Many of us have a sense that the world-as-we-know-it is not tenable. It is unstable. It is faltering.
As a solution, some focus on the accumulation of wealth as a way to better secure their positions on what is an increasingly fracturing foundation. This gives us a sense of control in an increasingly disordered world.
Some of us may be in the uncomfortable position of realizing that this solution is not actually a solution, but an emotional salve like the deployment of nitrous oxide as the plane goes down.
Still fewer of us, when faced with this reality, choose not to suppress it. Some of us, a very small few, choose to embrace the chaos. We choose to be somewhat naive — not in ignoring the signs of destruction all around us — but in the sense that we don’t assume this destruction is necessarily the end.
Instead of an end, we choose to see the trajectory of destruction as a new beginning. It allows us to hope.
Hope Replaces Despair
Environmental/political writer Rebecca Solnit characterizes hope as giving one’s self to the future, thus making the present inhabitable (5). Good thing, because our present reality is often times nearly uninhabitable.
Our children are killed in their schools. Innocent people face police brutality for their race, gender, or sexual orientation. Women’s rights are being openly threatened in industrialized nations in a way they haven’t been since the work of the suffragettes. People are getting sicker. Food is getting scarcer. Our world is getting hotter.
It would be so easy to excuse ourselves as we fall into despair. Yet some of us hope, if only to make the present inhabitable.
Hope stems from “a darkness as much of the womb as of the grave,” Solnit writes. To hope is to balance on the edge between symbolic birth and death, to assert existential freedom as well as the recognition of infinite variability.
As real people in a real world, this means that, yes, we may now find ourselves plunged into darkness. But we are the ones who choose what we see when we turn on the light.
Solnit’s description of dual-natured hope resembles Nietzsche’s concept of nihilism. Nihilism for Nietzsche was a response to the inevitable contradiction of the ‘Christian-Moral’ worldview: a will to truthfulness that eventually finds its metaphysical foundation to be untrue. This realization culminates in the onset of metaphysical uncertainty; the death of God.
For us, we sense intrinsically that the direction we’ve been going, the assumptions we’ve been making, don’t hold the promise ascribed by our predecessors. Although we feel this awareness subtly gnawing at our consciousness, we are afraid to stop, turn, and look it in the face. To do so would be very literally to look in the face of death.
What would we see there? The corpse of manifest destiny? Of industry? Of unending growth and prosperity, every man the master of his castle? The death of a vision of perpetual convenience and ease? The official death knell of monotheism and the comforts we still cling to in its wake?
Fundamentally, Nietzsche argued that we would see the death of our identity itself. No longer can we be passive receivers of culture, resources, and ontology. There is no one above us manufacturing it for us. Our truths are no longer self-evident.
Modern individuals are thrust into a central antagonism in that we are “not to esteem what we know, and not to be allowed any longer to esteem the lies we should like to tell ourselves” (10). That is, we are so frightened by the sudden realization that we are masters of our own reality — instead of subject to the omnipotent paternal figure on whom we previously relied — that we are temporarily barred from social and moral agency.
This is the stage of paralysis we face when the lights have just gone out.
For Nietzsche, this is nihilism.
In its most positive form, nihilism is a coping stage, a mourning period in which we pine for the metaphysical certainty of unconscious devotion to divine will. We can see this so clearly in the schism in American politics; one side clings to order and meaning, the other eschews it, offering nothing to replace it but relativism.
This stage can be a path into despair and further existential paralysis, or it can be the jumping-off point for engaging in the creation of a transformative, emancipatory, and participatory reality.
In other words, not God, not government, but we — as the collective creative consciousness — determine our fate.
Kind of scary.
Creating Our Own Freedom
Solnit points to the collapse of the Soviet Union as an example of such metaphysical agency. She writes, “By acting as if they were free, the people of Eastern Europe became free.” That is, rather than continuing to accept the imposition of control from repressive government, they simply rejected it in favor of social and political autonomy.
Of course, in the example of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, political conditions made the situation ripe for this kind of cultural self-assertion. Soviet citizens responded to Mikhail Gorbachev’s revocation of the Brezhnev Doctrine, an act that essentially undermined the Soviet contention of socialism as a self-evident ideology and instead adopted policy in favor of glasnost, or openness.
While the collapse of the Soviet bloc could not have occurred without these favorable conditions, the contention that modern society is unripe for similar sociopolitical shifts relies on the fallacy of metaphysical determinism. Our inability to visualize similar possibilities in the current sociopolitical climate is due to the fact that we are only made aware of such potential retrospectively, through the eventful manifestation of that potential and its incorporation into history.
