Nihilism

May be triggering. You're warned.

I've read that faith increases recovery from depression by 70 percent and wonder if there's some sort of equivalent for faith that could have the same effect for nonbelievers. I've tried hypnosis, but every thought of God depresses me.

For a while, faith helped me recover. Now, I still more or less assume there is or probably could be something that evolved into a God based on pure logic. According to my logic, God, if there is one, would be a unification of an infinite number of extraterrestrial societies across an infinitely large and old universe, each of which would have evolved to a point that they would have achieved a technological singularity.

The problem is that this hypothesis gives me not a modicum of hope. If it is incorrect, then everyone in the universe is doomed either to return to nothingness or reincarnate in infinite circles. If it is correct, then God is a goddamn bastard who relishes in our suffering. Yeah, I've heard the cliché that "the world couldn't be perfect," but if every entity were unified with absolutely every possible quale or experience in the universe through infinite love, as God would be, then the universe would effectively be perfect.

However it may be, I could never feel anything but hate for something omnipotent which would allow infinite suffering to happen. If you think that the suffering in the universe isn't that bad, then you haven't seen enough of it.

Last fall, I kept having nightmares of people dying in the most agonizing ways, and lost my faith. Even in my faith, I've seen so much suffering that I couldn't possibly believe anymore. The Universe will just keep letting me suffer even if I go through the deepest levels of hell. The Universe feels dead to me, if not worse, undead — a walking dead. It feels as though the whole Universe is a rotting corpse. If the Universe is so terrible, I cannot imagine any way there could possibly be a meaning to anything at all I might do, and I cannot be more than a fungus feasting on the corpse's flesh. I've become so embittered by the mere existence of suffering in the universe that I cannot believe in anything anymore, and I cannot bring myself to truly love anything or anyone in life. There is only terror left at how random and meaningless everything happens.

I'm sick of not understanding why the universe is so horrible, sick of trying to guess at the answer never to know if it's anywhere close to the truth. I'm sick of living in ignorance and groping in the dark. I'm sick of living in this huge automated machinery that is indifferent for whatever suffering its ticking might happen to bring about.

Unless all suffering that happens to absolutely anyone happens solely by their own choice and THEIR CHOICE ALONE, I cannot forgive life for its crimes. Nor would it make it any less diabolical if suffering was determined by one's expectations or karma. It should be OUR OWN CHOICE ALONE, no matter what, but how could such infinite ordeals possibly be by our own choice? Starvation, parasites, mutilations… Every time I think of such things, I feel the pain as though it were in myself. That's the reason why I've tried not to care about anyone else but myself, because if I do, I can't lock out their torments. Recently I read about bound feet and I can still sometimes feel the crushing of my own feet. It's the schizotypal PD, I suppose. Too vivid an imagination. But should I dampen all my feelings just to be safe? Bah! The very thought makes me cringe.

It would be bearable to know of the suffering in the world if there wasn't any more suffering out there than there is in my own life, the "mediocre" pain of a major clinical depression. But there's plenty more of ordeals that are infinitely worse — dismemberment, disease, torture, murder,… No, if the universe condemns innocents to such infernos without their own choice then I cannot help but scream at its existence in hatred for as long as I continue to exist in any form but rotting meat full of maggots. I cannot help.

There doesn't seem to be any way out of this quandary. I've tried forgetting, but it doesn't help. The thought of how the universe produces so much suffering keeps following me. How can it not? Every time I am in suffering or see anyone else in suffering in any way, or even think of it, I feel that there is nothing that brought it about but randomness! Coincidence! Does nothing care in this prison even when people are in the throes of gruesome deaths? Oops! Mass murder. Oops, someone got its legs blasted off. Oops, someone screaming through the streets in the flames of napalm. Oops, someone groaning with the little lungs left after they've been crushed in the rubble of an earthquake. Oops, impaled from perineum all the way to the neck.

Oops.

Praised be thy name. Hallelujah.

I've banished these thoughts for about five months now, but they merely festered in my subconscious. What do I do? How do I get rid of it? The nihilism, the despair. How can I live with this?

This has to be one of the most interesting posts that I have read for a long time here. I have often wondered about this topic too, but always came to the conclusion that there is no faith that can 'rescue' non-believers, except for a belief or faith in their own abilities. You should ask yourself this question, Oblomov: Why do you feel the need to ascribe to something in order to be 'rescued'?; Why can't you 'rescue' yourseklf through your own self-belief. I have generated/created self-belief by saying to myself that I am an important person, and that I will never let any other person control me.

Nihilism is arguably a belief system in itself though, yes? If you must, find your sense of freedom from Nihilism. There are many out there who 'religiously' follow Nihilism (pun intended), just as other people religiously follow Christianity or Islam.

