Monthly Archives: January 2020

In order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it's necessary to distinguish it from pessimism, cynicism, and apathy.

By: Nolen Gertz

Nihilism, not unlike time (according to Augustine) or porn (according to the U.S. Supreme Court), is one of those concepts that we are all pretty sure we know the meaning of unless someone asks us to define it. Nihil means nothing. -ism means ideology. Yet when we try to combine these terms, the combination seems to immediately refute itself, as the idea that nihilism is the ideology of nothing appears to be nonsensical. To say that this means that someone believes in nothing is not really much more helpful, as believing in something suggests there is something to be believed in, but if that something is nothing, then there is not something to be believed in, in which case believing in nothing is again a self-refuting idea.

It is easy therefore to fall into the trap of thinking Everything is nihilism! which of course leads to thinking Nothing is nihilism! Thus in order to preserve nihilism as a meaningful concept, it is necessary to distinguish it from concepts that are often associated with it but are nevertheless different, concepts such as pessimism, cynicism, and apathy.

If optimism is hopefulness, then pessimism is hopelessness. To be a pessimist is to say, Whats the point? Pessimism is often likened to a Glass is half empty way of seeing the world, but since its only half empty this scenario might still be too hopeful for a pessimist. A better scenario might be that, if a pessimist fell in a well, and someone offered to rescue him, hed likely respond, Why bother? In the well, out of the well, were all going to die anyway. In other words, pessimism is dark and depressing. But it is not nihilism.

If a pessimist fell in a well, and someone offered to rescue him, hed likely respond, Why bother? In the well, out of the well, were all going to die anyway.

In fact, we might even go so far as to say that pessimism is the opposite of nihilism. Like nihilism, pessimism could be seen as arising from despair. The fact of our death, the frustration of our desires, the unintended consequences of our actions, the tweets of our political leaders, any or all of these could lead us to either nihilism or pessimism. However, where these two roads diverge is over the question of whether we dwell on our despair or hide from it.

To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist. But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea. Indeed you could yourself be a nihilist and have no idea. Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it. This difference was illustrated by Woody Allen in his movie Annie Hall (1977) when his alter ego Alvy Singer has the following exchange with a couple he stops on the street for advice:

ALVY (He moves up the sidewalk to a young trendy-looking couple, arms wrapped around each other): You-you look like a really happy couple. Uh, uh are you?

YOUNG WOMAN: Yeah.

ALVY: Yeah! So h-h-how do you account for it?

YOUNG WOMAN: Uh, Im very shallow and empty and I have no ideas and nothing interesting to say.

YOUNG MAN: And Im exactly the same way.

ALVY: I see. Well, thats very interesting. So youve managed to work out something, huh?

YOUNG MAN: Right.

Alvy Singer is a pessimist. The man and woman are nihilists.

What is most illuminating about this scene is that it shows how a pessimist can reveal the identity of a nihilist, just as it might be argued that the pessimism of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer helped reveal to Nietzsche his own nihilism. Before they are confronted by Alvy, they are just a happily shallow and happily empty couple. However, when he asks them to explain their happiness, they are no longer shallow and empty; they are instead forced to awaken from their reverie and to become self-aware. It is not that they are happy that reveals their nihilism; rather it is their attempt to explain to a pessimist why they are happy that reveals their nihilism. On the surface, they are soul mates who have found each other. But surface is all that they are. The attempt to go any deeper reveals that there is nothing deeper. And it is precisely a pessimist who, when confronted with such a happy couple, would ask the Why? that reveals their nothingness.

If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism. To see the glass as half full is to think that we should be happy with what we have rather than focusing on what is missing. But being happy with what we have can also be a way of remaining complacent, of ignoring what is missing so as to avoid having to seek change. Similarly, to believe that everything will work out in the end, that there is always light at the end of the tunnel, is to believe that life is teleological, that there is some goal or purpose whether God or Justice operating invisibly behind what we experience.