Nihilism presents a paradox in that it invites us to dismantle it through the realization of that potential, to presuppose sociopolitical timeliness as a constant and inevitable possibility.
Society is always on the cusp of change, whether we as members of society are conscious of it or not. This perpetual state of possibility is requisite for drastic shifts — in politics, in society, in our metaphysical awareness. It requires a response. The misconception lies in our failure to realize that we are constantly responding, whether with action or inaction, consciousness or unconsciousness.
We can easily succumb to the trap of perpetual nihilism, what Solnit calls ‘obsession with the enemy’, in an almost sycophantic sensationalizing of the thing we fear the most (for leftist America, Trump comes to mind). This irony is like an offering of our creative agency and potency to the very thing we fear.
In essence, we are calling for daddy to come get the bad guys, having forgotten that there is no daddy. It’s just us.
If we keep looking for some harbinger of justice outside of ourselves, of our social institutions, our governments, our society, we fail to recognize the possibility for emancipatory — as opposed to non-participatory — change. Then the enemy wins.
Because, ultimately, the enemy is the ontological fallacy that there is some concrete authority other than ourselves that controls our way of life and our fate. It can be God, “the man”, a government, a marginalized group, or any scapegoat we so choose. Anything we make “other”, any dichotomy in which we create an “us” and a “them”, a subject and an object, we have given away our power.
Certainly, there are institutions and individuals who do harm, and who seem to warrant opposition. But as the saying goes, the best revenge is success. Rather than focusing our effort, resources, rhetoric, and thoughts on dismantling our enemy, it is far more productive to utilize that potent energy to create the thing we want to see in its place. Furthermore, it is far more threatening to an already existing entity to be actively replaced rather than actively railed against.
It’s sticks and stones, in the end.
Activist movements based on anger, opposition, and even — I daresay — resistance create momentum that is matched with equal and opposite momentum.
Had Trump been ignored by his detractors in the media rather than sensationalized, he would have been dead in the water. He is a living, breathing publicity stunt, and he got exactly what he wanted from those who oppose him most; a reaction.
Not unlike a toddler acting out for attention, the more he gets center stage, the more he is getting exactly what he wants. The means are irrelevant.
Instead of sacrificing our autonomy and agency to an ‘obsession with the enemy’, we can utilize the opportunity that nihilism presents as a tool to transcend itself, to fuel a shift toward existential, sociopolitical, and personal actualization.
The Will to Excrete
Nietzsche presents three characteristic forms of nihilism: passive, active, and what is described by Simon Critchley as ‘armchair nihilism’ (83).
The first involves a conscious but pessimistic acceptance of a “void” in one’s metaphysical beliefs, which results in the affirmation of that void through superficial asceticism or spiritual practice. Nietzsche somewhat maliciously called this form of nihilism “European Buddhism.”
This is the “tune in, turn on, drop out” approach, which in most cases turns out to be less of the tuning in and turning on, and more of the dropping out. It is a form of escapism.
The second manifestation of nihilism involves what Nietzsche characterized as the “expression of physiological decadence” in response to the metaphysical void — i.e. destructive acts and “wildly creative terrorism” as an affirmation of that void.
The Jihadi is the most stereotypical example, but so are the looters, the school shooters, those who take advantage of disorder, and every rebel without a cause.
The third form of nihilism involves a “general cultural mood of weariness, apathy, exhaustion and fatigue.” Nietzsche expresses this in Will to Power as the ‘theory of exhaustion’. He writes, “modern society is no ‘society,’ no ‘body’…a society that no longer has the will to excrete” (32). A similar sentiment was reflected by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher when she said there is no such thing as society, but only a collection of individuals.
That is to say, when the members of a culture cease to participate actively in defining their culture — through ritual, art forms, a collective belief-system, even basic standards for appropriate social behavior (think app-based dating and “ghosting”) — that entity can no longer be called a culture at all.
The individuals of this post-culture are disempowered through their social fragmentation, their lack of community, and their inability to change their circumstances.
All they have is the most general and superficial set of shared images on which to base some collective experience — these days, mostly branding. As Morgan Spurlock has shown us, young children recognize brand logos more readily than American presidents and Jesus.
This lack of shared images, shared narrative, and shared values is a hallmark of nihilism, and provides the conditions necessary for existential paralysis to pervade.
Consumption Replaces Creativity
These armchair nihilists may not have the energy to excrete or to create, but they do have the energy to consume.