Kevin

Thanks a lot for the reply, Chucky.

Nihilism is pretty much desperate per definition. A constructive counterpart would be existentialism. I've very much tried that. It's something, true, something more auspicious than nihilism, at least. It still doesn't work nearly as much as faith, though.

This is about something very big. You can't just solve that by belief in yourself. Your self can't protect you from problems like the infinite suffering without purpose, the total meaninglessness of fate or the endless oblivion of death that loom up in the beliefs of nihilism.

May I just say that you are thinking too much about these things. Try to imagine there being no life or death, okay? There are no such boundaries in the Universe. You are just a form of energy that moves around and interacts with other forms of energy. When you 'die', all of your energy is still there, but it becomes distributed around. This mind that we have is nothing... ...If you have thoughts in your head, empty them now and just 'be' in existence and be as fluid as you want to be.

A good way to deal with strong emotions is to detach yourself from them, which is what you're doing I think. I have no trouble with believing in god, although I believe pain is a illusion and don't believe in hell or punishment. Punishment occurs on Earth, which is a form of natural karma, where bad action attracts bad results. eg. committing a crime results in punishment through guilt or prison.

Actually, when I found there was no way out of my nihilism, it was quite easy to stop thinking about it and just experience. It's not that the thoughts themselves bring me down, I think — you just live in an entirely different world when you no longer have the feeling there's a higher order to ensure you that there is always hope and destiny, that no matter what happens, it's okay. It's not that existentialism brings me down, but rather that faith gave me hope.

It also made me feel less lonely. But even if there is a God, how could I long to feel connected with it if it loves my/our suffering just as much as our happiness?

The suffering of others is not something I think about nowadays. I just feel it as though it were my own when I see it. It can't be helped. The only thing I can do is to avoid seeing others' suffering at all.

Yet there should be some way… even Nietzsche had what he called a "weak belief" in his later years which kept him going. A belief that there might be a God, possibly.

My belief was very similar, open to both possibilities (there being a God or not) as being equal (as there is no way our human minds can fathom such complex matters). It was merely comforting to assume "what if there is a God?" as one would do in a daydream, without quite knowing or caring if it is true; for you, it's true then. You can believe with the heart and yet not with the mind; with the mind, I've been an agnostic all my life, while my heart was in turns nihilistic and believing.

Now, my answer to that question "what if there is a God?" has become quite a lot darker, and I would almost hope that there is not a God at all which would see our suffering and not leave us our own choice whether we deserve or want it. If I ask myself "what if there is a God," then I can only feel indifference or a deep hatred for that hypothetical God, as it does not seem to interfere with nor care about anything that happens in the Universe and leaves us to struggle alone, even seems to love to see us struggle.

Nor can I still believe in any kind of sense or order or logic in the Universe in any other, non-divine way, as in Singularitarianism — and that's worse.

Logically, there appear to be three possibilities as to where we will eventually go after our deaths: nihility, infinity and finity. In the first case, we go nowhere at all and anything we might do here will serve us only in this existence. In the second case, we unite with God, either instantly or after a series of rebirths in some way or other. In the third case, we keep reincarnating at infinitum, so that we're trapped in an infinite cycle in which we would, given the nature of infinity, eventually end up in every possible situation imaginable. In one of my reincarnations I might be Hitler or a rapist, for instance. What sense does it still make then, to try and become a better person, except for in this life alone?
And worse, given enough time, I would go through endless suffering and even cause endless suffering to others. Worse still, given enough time, everything would also eventually happen again in an identical or quasi-identical way.

With my faith lost, I can no longer believe that I will eventually achieve infinity. Thus the only possibilities that are left to me are both blood-curdling: either nothing at all or eternal repetition of everything that has ever happened.

I say this not because I still think about this often, but to give an idea of why I've eventually come to reach such state of aimlessness and lost all sense of direction.

Thanks for the replies.