It is by believing in the existence of superhuman goals and superhuman purposes that we lose sight of human goals and human purposes. Likewise, when we elevate someone like Martin Luther King Jr. to the status of a saint or a prophet, we see him as more than a mere mortal, thus freeing ourselves from the responsibility of trying to emulate him since we simply have to be hopeful that someone like him will come again. If optimism leads us to be complacent, leads us to wait for something good to happen, or for someone else to make something good happen, then optimism leads us to do nothing. In other words, it is not pessimism but optimism that is similar to nihilism.

In Ancient Greece, a Cynic was someone who lived like a dog (the Greek kynikos means doglike), or, to be more precise, was someone who lived by the Cynic philosophy of staying true to nature rather than conforming to what that person saw as social artifice. Today, a cynic is similarly someone who looks down on society and sees it as fake, though not because the cynic sees society as unnatural, but because the cynic sees the people who make up society as fake. To be cynical is to assume the worst of people, to think that morality is mere pretense, and to suppose that even when people seem to be helping others they are really only trying to help themselves. Believing in only self-interest, the cynic appears to others to believe in nothing. Consequently, cynicism can appear to be nihilism. But it is not nihilism.

A cynic can even enjoy life. In particular, a cynic can take pleasure in mocking those who claim that altruism exists, or that politicians are self-sacrificing public servants, and especially finds laughable the idea that we should try to see the good in people.

Cynicism, like pessimism, is about negativity. However, whereas pessimism is about despair, about the feeling that life is pointless in the face of death, cynicism is instead much more about disdain than despair. A cynic wouldnt say that life is pointless but would just say that what people claim about life is pointless. A cynic can even enjoy life. In particular, a cynic can take pleasure in mocking those who claim that altruism exists, or that politicians are self-sacrificing public servants, and especially finds laughable the idea that we should try to see the good in people.

Pessimists are not nihilists because pessimists embrace rather than evade despair. Cynics are not nihilists because cynics embrace rather than evade mendacity. A key part of evading despair is the willingness to believe, to believe that people can be good, that goodness is rewarded, and that such rewards can exist even if we do not experience them. But to a cynic such a willingness to believe is a willingness to be naive, to be gullible, and to be manipulated. The cynic mocks such beliefs not because the cynic claims to know that such beliefs are necessarily false, but because the cynic is aware of the danger represented by people who claim to know that such beliefs are necessarily true.

A skeptic waits for evidence before passing judgment. A cynic, however, does not trust evidence because the cynic does not trust that anyone is capable of providing evidence objectively.

A skeptic waits for evidence before passing judgment. A cynic, however, does not trust evidence because the cynic does not trust that anyone is capable of providing evidence objectively. The cynic would prefer to remain dubious than risk being duped, and thus the cynic sees those who do take such risks as dupes. For this reason the cynic is able to reveal the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of cynicism, much like how the pessimist reveals the nihilism of others by challenging people to defend their lack of pessimism.

Perhaps the best example of the revelatory abilities of a cynic is the argument between Thrasymachus and Socrates in the opening book of Platos Republic. Thrasymachus is first introduced as mocking Socrates for questioning others about the definition of justice and then demands that he be paid in order to tell them what justice truly is. Once appeased, Thrasymachus defines justice as a trick invented by the strong in order to take advantage of the weak, as a way for the strong to seize power by manipulating society into believing that obedience is justice. Thrasymachus further argues that whenever possible people do what is unjust, except when they are too afraid of being caught and punished, and thus Thrasymachus concludes that injustice is better than justice.

When Socrates attempts to refute this definition by likening political leaders to doctors, to those who have power but use it to help others rather than to help themselves, Thrasymachus does not accept the refutation like the others do, but instead refutes Socratess refutation. Thrasymachus accuses Socrates of being naive and argues that Socrates is like a sheep who thinks the shepherd who protects and feeds the sheep does so because the shepherd is good rather than realizing that the shepherd is fattening them for the slaughter. Socrates is never able to truly convince Thrasymachus that his definition of justice is wrong, and indeed Thrasymachuss cynicism is so compelling that Socrates spends the rest of the Republic trying to prove that justice is better than injustice by trying to refute the apparent success of unjust people by making metaphysical claims about the effects of injustice on the soul. Socrates is thus only able to counter cynicism in the visible world through faith in the existence of an invisible world, an invisible world that he argues is more real than the visible world. In other words, it is Thrasymachuss cynicism that forces Socrates to reveal his nihilism.

