1. Overcoming nihilism, as a desideratum for life, is itself a nihilistic gesture. But even more: our ever getting into the posture of meaning, and, when the going got tough, maintaining that posture, has a nihilistic tinge to it. It’s as though life wears a thick garment and we get lost in its folds. Or it’s as if from whatever angle life as it happens approaches, whether from the back or from the front, or from some side, it is pounced upon by a dissatisfied animal–for nihilism at bottom is nothing more than this: dissatisfaction writ large–goading it to become this or that. Rather than letting it be what it is, not a nothingness–oh, how much definition this word has come to have for us!–nor even a something concrete and obvious, but an oncoming uncertainty, a resplendent indefiniteness! If life gives its secret in pronouncing that life is composed of constant overcomings, a deeper secret of life is: there is nothing to overcome. Let the others have nihilism, if that’s what life comes down to for them. While we, we shall have–this paradox, let it stand there as it is, an even uncannier guest than so-called nihilism, the paroxysm and fugitive dream of a certain conception of–and demand for!–desirability. No salvation, no escape from any of this–only encounter.
Love the Dust 