We're Doomed. Now What?

[qcrisp]

I've just read this article and found it thought-provoking:

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com...now-what/?_r=0

I don't have any comments about it myself at the moment, but am certainly interested in people's thoughts.

The Earth itself will still be here. Our chattering hominid carcasses just won't be constantly raping it anymore. If that instills any degree of solace in anyone, that at least the planet itself won't be destroyed, by all means.
After all, the average span of a species' longevity is only 1.5 million years.

[Cnev]

Why is it so hard to just......be? What is so interesting about all this human drama? I'm so sick and tired of hearing all these mindnumblingly stupid designations people define themselves by, and as long as we keep holding on to these self-important delusions of separatism we're ultimately never going to get anywhere( assuming there is actually anywhere to get to, which I don't think there is). Everyone has something to prove, for whatever empty and hollow reason and the imagination can pretty much validate anything the mind or "heart" wants. I mean ####, was there not a video posted on these forums not too long ago of a woman given a platform to speak about how communicating with correct grammar is racist? Come on. It's never going to get any better when you have this many people trying to validate their competing delusions with more delusions. Consciousness is the curse that pits itself against itself, and it will go on forever and ever until people face the reality that they are nothing special and that their thoughts and feeling are just as illusory as the next persons.

I do find hipster nihilism to be fairly interesting though, because I think it's shows a slow, subtle and perhaps subconscious recognition among younger folks that this whole human struggle is ultimately absurd and not necessarily worth the ridiculous effort. I hope it continues.

[teguififthzeal]

Why is it so hard to just......be? What is so interesting about all this human drama? I'm so sick and tired of hearing all these mindnumblingly stupid designations people define themselves by, and as long as we keep holding on to these self-important delusions of separatism we're ultimately never going to get anywhere( assuming there is actually anywhere to get to, which I don't think there is).


I agree with that but there's the suffering of others to be concerned with.

If you just leave everything for the next generation to deal with you are increasing the world's suffering, however sincere the nihilism.

[ToALonelyPeace]

The conclusion seems to be tacked on.

Quote

We need to learn to see not just with Western eyes but with Islamic eyes and Inuit eyes, not just with human eyes but with golden-cheeked warbler eyes, coho salmon eyes, and polar bear eyes, and not even just with eyes at all but with the wild, barely articulate being of clouds and seas and rocks and trees and stars.

Precisely because we cannot, and have never been able to see from the eyes of "golden-cheeked warbler", "coho salmon", and "polar bear" that we are in this quagmire.

Somehow the author thinks that acceptance of how ####ed we are would bring us together to solve 'the problem'. The thing is...people know. Pollution, fishes dying, ice melting, oil sea, extinction of many species...we read the news, we get it. Unfortunately, we have an ever-present problem we always have to take care of first: the human problem. Wars, unemployment, immigration, fascism on the rise, increase surveillance...

[Pharpetron]

Was I the only one who found the article and its prescriptions to be a bit trite? The author responds to the so-called "nihilism" of the contemporary world with a clarion-call to a multicultural and trans-human empathy that is banal, at least to me, a Canadian living in a nation whose leaders -- Justin Trudeau, our Prime Minister is an excellent example -- and most admired citizens -- such as Canadian ecologist David Suzuki -- endlessly preach the gospel of multiculturalism and ecological sensitivity.

I have no problem with multiculturalism or with ecological sensitivity. I've spent the better part of my adult life helping refugees from the third world come to Canada. I speak, read, and write seven languages, and am a big supporter of a post-human,
nonanthropocentric understanding of the world. This being the case, the author's prescriptions are a bit underwhelming, since they're just a rehash of a rhetoric that is ubiquitous and taken-for-granted in the culture that I inhabit.

I also found myself puzzled by the way the author prescribed a non-anthropocentric perspective while at the same leashing meaning and the making of meaning to humanity, as though meaning exists only within human subjectivity.