God is not a bastard that enjoys our suffering. Human beings are by far the most arrogant beings in all creation. That we consider humanity the pinnacle of creation. Yes, God gave us free will. And that God allows free will to continue, regardless of our actions, until we actually approach 'the end', in which the world would finish quickly. But you know this. Have you forgotten that God created other beings than humans which are also subject to free will? That there are angels, and all sorts of beings in heaven which are far superior to mankind, and also obey the tennants of free will. When God judges us by free will, it is an extension of what exists in heaven. God permitted angels to chose whether to worship Him or not. God permitted everything the ability of free will because He is just. We argue that if God was a good God, He would interfere. But if He ended free will for humans, the beings in heaven would see that God is different. God is as He is because He is perfect. That His followers in heaven do so because He is perfect in His ways. God isn't about to save human beings and destroy His morals, when He didn't do this to stop various angels from leaving. If you believe in faith, you would know that there is a final war against good and evil. That all beings are observers, that they must choose between good, or evil- while all are witnesses to various attrocities in their own times. The battle is essentially over God being perfect, God being Just. And so it is a contradition for God to swoop down and fix everything to make humans happy while they invent new ways to pervert his laws. That by God doing this, He would be stating to all that He fears the powers of evil, that He must intervene otherwise He would lose due to the increasing strength of evil. The 'end' happens only when Satan has obtained as much power as he can attain, and all that is left is the hunting down of the last believers of God. He ends the world out of mercy for the few that still worship Him in times far more nightmarish than those we currently experience. I just wanted to clarify this one point.

I think nihilism might be the "truth" so to speak, the unbearable truth that is incompatible with the human condition. Animals are nihilists, I suppose. They don't really have thoughts, right? They just live, and die, never asking why or how, etc. Humans are of the similar breed in the sense that we are born, we live, and we die. Unlike animals, however, humans have "awareness" or whatever. We ask questions and desire answers where perhaps, there are none to be had. Religion imo is for crazies; I don't blame them for wanting meaning, but I think theres something really wrong with them, even if they are "happy". Science hasn't really been able to answer everything, or even alot, I guess. Plus, "scientific fact" is so often changing, isn't it. And science probably couldn't answer the "why", because maybe there isn't a "why".

In order to make the ride more bearable or for whatever reasons, we assign meaning to our perceptions. We fill our heads with illusions of love, truth, meaning, reason, etc. I lack religious faith, and am able to admit that the only thing I know for sure is that I am going to die. So, I opened my heart to nihilism, the meaninglessness of the universe, only to find that I was living like a dead man, except I was merely spiritually dead. Corporeally I was still here, and what was left? UTTER AGONY.

Nihilism is to my mind pretty much incompatible with our humanity. As for myself, being a skeptic, I indulge in few illusions. But I do indulge in a few, because that seems to be what makes life worthing, at least to me.

My advice to YOU is to not get to hung up on "truth", because it twists and convolutes everything (religion, fanatics). You seem to be a skeptic, so maybe find a few illusions that work for you and ride them until you die. Its what we all do, I guess.

As for the poster above me, I think that he is deluded with referene to his notions of "god". But who knows. He/she probably thinks I'm wrong/crazy/etc with regards to my atheism/agnosticism. Its a perfect example of the human desire for meaning and purpose in a universe that is absolutely devoid of any of those things.

In response to something someone said earlier, I have found value in abandoning hope. Its bittersweet though.

The thing about people who quote abstract ideas regarding infinity and percentages is that these things are defined by science. Arts, as they are proposed, is a fantasy that is just as perverse as religion. The only difference is that religion has provided miracles, while the authors of literature imagine things. When people talk about statistics and numbers, they very things they talk about are founded in science, in mathematics, the very things that they don't believe in because 'science' is wrong. You cannot see a particle, and you cannot see a soul, and so you have to create some sort of idealistic notion of what is there, without proof. You can punch yourself in the face, I mean you are there. There is substances there, there is a tangible existence. yes, science is changing all the time, but the refinements don't change the fact that we are humans. A new theory in science isn't going to change the appearance of human beings. A circle isn't instantly going to transfigure into a square. WHen you talk about God and religion, you use the bible as reference, and not the watered down crap on tv. It makes life easier when it comes to judging your own faith.

The concepts of logic is founded mathematically, which is defined by science. One would argue that 1+1 = 2, and this is a 'truth'. However, science, as it is, defines truth. Nihilism defines truth as a binary operator. It is either right or wrong- however, it uses the pretense of logic. By changing the rules of logic, which can easily be done, as its foundation is in the mathematical sciences, we can change truth into a tertiary or quartic operator. Logic is definable by anything mathematicians want it to be, and the base can be anything defined as truth. For instance, a tertiary operator solves the 'infinite paradox' that is found in the binary statement "I am lying to you right now". That it simply exists as a third state, which doesn't mean 'infinite', but merely an evaluation from the standard, which is something that infinity can alter. "definition from the standard" reflects on the fact that an asymptote, is defined as vertically infinite, or essentially 1/0. That by changing the definition of 0 from nothing to a standard, infinite is something different. This argument is relevent in the 'artistic mind' as it is not 'purest maths', and yet even in science this is somewhat verified, as zero is often used as a standard instead of meaning 'nothing'. Such that the definition of infinity itself is generated from the binary belief of truth, which isn't 'etched in stone', by the debate that 'science is garbage'.