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this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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chapotraphouse
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I'm actually extremely mad that nihilists are using the pale blue dot this way.
What I always took away from it is we're all the same. The pale blue dot is us, not just humans, but the whole biosphere is all an interconnected "us" that unites Earth as the only world to harbor life in a huge and lonely universe. There is nowhere else.
Or as Sagan said: "To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known." That shit makes me tear up, still, 16 years out of highschool when I first heard it.
To flip this around as "lol no one and nothing matters" is an abomination, a total perversion of the pale blue dot.
These people are not well.
I mean, sure. Art is open to interpretation and all, but I think "lol no one and nothing matters" would be an odd takeaway from pale blue dot. Do you genuinely believe that that's the message that a generic astronomy account is intentionally trying to communicate? If so, why? I'm not aware of any global political groups with power that are motivated by an adolescent misunderstanding of nihilism.
That's very clearly the message: you don't matter on the scale of the Earth, everyone disappears when you zoom out far enough.
And that's exactly the ethos of so-called effective altruism, longtermism, extropianism, etc. The idea is that you should zoom out and ignore all the individual people because they don't matter on a large scale, instead we should focus on growing the economy for a technological-utopian future where the number of humans can grow exponentially by living in space and trying to colonize all parts of the universe.
This dominates Silicon Valley and has become a driving force in the tech industry.
Yes. I agree this is what it's communicating. This seems straightforward, empirically correct, and philosophically basic. Things look different when you look at them from a different perspective. Isn't it interesting to look outside ourselves for a moment and consider things from a different point of view.
I'm sure you can find people in real-life who believe those things, and maybe even some who will admit to knowing what the fuck those specific terms mean. I'm sure some of those people even like looking at pictures of space. I'm sure some of those people look at pictures of space and think to themselves "all that will be mine some day! I shall rise above the puny mortals and claim my rightful place among the stars! galaxies will tremble at my unrivaled splendor!"
I just don't believe that the Venn diagram of people who like looking at space pics and people who are seriously committed to leading a post-human space empire is a circle. I know a lot of people who like looking at pictures of space and considering how small we are on a cosmic scale, and I can think of maybe a few people in real life that are making serious financial decisions about fucking the planet to colonize Mars. For that Venn diagram to be a circle, it would require most of the people I've ever interacted with during my life to all secretly hold the same specific and detailed political philosophy that they've deliberately kept hidden from me. When I find myself seriously considering things like that, I remind myself to go outside and touch grass. Or look at pictures of space.
Why are you talking to me like that?
This isn't just a space pic. This is, specifically, a nihilist space meme. I think the venn diagram in this case has a lot of overlap.
I reject that!
Everyone matters. When you zoom out, we're all the same. We're all connected. An injury to one is an injury to all.
What this meme does and what you are doing is flipping that around to then say "When you zoom out, we're all irrelevant. We're all nothing. No one matters at scale." I refuse! Every single person matters to all of us, because we're all the same. When you zoom out you can't tell us apart, all you can see is a pale blue dot. That's us. That doesn't mean that no one matters at scale, that means everyone matters as much as everyone else. No one is more important or more valuable or more human, we are all the same, we all matter equally. We are our home.
I refuse to accept that no one matters, no matter what scale we are talking about. Every single person matters as part of that pale blue dot.
I apologize. I was going for levity, not insult. It's easy, in niche internet subcultures like this, to fall into the idea that everyone outside the subculture all uniformly believes the same specific thing. I'm not immune. Many internet subcultures devote a lot of energy into collectively creating a hypothetical amalgamation of everything they personally dislike, then posting about how everyone else is just like the bad thing chimera. It's the most reliable way to drive engagement. Look how popular /r/ShitDumpPeopleSay style communities are in every online medium. I find that most normal people tend to have diverse, inconsistent, and largely unexamined beliefs about most things.
I agree in spirit with all of this. "We all matter equally" doesn't mean "no one matters". I don't believe not individually "mattering" on a planetary scale means that humans don't "matter" at all: I see it as a rejection of anthropocentrim. I'm not the most important thing in the world. It came before me. It will be here after I'm gone. It wasn't created to service my personal desires. It's the only home of uncountable living creatures, older and more numerous than me, and they all have value too. I am not so much more important than every other living thing on this planet that destroying our shared home is acceptable just because I got what I needed out of it. Other things live here too, and because I don't have any more inherent value than any of them, I have a responsibility to be a good neighbor and steward of the only home any of us have.
I'm pretty far removed from taking Philosophy 101 so forgive my ignorance, but I wanted to speak on nihilism. I also haven't read a ton of any specific nihilist philosopher's work, so I'm going off the broad strokes as I understand them. Most people use "nihilism" in the way that most people use "anarchy": as an epithet that broadly means chaotic, disordered, or without purpose. Nihilism, like Anarchy, means a lot of specific and conflicting things depending on which particular author you're reading. My reductive understanding of the broad umbrella of nihilist philosophy boils down to two points. Point 1: Life has no intrinsic meaning. That's about as far as most people get. They hear that and go, "See, that sounds bad! [insert supernatural thing here] gives life meaning and tells us the one correct way all must live!" The ignored second part as I understand it is Point 2: Because life has no intrinsic meaning, we must create our own meaning. Some people hear that second part too and decide that, on the whole, it's not for them. They prefer to believe that something outside themselves gives their life meaning and defines how they should live. Fine by me! I'm not the philosophy police! I've just genuinely never heard of a self-described nihilist (outside of literal children) who claimed their own understanding of nihilism to be the first point, but not the second. The only adults I have ever seen use "nihilism" that way are using it as an epithet to explain what people they don't like must believe in order to be so evil.