Here we can see that nihilism is actually much more closely related to idealism than to cynicism. The cynic presents himself or herself as a realist, as someone who cares about actions, not intentions, who focuses on what people do rather than on what people hope to achieve, who remembers the failed promises of the past in order to avoid being swept up in the not-yet-failed promises about the future. The idealist, however, rejects cynicism as hopelessly negative. By focusing on intentions, on hopes, and on the future, the idealist is able to provide a positive vision to oppose the negativity of the cynic. But in rejecting cynicism, does the idealist also reject reality?

Nihilism is actually much more closely related to idealism than to cynicism.

The idealist, as we saw with Socrates, is not able to challenge the cynics view of reality and instead is forced to construct an alternate reality, a reality of ideas. These ideas may form a coherent logical story about reality, but that in no way guarantees that the ideas are anything more than just a story. As the idealist focuses more and more on how reality ought to be, the idealist becomes less and less concerned with how reality is. The utopian views of the idealist may be more compelling than the dystopian views of the cynic, but dystopian views are at least focused on this world, whereas utopian views are, by definition, focused on a world that does not exist. It is for this reason that to use other-worldly idealism to refute this-worldly cynicism is to engage in nihilism.

Along with pessimism and cynicism, nihilism is also frequently associated with apathy. To be apathetic is to be without pathos, to be without feeling, to be without desire. While we are all occasionally given choices that do not particularly sway us one way or another (Do you want to eat Italian or Chinese?), such disinterestedness is what someone who is apathetic feels all the time. To be apathetic is thus to be seen as not caring about anything. The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing. In other words, apathy is seen as nihilism. But apathy is not nihilism.

The pessimist feels despair, the cynic feels disdain, but the apathetic individual feels nothing.

Apathy can be an attitude (I dont care about that) or a character trait (I dont care about anything). However, in either case the apathetic individual is expressing a personal feeling (or, to be more precise, feelinglessness) and is not making a claim about how everyone should feel (or, again, not feel). The apathetic individual understands perfectly well that other people feel differently insofar as they feel anything at all. And because the apathetic individual feels nothing, the apathetic individual does not feel any desire to convince others that they should similarly feel nothing. Others may care, but the apathetic individual does not, and because they do not care, the apathetic individual does not care that others care.

Yet apathy is still often seen as an affront, as an insult, as a rebuke by those who do care. For example, in MTVs Daria (19972002) a show about a highly apathetic high schooler Daria Morgendorffer and her friend Jane Lane have the following conversation:

DARIA: Tragedy hits the school and everyone thinks of me. A popular guy died, and now Im popular because Im the misery chick. But Im not miserable. Im just not like them.

JANE: It really makes you think.

DARIA: Funny. Thanks a lot.

JANE: No! Thats why they want to talk to you. When they say, Youre always unhappy, Daria, what they mean is, You think, Daria. I can tell because you dont smile. Now this guy died and it makes me think and that hurts my little head and makes me stop smiling. So, tell me how you cope with thinking all the time, Daria, until I can get back to my normal vegetable state.

DARIA: Okay. So why have you been avoiding me?

JANE: Because Ive been trying not to think.

The apathetic individual can thus, like the pessimist and the cynic, reveal the nihilism of others, though, unlike the pessimist and the cynic, the apathetic individual does this without actually trying to. Whereas the pessimist and the cynic challenge others to explain their lack of either pessimism or cynicism, the apathetic individual is instead the one who is challenged, challenged by others to explain his or her lack of pathos. In trying to get the apathetic individual to care, the person who does care is forced to explain why he or she cares, an explanation which can reveal just how meaningful (or meaningless) is the reason the person has for caring.

The apathetic individual doesnt care. However, not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings. Its just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing. And indeed it is because the nihilist is able to have such strong feelings, strong feelings for something that is nothing, that the nihilist is not and cannot be apathetic. Nihilists can have sympathy, empathy, and antipathy, but they cannot have apathy.