In the midst of a fragmented metaphysical framework as well as a splintered society, the nihilistic response of modern individuals manifests itself through consumption. This response relies on market ideology as well as the creation — through the elaborate psychological project of advertising — of consumer need.
Individuals in modern society have become members of an intrinsically economic culture. Our role in the market is two-fold: we act as consumers of commodities as well as suppliers of labor/time. Time becomes a commodity that we owe the market in order to sustain not only a preconceived standard of living, but in some cases to sustain life.
In this sense, we are born in original economic sin, required to outsource the satisfaction of our basic needs through the selling of our labor/time. We are not entitled to “a living”, but must earn it through an allegiance to market ideology, to which we are automatically indebted at birth.
Culture is no longer focused on directly meeting our needs through novelty, creativity, community, and intimacy. Instead, as put by University of Mass, Amherst, professor of communications Sut Jhally, culture has become an adjunct to consumerism. It is a vehicle through which consumerism is made effective, and is only relevant to the market insofar as it produces consumer need.
Our social and emotional values are utilized as advertising tools to create the illusion that products, and thus participation in the market, can fulfill our needs. As Jhally puts it, advertising repackages our emotions and sells them back to us.
The market co-optation of cultural values effectively renders those values relevant only insofar as they are selling tools. In this sense, the values portrayed in advertisements and media in general are phantom values: they are not actually realized either in culture or the market.
A diamond ring may evoke images of romantic love, fidelity, etc. but the only value actually met through the purchase of the ring is a temporary aesthetic one. The consumer confuses the purchase of a product, which has been transformed through media into a symbolic representation of a social or psychological need (i.e. love, companionship, community), with the acquisition of a tool that can satisfy those needs.
Cultural theorist Raymond Williams refers to this phenomenon as the “magic system” whereby consumer goods are superstitiously attributed with transcendent powers.
This illusion of consumer goods as “magical” objects can be attributed to the late-capitalist social project of advertising, which Jhally refers to as an invention meant “to make the dead world of ‘things’ come alive with human and social possibilities”. Psychologists Allen Kanner and Mary Gomes characterize corporate advertising as the “largest single psychological project ever undertaken by the human race” (Roszak, Gomes, and Kanner 77–91).
Advertisements rely on the perception that the product being advertised satisfies some kind of desire, whether emotional, sensory, or both. This requires the dual application of artistic creativity and an understanding of the psychological motives driving human behavior.
Rationally-based appeals for consumption have been abandoned for more stylistic, emotional methods. Characterizing the emerging attitude of the advertising industry, professor of media studies Stuart Ewen writes, “[s]tyling…must speak to the unconscious, to those primal urges and sensations that are repressed in the everyday confines of civilization. Like art, psychoanalysis was being evaluated as a ‘new business tool’” (49). The synthesis of art and psychology became a strategy for advertisers to tap into the emotional substrata of consumers.
A product that embodies the emotional, aesthetically-based motives for consumption is Coca-Cola. Contemporary philosopher Slavoj Žižek calls Coke the “pure surplus of enjoyment” in that it does not satisfy any need, even thirst. In fact, notes Žižek, the more we drink, the thirstier we become.
Referring to the 1982 coke slogan “coke is it”, Žižek writes, “Coke is ‘it’ precisely insofar as it’s never IT, precisely insofar as every consumption [of Coke] opens up the desire for more”. Coke is actually the non-thing, pure image. When we buy coke, we buy a symbol, not a functional commodity that meets our needs. Thus, we consume Coke simply for the sake of consuming, for the “beauty,” or aesthetic appeal, of the experience.
Giving New Meaning to Retail Therapy
The suppression of primal urges to which Ewen refers can be viewed as a symptom of the nihilist’s “metaphysical void”: the absence of unified structures of value, community, and ontological groundedness.
Referring to Foucault’s conception of a “regime of truth,” or the unified cultural narrative developed by dominant social institutions, UC Berkeley feminist philosopher Judith Butler asserts that contemporary society’s cultural narrative is increasingly splintered, leaving individuals without ethical direction (215).
The resulting lack of cultural foundation provides fertile ground for a nihilistic response, specifically through the act of consumption. In the face of metaphysical uncertainty and a lack of unified social structures, the advertising industry has effectively created a mythic framework for the ‘armchair nihilist’ to take refuge in.
That framework includes, first and foremost, the role of the individual as a consumer, a view sanctioned by social values and around which identities are built. The prevalence and consumer emphasis on brands is an example of this. Individuals and groups increasingly associate themselves with brand names as a means of expression and self-identification, participating ritualistically, even religiously, in the consumption of goods.
