Category Archives: Nihilism

Henry Giroux

Henry A. Giroux currently holds the McMaster University Chair for Scholarship in the Public Interest in the English and Cultural Studies Department and...

Ignorance is a terrible wound when it is self-inflicted, but it becomes a dangerous plague when the active refusal to know combines with power. President Trumps lies, lack of credibility, woefully deficient knowledge of the world, and unbridled narcissism have suggested for some time that he lacks the intelligence, judgment and capacity for critical thought necessary to occupy the presidency of the United States. But when coupled with his childish temperament, his volatile impetuousness and his Manichaean conception of a worlda reductionist binary that only views the world in term of friends and enemies, loyalists and traitorshis ignorance translates into a confrontational style that puts lives, if not the entire planet, at risk.

Trumps seemingly frozen and dangerous fundamentalism, paired with his damaged ethical sensibility, suggests that we are dealing with a form of nihilistic politics in which the relationship between the search for truth and justice on the one hand and moral responsibility and civic courage on the other has disappeared. For the past few decades, as historian Richard Hofstadter and others have reminded us, politics has been disconnected not only from reason but also from any viable notion of meaning and civic literacy. Government now runs on willful ignorance as the planet heats up, pollution increases and people die. Evidence is detached from argument. Science is a subspecies of fake news, and alternative facts are as important as the truth. Violence becomes both the catalyst and the result of the purposeful effort to empty language of any meaning. Under such circumstances, Trump gives credence to the notion that lying is now a central feature of leadership and should be normalized, and this serves as an enabling force for violence.

For Trump, words no longer bind. Moreover, his revolting masculinity now stands in for dialogue and his lack of an ethical imagination. Trump has sucked all of the oxygen out of democracy and has put into play a culture and mode of politics that kill empathy, revel in cruelty and fear and mutilate democratic ideals. Trumps worldview is shaped by Fox News and daily flattering and sycophantic news clips, compiled by his staff, that boost his deranged need for emotional validation.

All of this relieves him of the need to think and empathize with others. He inhabits a privatized and self-indulgent world in which tweets are perfectly suited to colonizing public space and attention with his temper tantrums, ill-timed provocations, and incendiary vocabulary. His call for loyalty is shorthand for developing a following of stooges who offer him a false and egregiously grotesque sense of communityone defined by a laughable display of ignorance and a willingness to eliminate any vestige of human dignity.

Anyone who communicates intelligently is now part of the fake news world that Trump has invented. Language is now forced into the service of violence. Impetuousness and erratic judgment have become central to Trumps leadership, one that is as ill-informed as it is unstable. Trump has ushered in a kind of anti-politics and mode of governance in which any vestige of informed judgment and thought is banished as soon as it appears. His rigid, warlike mentality has created an atmosphere in the United States in which dialogue is viewed as a weakness and compromise understood as personal failing.

As Hofstadter argued more than 50 years ago, fundamentalist thinking is predicated on an anti-intellectualism and the refusal to engage other points of view. The other is not confronted as someone worthy of respect but as an enemy, a threatening presence that must be utterly vanquishedand in Trumps case, humiliated and then destroyed.

Philosopher Michel Foucault elucidated the idea that fundamentalists do not confront the other as a partner in the search for the truth but an adversary, an enemy who is wrong, who is harmful, and whose very existence constitutes a threat. There is something even more serious here: in this comedy, one mimics war, battles, annihilations, or unconditional surrenders, putting forward as much of ones killer instinct as possible.

Trump is missing a necessity in his fundamentalist toolbox: self-reflection coupled with informed judgment. He lacks the ability to think critically about the inevitable limitations of his own arguments, and he is not held morally accountable to the social costs of harboring racist ideologies and pushing policies that serve to deepen racist exclusions, mobilize fear and legitimize a growing government apparatus of punishment and imprisonment. What connects the moral bankruptcy of right-wing ideologues such as Trump and his acolyteswho embrace violent imagery to mobilize their followers with the mindset of religious and political extremistsis that they share a deep romanticization of violence that is valorized by old and new fundamentalisms.

The current crisis with North Korea represents not only the possibility of a nuclear war triggered by the irrational outburst of an unhinged leader, but also a death-dealing blow to the welfare state, young people, immigrants, Muslims and others deemed dangerous and therefore disposable.