It's the same way most people use Anarchist. "That person doesn't care about anything, and they just want the world to burn because they're an anarchist!" I'm a Marxist-Leninist, so have some significant disagreements with Anarchist political philosophy as I understand it. That said, I don't believe any self-described anarchists would characterize their belief system as "basically just, like, the Joker, man", even if that's what most people probably think. When someone says "the problem with society is there's all these anarchists that don't care about anything and just wanna fuck shit up", I don't think that's a very accurate way to explain the world, both because there aren't that many Anarchists shaping world politics, and the ones that exist wouldn't describe their own beliefs as "fuck everything! nothing matters!"
Coming back to nihilism, I think plenty of people can find the idea that life has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we make for ourselves to be freeing. They can know being their authentic self and doing what makes them happy is just as valid as anything else, and that they're not "failing" at life by not conforming to the mold that their family, or god, or society sets for them. A woman isn't "failing" at her "intrinsic purpose" as a wife and mother if she doesn't want to do any of that shit, for example. Any way she chooses to live is an equally valid way of being a woman. I can see why that might not resonate with some people, or that some might be frightened rather than hopeful at the idea of defining your own purpose, and I think that's fine. A philosophy is only useful if it helps you navigate your own life. People have different perspectives, and I generally think we should try to understand one another's differences rather than imposing our own on others.
joke: please do not yell at me
...except when it comes to the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism, the one true path to proletarian liberation! All revisionists get the wall!tl;dr Nihilism: it's about perspective
It sure has been a long time since Philosophy 101 huh? I'm pretty sure you are confusing existentialism with existential nihilism.
Existentialism is the belief that we construct the meaning of our lives through our own awareness, will, and reason. Nihilism, on the other hand, is the assertion that there is no meaning to life including whatever meaning we try to make for ourselves and that it is pointless to try to give life meaning. The man climbs the tree because he wants to, there's no deeper meaning behind it because meaning doesn't exist. He's not making a new meaning for himself, he's just doing what he wants because there's no reason not to and nothing is stopping him.
I'm sympathetic to the nihilist view, but rather than reject giving life meaning as pointless I just recognize that it is absurd and then do it anyway.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy, yeah?
And now we return to that pale blue dot. That's home. That's us. I choose to give that meaning and acknowledge that I am choosing to do so, despite the meaningless universe in which we find ourselves. I am part of something bigger than myself, and so are you, and together we give the world meaning. Nihilism rejects meaning, and I don't think you're actually a nihilist.
I'll confess, you're probably right that I'm conflating some stuff from nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. It's been a while, and my understanding is that they were always very overlapping and informed by one another. I've just never met or even heard of a real person explaining their own beliefs in literal "We believe in nothing, Lebowski!" terms outside of memes or epithets, so it's difficult for me to jump to the conclusion that it must be what someone intends from one instance with plausible ambiguity. Accepting the premise that someone does strictly believe "nothing means anything; full stop", I don't see how that would be an action motivating belief. If "nothing means anything" is the full scope of how you relate to the world, then where's the benefit in persuading anyone else? If nihilism definitionally prohibits a "therefore" after the proposition that "nothing matters", then I don't see how it's not self-excluding. Nobody can exist in the world in a perfect state of inaction, and if "nothing matters so make your own meaning" leaves the definitionally pure confines of nihilism, then I don't see how "only I matter" or "only I and [subgroup]" matter isn't just as much a departure from that definition.
I've never called myself a nihilist because to me the "nothing matters" or "nothing has intrinsic meaning" part of the equation always seemed like an immaterial meta-issue. If you can't objectively test for whether or not something matters, or quantify the degree to which one thing matters over another, then "nothing matters" and "everything matters an infinite amount" are functionally indistinguishable to me. It's what you materially do with the motivation that I'm interested in. I don't think "bully more people on the internet" is a particularly worthwhile thing to do or encourage generally, no matter the thought process behind it. To the extent that one's "political action" is limited to online bullying, I feel like "people that talk about science", "people that talk about philosophy", and "people that don't believe a god" are pretty poor proxy groups for the people in real life that actually have the political power to make the world worse, unless you're identifying "intellectuals" rather than "capitalists" as the final boss of class struggle. It just feels like, if you want to make a reasonably safe materially insignificant net positive contribution to the class struggle without working too hard or thinking too much, you'd be better off shoplifting a pack of gum from a business, or throwing a rock at the most expensive house in your neighborhood or something.
You're right, “only I matter” and “only I and [subgroup] matter” are not nihilistic either, but that's that's not what this meme is implying or what I'm rejecting. A truly nihilistic stance is "I don't matter, no one matters, nothing matters, and there's no reason to create meaning because that doesn't matter either." If I ask "should I kill myself" then nihilism can not provide me a reason to survive. Earth before, Earth after, nothing changes. That's why Camus considered suicide to be the only really serious philosophical problem.
Now of course, nihilists aren't necessarily suicidal (although it's not uncommon). The nihilist philosophy tells us to reject meaning and to pursue personal pleasure and satisfaction and self actualization i.e. the Will to Power, not because that is the meaning of life, but because in a meaningless universe there's no reason to do anything else. The person who can achieve this becomes the Übermensch, able to overcome the limits of religion and reason to pursue ambition and no longer burdened by the sorrows of ordinary people.
And again, this isn't something that gives life meaning. It's a supposedly rational solution to the question "should I kill myself" i.e. the Übermensch wants to live for life itself and does not need a reason to do so or to find meaning for life to be worth living.
All of this is to say that, yes, real people believe this stuff and they should be discouraged from doing so whenever possible.