Social rituals, including consumption, can be considered creative acts meant to constitute value and meaning, to bring people together, and to create a collective identity — a sense of belonging. Consequently, individuals engage in consumption to construct meaning where other cultural institutions have failed to provide it.
The implication here is that we are currently suspended in a state of psychosocial deficit. No longer does our prior view of ourselves and our world make sense. In the absence of sense, the absence of security, we’ve decided to go shopping.
Maybe this is a fair response when our metaphysical self-assurance is suddenly turned on its head. Perhaps our turn toward consuming goods is actually a positive reaction to a fairly negative situation.
It’s not unlike the ancient Egyptians piling property in tombs to accompany them to the afterlife; at least we still believe in something, and we still believe there is some reason to take action. Even if that action is to buy, it is still at it’s core a life-affirming gesture.
But imagine what else we could do with all of that energy.
This is the point at which nihilism serves us. If we finally admit that our one remaining life-affirming social activity is a futile one, we subvert the nihilistic void and find ourselves in the empty womb which is ripe for change, for rebirth.
And the good news is we don’t have to stop shopping.
Making Friends With the Joneses
Although we saw that our shop-till-you-drop attitude is essentially positive, it is ultimately self-driven and self-destructive. We buy things to build ourselves up. We buy things to be safe, to be secure, to be comfortable. We buy things to keep our families safe, secure, and comfortable as an extension of our personal identities.
And in doing so, we are ignoring the logic that a finite planet with relatively fixed resources cannot sustain an ever-increasing and materially-based economic trajectory. In other words, the arrow can’t just keep going up.
Psychosocially, the implication is that if you have more than someone else, you are less likely to fall prey to the increasing instability outside. This is, of course, somewhat true.
But it’s not the whole truth.
In reality, deep, psychological security comes from factors like a sense of belonging to a group or culture that is larger than yourself. It comes from knowing your place as an organism in the cosmos. It comes from not sensing that the members of your own species are out to get you in an every-man-for-himself market competition. It’s a bit of a Hunger Games-esque scenario that we’ve gotten ourselves into.
We tend to not see the paradox in the hyper-individualistic nature of our race for security. The more individual we are — that is, outside of or deprived of collective identities — the more psychologically insecure. There is a reason for the cliché there is safety in numbers.
We, as social animals, require belonging, acceptance, and collective meaning to feel safe, secure, and whole. Just ask your therapist. Ironically, the more we hyper-individualize our world and increasingly try to retroactively police the chaos this causes, the more we increase hostility toward one another, the more we fear one another, and the less safe we actually are. Increased states of stress and fear drastically decrease empathy. Your therapist can confirm this one, too.
I’m not calling for communism or socialism or any other political ideology. Political ideology is incidental here. I’m calling for a slow but steady direction change that simply places the collective identity above the individual, simply mirroring our nature as social, cooperative creatures that lead an interconnected existence.
We can still have our own houses, we can still have our own stuff. We can even keep our credit cards.
All that we change is the prioritization of individual need and desire over the group. This comically simple reframe is literally all that’s required for greater satisfaction in our day to day lives.
A Last Word on Hope
Solnit tells us that to hope is to give one’s self to the future. It is a coping mechanism when the right-now is a little too hard to bear. But it is not a solution in and of itself.
Hope is the moment in which we pause and acknowledge that what we see before us is not the world in which we want to live. It is the moment in which we take responsibility — socially, politically, ontologically — for moving forward and cleaning up the mess.
We are not victims of our world. We are the creators of it. Certainly, we experience the freedom to create to varying degrees based on our socioeconomic status, race, country of birth, and an endless variety of other factors over which we have no control.
In this sense, those who possess greater agency by virtue of these factors also have greater responsibility to exercise it. It is the comfortable but fearful armchair nihilists to which most of the burden falls.
It is necessary for these armchair nihilists to first rouse themselves with hope — hope for something that is perhaps less comfortable but is ultimately more fulfilling. Otherwise we are much like the frog in the pot, slowly falling asleep while the water comes to a boil.
Hope must carry us across the void of nihilism, of inaction and complacency, so that we make it to the other side. Once we cross, there is nothing to hope for anymore. There is no future to give ourselves to; we have arrived in the present as creative agents.
Once we fully allow ourselves to step into this role, once we fully commit, there is no longer an “us” and “them”. There is only us, a collection of individuals who now make up a cooperative effort to actualize the essence of human nature, something we’ve always been imbued with; creativity.
Sources
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