Not caring is not the same thing as caring about nothing. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But the nihilist has feelings.

Nietzsche tried to demonstrate the feelings at work in nihilism in his argument against what he called the morality of pity. The morality of pity holds that it is good to feel pity for those who are in need, and it is especially good to be moved by such pity to help those who are in need. But, according to Nietzsche, what is often motivating the desire to help is how we are able to see ourselves thanks to how we see others in need, in particular how we see ourselves as capable of helping, as powerful enough to help.

The morality of pity is for Nietzsche not about helping others, but about elevating oneself by reducing others, by reducing others to their neediness, to a neediness that we do not have and that reveals how much we do have by contrast. Pity is nihilistic insofar as it allows us to evade reality, such as by allowing us to feel that we are better than we are, and that we are better than those in need. Consequently, we are able to avoid recognizing that we have perhaps only had better luck or have been more privileged.

The morality of pity drives us to feel pity and to feel good for feeling pity. Having such feelings is worse than feeling nothing, for if we feel good when we feel pity, then we are motivated only to help the individuals we feel pity for rather than to help end the systemic injustices that create such pitiful situations in the first place. Whereas apathy may help us to avoid being blinded by our emotions and to see situations of injustice more clearly, pity is instead more likely to motivate us to perpetuate injustice by perpetuating the conditions that allow us to help the needy, that allow us to see ourselves as good for helping those we see only as needy.

This is not to suggest, however, that we should try to achieve apathy, that we should try to will ourselves to feel nothing. Popular versions of Stoicism and of Buddhism advocate for calmness, for detachment, for trying to not feel what we feel. To force oneself to become apathetic is nihilistic, as to do so is to evade our feelings rather than to confront them. There is thus an important difference between being apathetic and becoming apathetic, between being indifferent because that is how one responds to the world and becoming indifferent because we want to be liberated from our feelings and attachments. Similarly, to become detached, not because of Stoicism or Buddhism, but because of hipsterism, is still to try to detach oneself from oneself, from life, from reality. So pursuing irony can be just as nihilistic as pursuing apatheia or nirvana.

Nolen Gertz is Assistant Professor of Applied Philosophy at the University of Twente in the Netherlands, and author of Nihilism, from which this article is excerpted.

Link:

What Nihilism Is Not - The MIT Press Reader

This may have just gotten lost in our Christmas shuffle, but we could have sworn Sea Girls had a show planned in Allston last month, one that apparently dropped off the calendar before we had a chance to swing down the holiday lights off Harvard Avenue. Were bummed about that, but quickly put at ease as the UK alt-rock band continue to provide a steady stream of radio-ready anthems, this time coming correct with the electric Ready For More.

The new track follows Septembers Violet and serves as a taste of Sea Girls forthcoming LP Under Exit Lights, set for release March 6 via Polydor.

Ready For More is the bad apple of the EP, says Sea Girls singer Henry Camamile. It looks and sounds sweet, but its basically staring into this abyss of nihilistic behavior and being scared that I couldnt change it. This song practically embraces the slippery slope I was on.

Sea Girls, named by its members after a misheard Nick Cave lyric, are poised for a wild 2020 breakout. Ready For More? You fucking bet.

See original here:

Sea Girls face the slippery slope of nihilism on 'Ready For More' - Vanyaland

Fifty years after Samuel Beckett won the Nobel prize for literature, newly opened archives reveal the serious doubts the committee had over giving the award to an author they felt held a bottomless contempt for the human condition.

Announcing that the Waiting for Godot author had won the laureateship in 1969, the Swedish Academy praised his writing, which in new forms for the novel and drama in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation.

But with Nobel archives only being made public after 50 years, documents have now revealed there were major disagreements within the Swedish Academy over the choice of the Irish writer. According to Svenska Dagbladet, the split was between Beckett and French writer Andr Malraux, with other nominations including Simone de Beauvoir, Jorge Luis Borges, Pablo Neruda and Graham Greene.