Trump has replaced politics with the theater and poison of nihilism. His politics combines spectacle with vengeance, violence and a culture of cruelty. Trumps impetuous and badly informed comments about North Korea represent more than a rash, thoughtless outburst. Rather, they contribute to rising tensions and the increased possibility of a major military conflict. Trumps dangerous rhetoric is symptomatic of the death of historical consciousness, public memory, critical thinking and political agency itself at the highest levels of governance. Under such circumstances, politics degenerates into dogma coupled with a game-show mentality symptomatic of a perpetual form of political theater that has morphed into a new kind of mass mediated barbarism. This is how democracy ends, with a bang and a whimper.

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Trump and the Politics of Nihilism - Truthdig

With the role that made him super-famous five years in the rearview mirror, Robert Pattinson is returning to theaters in his first leading role since the end of the Twilight franchise. The 31-year-old British actor stars as a low-life New York criminal named Connie Nikas in the critically acclaimed Good Time.

In the exclusive clip above, which is a snippet from the movies opening scene, we first meet Connies brother Nick (played by co-director Benny Safdie), who has developmental disabilities, as hes speaking to a psychiatrist (Peter Verby). Pattinsons character barges into the office to drag his brother out, triggering a very twisty plot that before long will lead to the two brothers on the run from the police after a sloppy bank robbery.

Pattison spoke to EW about finding the look, sound, and essence of his character. His performance has been generating awards buzz since the film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May. Good Time is in limited release now and expanding to more cinemas in coming weeks.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY:Tommy Lee Jones has an interesting connection to this character that you play in Good Time, isnt that right? ROBERT PATTINSON: Yeah, absolutely.

How so? [Co-director]Josh Safdie had sent me Norman Mailers book The Executioners Song and then I watched the movie [made for TV in 1982] with Tommy Lee Jones as murderer Gary Gilmore.Its just such a fascinating character. Theres something about his nihilism and the way he processes things. Theres not a conventional sense of guilt within him. After hes committed a crime, he still thinks its someone elses fault. Never self-reflective at all that gave me a lot of energy as the character I was playing.

Because Connie in Good Time lacks a certain self-awareness?Yes. Its so interesting playing someone who makes everything pragmatic for himself. Connie thinks that everything is excusable because its in the service of what he wants. But thats not how morality works. He needs that explained to him. And I found that fascinating.

And how did Tommy Lee Jones appearance affect how you look in this movie? That was a kind of later thing. In preparation for the role, we were trying all these different things with my face. We were trying to get me to look more like Benny [Safdie], who plays my brother. So I put on a fake nose, tried some other prosthetics. But I looked crazy.

Crazy in the wrong way? Yeah, crazy but not subtle. So what we did, and it was very simple, was just put a little bit of scarring and pock marks on my skin.

Is there something irresistible for you, given how recognizable you are, about being in a film where audiences might not know its you at first? I kind of love it. I keep wanting to disable audience preconceptions. Im trying to find a world thats also so different to a large part of the audience. And then you have them trapped. Whereas if the world is something that all the audience understands, then they are more likely to say, OK, I recognize him and now Im going to judge how his performance compares to other people. Id love for people to watch Good Time and think Im a first-time actor who theyve never seen before.

How did you come up with the characters voice?I had the luxury of being isolated while working on this. I was living in a basement apartment in Queens. And I was just repeating and repeating stuff until it vaguely felt right. Ive worked with dialect coached before but for this role it was just repetition. And I stayed in the accent while we werent filming. Its a fun accent, I must say. I missed it when it was gone.

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Watch Robert Pattinson burst onto the screen in Good Time opening scene - EW.com

The Recap: Rick turns himself into a pickle to get out of family therapy and winds up stuck. While Beth, Summer, and Morty talk through their problems, Rick finds himself accidentally swept up in a gruesome action movie.

R&M is at its best when it balances its fantastical and mundane plots, usually tying them together around a central theme. While the content of sitting in a therapists office couldnt be more removed from a slurry of Die Hard, Metal Gear Solid, Liam Neeson, and countless other action flicks and tropes, both plots focus around issues of agency and choice. Both begin with the characters being swept up, literally or figuratively, in some grand occurrence that seems to leave them powerless, and work their way up from there.

