What's The Point

Upfront I will warn you that this post will be rambling even more so than my typical rambling. This is because the idea I'm trying to express isn't fully formed in my head yet. I find writing about such ideas helps me form them more fully. If you don't like that, feel free to skip this post. With that warning out of the way, let me begin.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously declared the death of God. From The Gay Science:

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent?

Max Stirner, whose writings may or may not have influenced Nietzsche's, declared the same. From Stirner's The Unique and Its Property:

At the entrance of the modern era stands the “God-man.”

Will only the God in the God-man evaporate at its exit, and can the God-man really die if only the God in him dies? They didn’t think of this question, and considered themselves finished, when in our day they brought the work of the Enlightenment, the overcoming of God, to a victorious end. They didn’t notice that the human being has killed God in order to now become—“sole God on high.” The other world outside us is indeed swept away, and the great enterprise of the men of the Enlightenment is accomplished; but the other world inside us has become a new heaven and calls us forth to storm the heavens once again: God has had to make way, but not for us, rather for—humanity.

Internet atheists often take Nietzsche's (most of them haven't heard of Stirner) declaration as celebratory. This is because few of them have actually read Nietzsche's works. If they had, they would know that his declaration was both an observation about the Enlightenment and a warning. The observation about the Enlightenment, which is also highlighted in Stirner's work, is that Enlightenment thinking lead many to question the existence of God (really religion in general, but both were European writers and Europe was predominantly Christian). This ultimately lead to the downfall of Christianity as the foundation for Western morality. Nietzsche and Stirner both explain how morality isn't self-evident. Without something to plant the idea of morality into our minds, a phantasm to possess us in Stirner's work, there is a vacuum. Stirner points out that the vacuum has been filled by the concept of "humanity," which is just another phantasm. Nietzsche warns that without something to fill the vacuum, there will be nihilism.

Nihilism, like all philosophical words, isn't well defined. It means different things to different people. In the context of this post, nihilism means the absence of purpose or meaning. My observations lead me to believe that Nietzsche's warning remains unheeded. The Enlightenment wiped away the Christian foundation upon which Western civilization was based but nothing replaced it. Reason, the ultimate deity in Enlightenment thinking, can't provide purpose so today we live with those consequences, we live in a state of nihilism.

I'm not the only person who has observed this. Christians are quick to blame the current state of society on the lack of widespread Christian belief. They tell us that if people would just believe in God again, these ills would disappear! Whether that's true or not is irrelevant. The genie of Reason (capitalized as I'm using it as the deity of Enlightenment thinking) is out of the bottle and there's no way to put it back in. So long as Reason lives, God cannot. Christians aren't the only ones who have observed this vacuum. Many others have too. Like the Christians, they want to fill that vacuum. Unlike the Christians, they claim Reason to be their foundation. Political parties are a great example. They promise to fix the ills of society if only we bend the knee and accept them as our lords and saviors! While all political parties claim Reason to be their foundation, none make that claim louder than the communists and fascists. Despite the ruin they left wherever they've taken hold, some people still take them seriously. As bad as they might be, at least they're not nihilism.

The ultimate problem with nihilism is that it leaves everybody asking, what's the point? Everywhere you look you can observe people facing this question. It makes them uncomfortable because they can't answer it so they spend their days doomscrolling, recording videos of themselves screeching about the topic of the day, playing video games for 12 hours straight, endlessly consuming pornography, and anything else that distracts them from facing this question. Reason can't answer this question either, which is why those claiming Reason to be their foundation have failed to fill the vacuum left by God's demise.

I wish that I had an answer. I wish that I could wave a magic wand and fix this state of affairs. Unfortunately I don't have an answer and I can't fix it. All I can do is observe it and point it out. I will, however, leave you with these words from Renzo Novatore's The Revolt of the Unique:

Let each human being therefore work—if he thinks this way—at the discovery of his own I, at the realization of his own dream, at the complete integration and full development of his own individuality. Every human being who has discovered and won himself walks on his own path and follows his free course.

But let no one come to me to impose his belief, his will, his faith on me. By denying god, fatherland, authority, and law, I have achieved anarchism. By refusing to sacrifice myself on the altar of the people and of humanity, I have achieved individualism.

Now I am free...

If you can't find meaning outside of yourself, perhaps you need to look within.