Four members of the committee supported Beckett and two backed Malraux, with the primary objections to Beckett coming from Nobel committee chair Anders sterling, who had campaigned against the playwright for years. sterling questioned whether writing of a demonstratively negative or nihilistic nature like Becketts corresponded to the intention laid out in Alfred Nobels will, to reward the person who, in the field of literature, produced the most outstanding work in an idealistic direction.

While sterling acknowledged the possibility that behind Becketts depressing motives might lie a secret defence of humanity, but in the eyes of most readers, he said, it remains an artistically staged ghost poetry, characterised by a bottomless contempt for the human condition.

But Becketts main supporter on the committee, Karl Ragnar Gierow, felt that Becketts black vision was not the expression of animosity and nihilism. Beckett, he argued, portrays humanity as we have all seen it, at the moment of its most severe violation, and searches for the depths of degradation because even there, there is the possibility of rehabilitation.

Beckett was rejected for the prize a year earlier in 1968, but a year later his champions won out. sterling did not give the speech presenting him with the award. That was done by Gierow, who expanded on the arguments he made to the committee, saying that Becketts work goes to the depths because it is only there that pessimistic thought and poetry can work their miracles. What does one get when a negative is printed? A positive, a clarification, with black proving to be the light of day, the parts in deepest shade those which reflect the light source.

Beckett himself accepted the prize, but did not come to Stockholm to receive it, or give the traditional winners lecture. And the division among the jury remained secret for half a century unlike today, when the split over the decision to award the 2019 award to Austrian writer Peter Handke prompted the boycott of the ceremony by Peter Englund, the former permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, and further resignations.

Go here to see the original:

'Ghost poetry': fight over Samuel Beckett's Nobel win revealed in archives - The Guardian

More young people are seeking help for mental health issues, including thoughts of suicide.

In the year since it launched, Pennsylvanias tip line for kids to report threats of school violence produced a bombshell: Most calls arent about potential school shooters, but teen mental illness.

The 40,382 anonymous tips received by the Safe2Say Something program were kids mostly concerned with other kids who seem troubled and clinically depressed. Some 6,487 were about potential suicide. Thats 16% a lot.

Attorney General Josh Shapiro announced the numbers this week.

As I traveled across Pennsylvania to talk to students about Safe2Say, they werent peppering me on questions on school shooting drills or metal detectors. They were talking about fellow students who seemed depressed, came to school without lunch, and chronic online bullying, he said.

Shapiro seemed surprised, but why? Nearly 50,000 suicides were recorded in the U.S. in 2017, and it is the second leading killer of people ages 10 to 24 in America. The leading cause of death among young people is drug overdoses. Some 70,000 died.

These are diseases of despair, and the plague kills more than 100,000 people a year, most of them under 40.

The fragile state of the mental health of millennials (those 24 to 38) is well reported.

What we have is a continuing plague of diseases of despair, a plague that has touched nearly every family in America, but one that our college-edumicated political class rarely if ever discusses, because they a) dont care or b) have no remedy.

Whats causing widespread depression and nihilism among youngsters? Three observations from my turf in the middle class: Social media, pressure to go to college and apocalyptic predictions of the worlds end from climate change.

Of these, social media is 90% of the problem. Social media isolates. Its also the greatest personal propaganda tool ever placed into the hands of ordinary people.

Whatever media platform one favors, the message is similar: Look at me!

People present themselves as happy, content, having a great life and grand time. Theyre on vacation, posing with new car. There they are, all dolled up and headed to the prom or party. Theres passive-aggressive bragging, Honored to be named or Proud to learn Ive been chosen as

They never display their reality, which is as crummy, if not crummier, than yours. They never show pics of the pile of dirty dishes in their sink from last night. The splotches of black mold in their shower tile grout. The unfinished DIY projects. Their yellow teeth, receding hair and expanding guts. Things ordinary mortals have in common.

The effect of all of this fake reality on youngsters who dont know any better? Sadness, depression and despair. Online, everyones circumstances are better than ones own.

If youre 12, 13 or 14, social media makes it feel like youre stuck in the dim basement, while listening to the music, laughter and chatter of the party upstairs.