The execution mostly focuses on Rick and Beth, leaving Morty and Summer to act as this episodes baseline. By the end, its clear that while no one has their shit together, the kids are at least trying to process what theyve been through and improve things. The adults, meanwhile, would rather run screaming from any kind of revelation in favor of trading faux-philosophical dialogue or just ignoring the issue entirely.

The last point might be the most interesting one. The first two seasons dont shy away from the fact that Rick is terrible, but they also encourage us to think hes sort of cool. He gets all the great one-liners, he takes the audience to new and exciting places, he leads badass action scenes. And those elements cast an admiring light on his self-destructive habits and bleak nihilism (the show has never shied from nihilism, but it increasingly makes its stance as a constructive version that knows its different from that hopelessness).

If Rickmancing the Stone distanced us from Rick, this one brings us right up close for a dose of visceral unpleasantness. In some ways Ricks assault on the mansion isnt functionally different from his takedown of the Citadel of Ricks in the premiere; its the details that make it matter. While the premiere was a grand sci-fi battle that tugged us along on the assumption that Rick was doing something ultimately noble, here hes wading through a sewer and killing rats and roaches, working bits of brain with his tongue.

The rat-bug suit is some amazing Cronenbergian body horror, and the sheer nastiness that underpinned Ricks first few kills is embodied in the pragmatic trophies he wears for the rest of the episode. At first, he kills to save himself, then to get mobile, then just because some dudes irritated him; and even once cool lasers and explosions are involved, theres still that sickly veneer in the background. The imagery tells us that to Rick, everything in the world is spare parts that can be broken down if he decides he has a use for it.

The episode climax brings the reminder of that decay in an excellent way. It might arguably be a narrative cheat to have a character who can handily monologue all of Ricks problems in a succinct form, but putting it in the form of choice helps ease that burden. In the end, its not really a thesis on Ricks character or an attempt to offer an explanation that can then be reverse engineered into a cure; its a window into how his character might choose to reform his behavior going forward. It keeps the uncertainty going without being cheap, and Rick gives just enough of a consolation gesture to keep the viewer from simply writing him off.

If last week I was concerned the writers might be planning to sideline Beth, this episode has left me convinced that her increasingly unstable emotional state will be a major fixture of the season. Her desire to keep Rick in her life at any cost is no longer a personal decision but one that affects her family, and with people depending on her its not something she can continue being entirely selfish about. Or rather, she canbut that would make her just like Rick in ways that neither of them probably want deep down (waaaaaaaay deep; deeper; somewhere in there).

The kids have it worst of all in the meantime, and Im hoping the writing will continue to ratchet up that tension and division of loyalty versus self-preservation even when it takes time out for one-off adventures. Something is going to give, and its probably going to be real ugly when it does.

Vrai is a queer author and pop culture blogger; theyre very concerned about these kids. You can read more essays and find out about their fiction atFashionable Tinfoil Accessories, listen to them podcasting onSoundcloud, support their work viaPatreonorPayPal, or remind them of the existence ofTweets.

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Rick and Morty Recap: Pickle Rick - The Mary Sue

This gentle comedy is like the Midas Touch, teaching us how our fondest dream can turn into a living nightmare

Robert Hofler, provided by

A Parallelogram Theater Review: Bruce Norris Gives Nihilism a Good Name

I saw the Los Angeles premiere of Bruce Norriss A Parallelogram four years ago, and remember almost nothing about it. Having just seen the first New York production of this gently nihilistic comedy, which opened Wednesday at Second Stage, I think Ill never forget it.

Like Norris wonderfully mad heroine Bee (Celia Keenan-Bolger), perhaps Im living in a parallelogram, having experienced the same play in different planes of time and space. (Its doubtful this is the way Norris would describe a parallelogram. You need to see the play to get a much more cogent definition.) The major difference between Bee and most of us is that shes cursed with an older version of herself (Anita Gillette) who keeps telling her what will happen in the next 60 seconds, if not the next few decades of her life. In this sense, A Parallelogram is a lot like the Midas Touch and other ancient fables that teach us how our fondest dream can turn into a living nightmare.

