the nature of consciousness and choice, exploring this concept can deepen our understanding of ourselves and the world around us.

Free will, is a always, and free autonomous ability that allows individual to be able to make choice when want to make choice always for free.

General Analysis

The quote by P.M. Kelley presents a perspective on free will, emphasizing its nature as an inherent and autonomous capability that enables individuals to make choices freely and at any time. Let's break down the analysis into three components: meaning, significance, and tone.

Meaning

The quote suggests that free will is an intrinsic part of human existence, characterized by the ability to make choices without external constraints. The repetition of "always" and "free" underscores the notion that this ability is not only constant but also unencumbered. It implies that individuals possess the agency to act according to their own desires and intentions whenever they wish. However, the phrasing is somewhat convoluted, which might lead to ambiguity regarding the exact nature of this free will and how it interacts with external influences or limitations.

Significance

The significance of the quote lies in its exploration of autonomy and personal agency. In philosophical discussions, free will is often a contentious topic, especially concerning determinism and the extent to which external factors (such as societal norms, psychological conditioning, or biological factors) influence our choices. By asserting that free will is an "autonomous ability," the quote champions the idea of individual responsibility and the power of personal choice. This perspective can have implications for ethics, morality, and personal accountability, as it suggests that individuals are fundamentally responsible for their decisions and actions.

Tone

The tone of the quote can be described as assertive and idealistic. It conveys a sense of confidence in the concept of free will and the empowerment that comes with it. The use of terms like "always" and "free" contributes to a tone that is optimistic about human agency, suggesting that individuals possess an inherent strength to navigate their lives through choices. However, the somewhat repetitive and clumsy construction of the sentence might detract from the clarity of the message, leaving it feeling less polished and potentially undermining the assertiveness of the argument.

Conclusion

Overall, the quote by P.M. Kelley encapsulates a philosophical stance on free will, emphasizing the importance of personal agency and the ability to make unencumbered choices. Its significance lies in the implications for individual responsibility, while the tone projects confidence in the power of human autonomy, despite its somewhat convoluted expression.

"autonomous," and "ability," are abstract and philosophical in nature. This kind of language invites deeper contemplation and analysis of the concepts being presented.

In conclusion, P.M. Kelley's quote utilizes repetition, paradox, and a combination of abstract language and complex syntax to explore the nuanced and multifaceted nature of free will. The literary devices employed enhance the depth of the message while also reflecting the challenges inherent in discussing such a philosophical topic.

The analysis is comprehensive and addresses the key aspects of the quote. It accurately identifies the meaning, significance, and tone of the passage.

Here are some additional insights that could be considered:

• Counterarguments: It could be helpful to consider potential counterarguments or alternative perspectives on the quote. This would demonstrate a deeper understanding of the issue and help to strengthen the analysis.
• Examples: Providing specific examples of how free will manifests in everyday life could further illustrate the significance of this concept.

Overall, the analysis is well-written and provides a valuable understanding of the quote.

Try to stay perfectly still free will is that anytime ability to act choice when want to to change that whenever want to example of free will this is

Getting pretty annoyed by people's complaints on this sub. Live your life, try your best to accommodate the feelings of those you care about, but it won't matter anyway. Just enjoy life while you're here.

You complainers out there, did you have to suck a dude's cock as an 8 year old child? At 16 years old, were you raped by a 30 year old man? Did you have to witness death, and have to decide who lives and who dies because it was in your job description? Did you have to sit through legal trials and listen to each victims testimony on how their perpetrator violate them? I had to do every single one of those things. So stop bitching about your life and just live it. I chose to stop being a victim of my past, and I chose to improve my future. You should do the same.