The next source of despair is the incredible pressure for middle class kids to go to college.

Nearly the whole primary and secondary education system in the U.S. is rigged to pressure kids into college. College is seen as superior to the trades or starting a small business. But what happens when you get through it, are deeply in debt, and cant get a job that pays a middle-class income? I dont blame an underemployed college grad for feeling screwed. They were. How would you feel? Depressed, probably.

Then there is the steady drumbeat of doom, largely from the left in this country, about the apocalypse of climate change. Idling SUVs in Levittown are killing the planet. The most outrageous and false statement is that climate change will cause the world to end in 12 years.

Imagine you hear this from the time youre a little kid, as todays high schoolers in GenZ have. Even the Vatican fans the flames of this stuff. How would it make you feel? Terrified, maybe. Then depressed, maybe hopeless.

All of this in addition to the cultural hellscape we boomers and GenXers created for young people. The stresses endured from failed marriages and single parenthood, no religion, the push, push, push to succeed.

Mental health counselors in every school might help. Really, it starts at home. Making our homes and schools social media-free zones would be more effective. Plus, some truth-telling at home. I saw it coming years ago.

When my kids were little, Id play a game with them at dinner or before theyd go to bed. Each of us would have to tell the others three good things that happened to them that day. There are 300 good things that happen every day to the average person, Id say.

Soon, they began noticing the good things that happened. They noted them in memory, because they knew Id expect a full report at the dinner table. Go to bed thinking about those three good things, Id say, and youll have peaceful nights sleep. That was my way of countering the negative nonsense that depresses so many today.

You can start the healing by declining to post your wonderful life on social media.

Some kids life may ride on it.

Contact JD Mullane at 215-949-5745 or at jmullane@couriertimes.com.

See the article here:

Mullane: Why kids suffer mental health problems - Opinion - The Intelligencer

Sponsored by Studio 52. A community artist space located in the heart of Allston, and is proud to support the Boston music scene and local artist community.

Theres a certain freedom in acknowledging were all fragments of disposable data. Sure, weve all been slapped with an inevitable expiration date, but so has all human life since the dawn of time (and, come the information-harvesting, climate-crisis-ridden age of 2020, isnt it a relief that no one was built to last forever?) Call it cheerful nihilism, if you will.

Thats the exact lens though which Jenee Halstead chooses to view the world in her new tune Disposable Love, out today (January 17).

Disposable Love is an attempt to capture the hollowness and horror of the dark side of the digital/social media age, Halstead tells Vanyaland. Artificial Intelligence and big data serve as our new guiding principles and a compass for making sense of the world. This is a world that promises ease and accessibility, at the behest of turning over our valuable personal information. The dangers of a world driven by algorithm serves only to turn us further into consumers commodifying every human interaction and need as transaction.

Halsteads lyrics stalk her pop-rock noir melodies, eventually constricting the dampened heartbeat of this photoshopped hero wandering through the Internet age. Its morbid, yes, but its also revealing a kernel of truth.

Social media in particular plays off and takes advantage of our fundamental human needs: A desire for connection, to be informed and for recognition and relay with one another, Halstead adds. The companies behind these platforms manipulate our basest egoic nature seeking to profit off an environment steeped in voyeurism, comparison and competition. Digital devices further separate us into worlds of our of imagination, a hall of mirrors. Its lonely out there.

Fill some of the void with Halsteads new tune below, and catch her performing with Melissa Ferrick at The Burren for her single release party on Thursday (January 23).

Originally posted here:

Jenee Halstead eyes the vacuum of the Internet age with 'Disposable Love' - Vanyaland

TOLLAND Matthew Gudernatch may not be a household name, but it is very likely youve seen him in national television commercials in heavy rotation with Kristen Schaal or Jeff Goldblum.

Gudernatch left his hometown of Tolland more than 12 years ago and currently lives in West Hollywood.

Gudernatch was 16 when his father, Stephen who still lives in town took him and his sister on a trip to Las Vegas and introduced him to one of his comedy idols, Rodney Dangerfield.