Also Read: 'Napoli, Brooklyn' Theater Review: Italian American Saga With Extra Kick in the Sauce

Unlike most plays about madness, A Parallelogram takes us inside the lead characters feverish mind to reveal the logic of hallucination and how lucid it can make a person. Bees knowledge of the future does not give her the ability to change her life, she learns, except in the most insignificant ways. Extrapolating that nihilism outward, she finds that shes grossed out by childbirth and young children, and, truth be told, is not really affected by mass deaths on the other side of the world or, for that matter, the Holocaust and 9/11. Its with her mention of these latter catastrophic events that Norris shows his true bravery as a playwright. Its the older Bees casual rant here that separates the curmudgeons in the audience from the true misanthropists. And the younger Bees total disgust at a nearly born baby (a living turd) is equally breathtaking in its negativity.

Also Read: 'Hamlet' Theater Review: Oscar Isaac Strips to His Skivvies in Earthy Revival

Keenan-Bolgers gift as an actress is to keep her faade abnormally placid while revealing whats just below the surface, as well as whats wrenching her gut. Michael Greifs direction pairs her beautifully with Gillette, who personifies not a disgraceful version of Bees older self but someone who is definitely a deep disappointment to the younger Bee. Equally effective is Keenan-Bolgers pairing with Stephen Kunken, who plays Bees first boyfriend. Kunken is asked to repeat his characters actions, often three or four times a la Groundhog Day. He does this was astounding precision, but also gives the impression that hes as unaware of whats going on as Bee is hyper sensitive to everything around her past, present, and future.

For Bee, life turns out to be so much less than what she wants it to be, and Norris leaves her trapped by that knowledge. But he gives her moments. Bees subsequent boyfriend is played by Juan Castano, and his brief half-naked saunter across the stage after showering lets us know that their sex together is great. They wont remain together for long, but while hes there, shes getting laid in a spectacular way. A Parallelogram is like that. In the end, its message is a downer, but the play is thrilling to watch while its there in front of us.

Read original story A Parallelogram Theater Review: Bruce Norris Gives Nihilism a Good Name At TheWrap

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'A Parallelogram' Theater Review: Bruce Norris Gives Nihilism a Good Name - The Edwardsville Intelligencer

Last nights Rick and Morty wasnt the premiere, as the first episode of season 3 ran on April 1st. This is the start of the season proper, and while it wasnt as inventive as classic episodes like Total Rickall or Interdimensional Cable, the confidence of the writing lets the shows characters grow without getting corny.

Its funny to say that an episode where the characters go to a Mad Max-inspired universe to work out their feelings about divorce isnt inventive, but thats because Rick and Morty has set a high bar. Rickmancing The Stone doesnt flip the show on its head, but it does flesh out Summer, a character that sometimes comes off as one note.

Last season, Summer, Beth and Jerry got more of a spotlight, with mixed success. While Beth and Jerrys marital problems were sometimes irritating, it paid off with the two characters divorcing in the season 3 premiere. Theyve both moved into the background this episode in favor of showcasing how Morty, and especially Summer, are handling their parents separation. The siblings have joined Rick in a post-apocalyptic wasteland to run from their feelings. Mortys arm gets possessed by the muscle memory of an anonymous dead raid victim, and he beats the shit out of people to relieve his stress. Summer, on the other hand, really leans into the whole nihilistic wasteland thing, and ends up romantically engaged with Hemorrhage, the leader of the tribe theyve been hanging out with.

Summers a great character when she gets something to do. In Something Ricked This Way Comes we got to see her dynamic with Rick, and finally I feel like the show is building on that. At the end of the day, Summer and Rick are pretty similar. Theyre both self involved and neither of them have healthy coping mechanisms for their problems. Like Rick, Summers more likely to run away from things than face them head on. At the end of the episode, Rick finally convinces Summer to leave the Mad Max universe just by letting her new relationship get so mundane that it stops being an exciting escape.

Theres more hugging and learning in this episode than Im used to from Rick and Morty, but I appreciated that characters did get a chance to grow and to learn a little bit about themselves. While this is by no means a functional family, at least Beth and Jerry divorcing now seems like a plot point that will not only stick, but have a real impact on the cast. Rick and Morty would stop being interesting if these characters got their shit together, but Rickmancing The Stone seems like a step away from the unrelenting nihilism that the show sometimes gets mired in.

After the episode aired, Adult Swim streamed a post-show talk show, Ricking Morty, with series creator Dan Harmon and writer Jane Becker. While they didnt give away any show changing spoilers, it was really cool to get a behind the scenes look at how this episode took shape. Harmon talks about how his own parents separation inspired some aspects of this episode, and Becker talks about the episodes origins as a Pagemaster riff. Im pretty glad they landed on Mad Max instead.

