It’s different, how an individual–especially a philosopher, trained how he could be trained in times of crises–faces the threat of nihilism and how it is faced generally, for members of a social body generally under its throes. While the former holds his head above, or at least at a distance–two or three centuries worth of distance, Nietzsche suggested–from the trends of the day, the latter is but another name for the dominant trend, and when these trends are related to meaning, the mores of how to live one’s life, the convention of the wherefore or of the establishment of desiderata, nihilism is lived, that is, it’s messy, it’s cruel, it’s violent en masse.
Of course the philosopher could live with nihilism, could find himself beat down, in fact, by its messiness and chaos, could live it like all really important questions. But there is this difference: the philosopher may still find it questionable, nihilism, or the loss of one meaning as it applies to–what? As it concerns–whom? So questionable is the total loss of meaning that for a philosopher it could be a breath of an episode of one of his days, not this ad nauseam of centuries, entire ages of humanity. A philosopher may wake up from nihilism as from a bad dream, or come to wear it like a badge. In fact, the latter seems what society is willing to do, but again how differently! He may wear it as an emblem that he was able to question all the way up to, including, embracing, the question of meaning itself, where meaning–no matter how obvious and present, no matter how it is tied to our very lives, even our biological lives–is vulnerable, questionable, mortal. How different this is than the mere entertainment with destruction and ambiguity we face currently, this current of post truth and post humanism! There we question–and it is noble we question, it is ever noble we question!–but we do not question–with nobility!
We have the example of Nietzsche–we have the example, too, of Nagarjuna, and of the dark nights of the souls of saints, those who felt close to God and to meaning–of someone who has lived nihilism through to its depths and arrived on the other side. In the span of thirty years he was able to bring himself, if not the solace, then the courage of a new viewpoint after the greatest blanket of meaning had been ripped from him. If only we could wish for such overcoming in the sweep of society, in the promulgated expectations and collective schemes invested in by the great many! Well–could we? That is, is there a way to, if not relieve the process–for the process of meaning’s loss is as important for the society as it is for the individual–be perhaps sped along, and brought to a–an affirmative, let’s hope!–conclusion?
Love the Dust 