For example, he says: "[O]ur human drive to make meaning reappears as our only salvation." The first thing to note here is the notion that meaning is something that a human subject makes. This is an anthropocentric fantasy. Human subjects don't make meaning. It's meaning that makes it possible for us to be present to ourselves as human subjects. Meaning isn't something that is made by us, but is something that is given to us as a precondition of having any subjective experience whatsoever, be it human or otherwise.

The author betrays his own prescription of a non-anthropocentric outlook with his constant insistence on meaning as being something exclusive to the 'human'. You'd never guess from his essay that the dog who pisses on a tree to mark it and its immediate vicinity as his territory is as every bit as much a participant in meaning. The pissing on the tree has a sense and a meaning just like any human sign linguistic or otherwise. The DNA that carries the genetic information of all the organisms that live on the planet require meaningfulness as their essential quality in order for them to function as an information carrier. DNA isn't human and the proteins that read and work with DNA aren't human and have no subjectivity of any sort. Meaning is pre-human and pre-subjective.

In short, I found the essay banal and muddle-headed. I kept hoping the author would actually say something that hasn't been said before by a thousand other cultural pundits in a thousand other short essays about so-called "nihilism" and the crisis in values in contemporary Western societies.

[teguififthzeal]

<<I have no problem with multiculturalism or with ecological sensitivity. I've spent the better part of my adult life helping refugees from the third world come to Canada. I speak, read, and write seven languages, and am a big supporter of a post-human,
nonanthropocentric understanding of the world. This being the case, the author's prescriptions are a bit underwhelming, since they're just a rehash of a rhetoric that is ubiquitous and taken-for-granted in the culture that I inhabit.>>

I hate the word "multiculturalism".

It's sort of a leftover, academic kitschy phrase from the 90's that should have gone in the memory hole a long time ago. I know a lot of academics who are PC as hell and they don't use that word and have tired of the somewhat glib, cheap world of hidden insincerity that it denotes.

But that doesn't mean one goes wearing SS coats or being Gunter Grass. There's a median in human life that has to be maintained for there to be any kind of kindness at all. And to assume that there is a bodily chemistry that necessitates empathy is too much. A good portion of this population will abandon it as soon as they can, as we saw in 2008 and with the Bushes and with Reagan and, uh, with the Nazis.

[Malone]

It was ok until the sadly predictable bilge about how we need to come together and bestow meaning upon life. And we must, of course, abandon evil western dominance and learn to see through the eyes of others who are purer than us.

And we must keep churning out children to live in our ruins, otherwise what was the point of it all?

I love the crap about how none of us chose this, but I bet the author has an iPhone, drives a car, has procreated, flies regularly etc etc. Typical NYT sanctimonious crap.

[Karnos]

There's all this gloom and doom all over, and all I see by the window in front of my desk are children playing under the soft rain.

The world's been ending since time immemorial and the nihilism of our age is what you get when you let scientism become the dominant pilar of thought. That, and silly cults like transhumanism. I know it's more complicated than that, but my tea is boiling and I don't feel like getting into the details.

And besides, if one lets one's spirit be reduced to just the interaction of neurones and synapses, then I guess that's one's own damn fault. What was that quote by Jung? Man will go to great lengths to deny his own soul, something or other?

Stopped reading at the uninformed use of the word nihilist as a synonym for depressing. The Leftovers is an odd example of nihilist fiction considering its use of the supernatural afterlife, destiny and triumph of the core family through love for one another. I'm not criticising that show, either. The Leftovers S2 was perhaps the most perfect season of any show I have seen. It's only nihilistic if you consider it such because it features lots of sad scenes. By that token, The Passion of the Christ is nihilistic.

I don't think modern society is nihilist enough. It shallowly paints its pro-life (in the true sense of the phrase) fiction with a darker surface texture (*glares at Batman v Superman*), but otherwise the dominant narrative is that life has meaning, which causes significant depression for people who then spend their lives trying to find something that doesn't exist and holding themselves up against philosophical standards that they were never supposed to. Nihilism is the path to freedom, happiness and peace. Articles like this stigmatise it so that humanity stays stressing itself out for no reason, whilst true empathetic heroes like Ligotti are considered twisted and uncaring for opening a conversation.