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New Rick And Morty Visits A Nihilistic Mad Max Wasteland - Kotaku

I dont like shopping malls; they remind me of the weakness of our species when it comes to commodities that they must have, according to the spurious ethos of the prevailing economic system. Hence, when the woman in my life asked me to accompany her to that monstrosity known as the Baywest mall, outside the city, yesterday, to fetch a DVD that was only available at a music and video shop there, I agreed reluctantly. I had never been there in the time it has existed, and was quite proud that I had avoided this monument to greed, which had been built on, of all places, a wetland, which has a very important function in ecosystems.

As it turned out, it proved to be a very creative morning for me. As we walked in my eye was caught by a huge, poster-sized advertisement for some or other smartphone, and I was struck by the exemplary manner in which it graphically encapsulates the passive nihilism of our capitalism-ridden era. I immediately sat down on a bench and wrote this piece, while my partner went her way.

I have written on the varieties of nihilism distinguished by Friedrich Nietzsche in the 19th century here before (see http://thoughtleader.co.za/bertolivier/2015/12/15/we-live-in-a-nihilistic-age/ ); suffice it to say, therefore, that passive nihilism is the awareness that nothing has intrinsic value (any longer), combined with the simultaneous inability, or refusal, to accept it, followed by turning to anaesthetising practices in order to forget the absence of values. In Nietzsches time passive nihilism assumed the shape of seeing the shocking abyss of non-value and non-meaning, and promptly running back into the arms of the priests in order to avoid this terrible truth. Today, people run into the arms of Mammon, the god of money. So what does this have to do with advertisement for a smartphone? The latter graphically embodies such contemporary passive nihilism, as I shall try and show.

The advertisement in question is a photograph showing a group of children on a beach, the sea behind them, with their backs turned to it, huddling together so that the one taking the selfie (with the smartphone being advertised) can capture them all with one shot, the oceans crashing waves behind them. Here, in one brand-advertising image-configuration, the essence of the passive nihilism suffusing our time is paradigmatically captured.

First, it is significant that the ocean is behind them, their backs turned to it both literally and figuratively it is, in other words, a scene emblematically representing the current alienation between humanity and nature. Second, the smartphone as mnemo-technical device (which might just as well have been a digital camera, tablet or IPad) concretises the kind of enjoyment at stake here: it is mediated enjoyment. What used to be the sensory enjoyment of the sand, sunshine and waves on the beach, has been reduced to that of images on a screen, which, for better or worse, are the product of technical artifice.

In itself this is neither good nor bad, axiologically speaking (i.e. relating to values); as Bernard Stiegler persuasively argues, we are technical beings (Homo and Gyna technologicus) through and through. The difference, condensed in the composite image under scrutiny, is that the latter is symptomatic of a reductive tendency, globally, to replace the variegated spectrum of human experience with only one kind of privileged experience that which is technically mediated, in the process denuding the experiential world of its intrinsic value.

In the present instance the experience of a visit to the beach has been reduced to a selfie, in its turn made possible by the smartphone which is touted as the indispensable condition of an enjoyable visit to the beach. Behind this reductive iconic metonymy of the mnemo-technical capture of social life the destruction of savoir-vivre (knowledge of how to live your life), precisely lurks the Midas-touch of capital, which strives to transmute everything into proverbial gold, but at the cost of life.

To possess such a smartphone, one has to have access to capital, and quite a lot of it, too. Which means that you have to enter the consumerist loop: you have to earn money by working in the capitalist economy, and gain acceptance, not only by the system, but also by your peers, by being a good consumer spending money on consumer goods like the latest smartphone, car, and clothes, having a bank account, and most important, proving your consumerist virtue by demonstrating your willingness and ability to service debt.

All these consumerist-capitalist implications of the selfie on the beach are not incidental, of course; they cut to the cold heart of the matter. The technical capture of peoples attention (here, childrens; catch them young!) serves the objective of keeping the wheels of the consumer economy turning. In the process the natural world always culturally mediated, to be sure becomes a technically mediated world, where the instrinsic value of a beach, the ocean, flowers, mountains, streams, wildlife, is replicated (and concomitantly obliterated) by its mediating substitute, which, in its turn, functions as a metonymy (part for whole) of capital. Needless to stress, the latter is ultimately monodimensional, all appearances to the contrary notwithstanding.