It was like four months before he died, Gudernatch said. You had to be 18 or over, so my dad snuck me in and my mind was blown. I had no idea anybody could be that funny. I had no idea you could just stand there for an hour and a half and talk to people and have a blast. It was very formative. That was the day I wanted to do comedy.

With encouragement from his father and a professor at Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, Gudernatch moved to New York City where he lived with his aunt and started testing his comedy skills.

I had no idea what to do, he said.

He started by joining the improvisational comedy troupe Upright Citizen Brigade.

Their theater is really good, he said. Its low pressure. I started doing that, then on a whim started doing stand up.

Gudernatch made connections with other comedians who offered him encouragement and feedback on his stand-up routine. But he started to miss the Boston area, so he moved back north where he joined Improv Asylum and performed with them weekly.

While that was happening I booked my first major commercial, he said.

The commercial was for the Boston Bruins where he is on a date with a girl wearing a Montreal Canadians jersey. A bear then attacks Gudernatch for dating a fan of another team within the division.

The commercial garnered accolades and, more importantly, Gudernatch was now a member of the Screen Actors Guild He said that if there was ever a time for him to make a jump to Hollywood, it was then.

My friend Ryan (Gall) introduced me to my agent, AKA Talent Agency, and they signed me, he said. Hes been doing national commercials through them since 2012.

Success didnt come immediately for him, though, he said, not booking a single gig his first two years there.

He persevered though, and now Gudernatch has been performing his stand-up show, My Mom Died When I Was 14, runs his own production company, and is working on a feature film.

He admits his humor can be a bit avant garde, especially with his short films like Future Dust, a five minute short about him discussing life and death with his dog that was featured at the Palm Springs Film Festival.

What I try to do is border on hopeful nihilism, or nihilism and existentialism had a baby with lunacy, he said. But I also use that nihilism to have the best ride we can, even if this is all useless. Lets enjoy it.

Gudernatchs apparent preoccupation with finding humor in the tragic stems from the death of his mother when he was 14, who died from cardiomyopathy.

I lost my mom early on, but everyone loses somebody, he said. How can I tell this incredibly personal story and get people laughing and get people to want to hear?

The best compliment Ive gotten are friends coming up to me and say, Ive never laughed about a dead mom before. Every time Ive heard it in a movie or show before, Ive found it inaccessible.

Though it is a comedy show, Gudernatch said his show does address some sad and poignant moments in his life.

This is what its like being 14 years old and having the world fall apart around you, but at the same time, youre also sad that Kelly Richards doesnt want to go out on a date with you, he said. You were just at your moms funeral and youre still worried and afraid that no one is going to instant message you when you get home. That is a big section of my show. How do you deal with life and death when everything is life and death?

His first feature film, titled The Week After the Week After, is scheduled to start shooting this month and follows similar themes.

Its about a guy grieving his father who just died, he said. Hes from this small mountain town and he goes up to visit for a week. Its based on my experience on these grotesque moments in our lives that I find hilarious. You are so numb and so busy that nothing lands. You have bills, you have funeral arrangements, you have all these things and youre just going. Then that week ends and everybody leaves, and the phone calls dry up and the lasagna dries up and youre left in this week of What do I do? Can I smile? Can I be happy right now?

Youre still human and youre going through it, he said. Youre still mad you ran out of cereal. Its trying to use all the stuff I went through. Not many people openly talk about grief. In mental health we talk about grief, but its in this very clinical way or healthful way and this absolutely needs to exist. But nobody would ever joke about it. Isnt it kind of funny? There are these funny things that happen.

Gudernatchs other project is his production company, Owlie Productions, which he uses to operate Owlie Outreach, which offers cost-free, nonprofit film work for small to mid-sized local organizations that cant afford film advertising.

I own all that stuff, he said. If you have a niche skill, why not use that? Not just giving money and feel good about it for a day. Its really helping people. The only thing I charge for is if we have to rent anything. What I do, what my friends do, that comes for free.

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Laughing at Death: Tolland native putting his stamp on the national comedy stage - Journal Inquirer