On the topic of wildlife, a friends tale of his experience during a visit to the Addo National Elephant Park near Port Elizabeth in the Eastern Cape is emblematic of what Stiegler has identified as the capture of peoples attention by means of the capital-serving mnemo-technical devices that function as a conduit for the reduction of the sensory diversity of the world to its ostensibly mediating counterpart (which turns out to be nothing more than a lure of capital).

The friend in question had taken visitors from the Netherlands to see elephant and other wild animals including rhinoceros, lion, kudu and buffalo while driving through the extensive area comprising the park. To his astonishment, when they encountered a sizeable herd of elephant, his visitors proved more interested in looking at the images of these majestic creatures on the viewing screens of their digital camera and video-camera than in the animals themselves, which were quite close to their vehicle. Even when he tried to draw their attention to a particularly striking bull among the rest of the herd, they merely looked up long enough to be able to locate the animal, and then proceeded to marvel at its image framed by the viewing screens of their cameras.

It is not the case that all photography has (and has always had) such a reductive effect regarding the experiential value of the visible world, of course. When photographs serve the purpose of directing ones attention back to the extant world natural or cultural, and whether in memory or in actuality the latter is left intact, instead of being replaced by its technically replicated counterpart. When we travel throughout South Africa or to other countries, often to climb foreign mountains, my partner takes photographs of beautiful landscapes, rivers, mountains and animals. These photographs are reminders, when we look at them afterwards, of the beauty and variegatedness of the world, instead of being fetishes that are increasingly replacing the world, to the point where they rekindle the desire in us to revisit these places.

Put differently, as long as photographs are a record, reminders and a celebration of the visible world, its indispensable axiological role in human life remains intact. But when techno-mediated images of the world become what Baudrillard calls hyper-reality, that takes the place of the visible world and makes it disappear, as it were, the very (malleable) foundation of value in human experience is eroded, and nihilism prevails.

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Selfies, the disappearance of the natural world and nihilism - Thought Leader

A trope of the family-friendly Hollywood movie is that of the dead-eyed, whatever-sighing teenager. This teen is apathetic, bored, and nihilistic. They roll their eyes at family fun and take pleasure at resisting their parents values. Think of John Bender of The Breakfast Club, Lindsay Lohans character in Freaky Friday, Kristen Stewarts character Bella Swan in the Twilight saga or Hyde from That 70s Show. The list is long. Although these characters have their nuances, their archetype is that of a person misunderstood and disillusioned with the world as they perceive it. Sometimes, alarmingly, I recognize myself in this character.

Professor Anders Kraal of UBCs philosophy department defines nihilism, in the most basic terms, as the belief that there is no objective meaning in life, there is no way things ought to be in an objective sense.

This means, at the root, that life has no inherent meaning or code. When tragedy strikes and people search for deeper meaning, maybe seeking the design plan of a higher power, nihilists shrug. Their answer to the meaning of life: nothing.

Born in the early 19th century out of Europes rejection of religion, nihilism claims that nothing has value. German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche best articulates nihilism in his book Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Zarathustra, the books main character, sees the dark clouds of meaninglessness on the horizon.

As Kraal notes, I dont think it takes much imagination to see that there could be a lot of pain in seeing things this way.

Anecdotally, I see nihilism all around me. But its crucial to recognize the specific subset of youth who embrace nihilism.

There are liberal youth, said Kraal. "There are conservative youth. There are Christian youth, Muslim youth, Buddhist youth, secular youth, Korean and Danish and American and Pakistani youth. Your generation is not a monolithic whole. This is important. There are various other kinds of youth that dont show up in Hollywood movies or CBC discussion panels.

From my own vantage point, nihilism seems alluring to highly-educated, politically left-leaning millennials. Often those brought up in worlds of Western privilege, much like the people at the movements inception. Can all of these nihilists be people in pain?

Some people see a lack of objective meaning as freedom. An example: transgender and non-binary folks may look at the construct of gender and, with a healthy dose of nihilism, determine that there is no inherent meaning to the concept. Thus, they are free to define themselves how they please.

This is a looser version of the philosophy. It posits that there is no objective meaning to life but there is subjective meaning.

For those, like myself, who need a refresher on the difference: objective values are unbiased and can be proven with concrete facts and figures, otherwise known as the capital "T" Truth. A non-nihilist might state an objective fact: The sun is shining, the birds are singing, so its a beautiful day. Who can disagree? But a nihilist would call the meaning of beautiful into question. Does the day have any inherent and objective value? To them, no. Subjective values, on the other hand, are coloured by an individuals experiences and beliefs. These values cant be verified with concrete facts, but they reflect that persons version of reality. For example, my subjective opinion is that pineapple on pizza is delicious.

So, nihilists can embrace meaning, but that meaning is particular only to them.

Many nihilists consider various things to give them a sense of the meaning of life and they subscribe to values they are comfortable with. But they deny that these values have any objective validity, said Kraal.

Kraal mentions a student who revealed to him that she sees no objective meaning in life whatsoever, and thus was unmotivated to study hard in school. I can relate. Grades and academia as a measure of intelligence feel wrong and unfulfilling. And yet, I still strive to get good grades and often measure my own worth by them. For me, the small belief in the back of my mind that grades and school dont really mean anything is a comfort on a day when I get a crummy grade or just dont feel like working. I will choose to invest imaginary meaning in the importance of school, but ultimately, I wont beat myself up about it.

Nihilism, then, in a strange reversal to the clouds of meaninglessness, can be a kind of protection. In 2017, as political destruction, human suffering, and the terrifying effects of climate change filter in to us, often through social media, the backlash against this toxic negativity comes in an unlikely form: memes.

The Facebook page titled Nihilist Memes has nearly 2 million followers. Jokes about the void and being dead inside are abound across the internet. Depression, anxiety and existential angst are suddenly somehow trendy, at least in its Twitter-joke format. From an outsiders perspective say, someone from my parents generation this sort of humour is alarming. But to those who like it, this humour is both funny and strangely uplifting. It is a kind of comforting buffer between ourselves and the pain of the outside world.

It is worth questioning, however, why we young people who subscribe to some form of nihilism are so heavily represented in media. Why is the list of nihilistic film characters so long? Kraal, who reveals that he does not believe in nihilism, thinks it would be good if we showed some resistance to this stuff.

In each generation, there is always this in group that wants to set the norm for others, and this in group is partly determined by who has the big money, and who has the means necessary to project a public image of what young people are like today. Cue the image of the gum-popping and eye-rolling teenager. Hollywood and music companies are examples of entities with this sort of money, and who do this sort of thing.

By painting nihilism as cool, and linking nihilism to their products, are companies able to sell more to young people who very desperately want to be cool? Think of those multi-colored Whatever t-shirts at Forever-21, or the artist The Weeknd, who sells out stadiums with his brooding and self-destructive lyrics.

How would Hollywood and other wealthy, consumption-based industries benefit from a generation of youth who dont care about anything? Do nihilist youth buy more of their products to fill the void? Do nihilists lay down and accept the inevitability of war and the earths destruction?

Nihilism, like any other philosophy, serves a myriad of purposes, some more harmful than others. Its purpose depends entirely on the degree to which you embrace it.

Professor Kraal recommends reading some of the serious philosophers who argued both for and against nihilism; Kant, Leibnitz, Kierkegaard are a few.

Kraals note of warning is simple: If people want to embrace nihilism, then do so. But don't do it until you have first studied the other side seriously. Otherwise you might wake up one day with deep regrets.

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Nihilism for everyday life - Ubyssey Online

One problem with American society is that many of the successful, intelligent and otherwise kind people are far too busy pursuing success, so that they fail to put their skills in service to political and social transformation. As I see it, this is one of the major blind spots of common sense attitudes of libertarian, liberal and conservative citizens alike. Too many of us remain practically indifferent to the astounding magnitude of political corruption, violence and economic upheaval in America and the world over. Here the actual drivers and machines of political speeches, free markets and promises of progress are dominated by globalizing market trajectories, corporate party interests, and relentless profiteering couched in the language of liberty and the good life.

Meanwhile at home, the life of success, family and profit seems harmless and even well deserved (hard work!). But outside the bubble of nostalgic patriotism and the complex lie of greatness that masks a tremendous disparity between 1st and 3rd world countries and a "secular aristocracy" in America that hordes over 90% of its wealth and resources, a sober look at the international landscape reveals crises that would make even the most mediocre moralist commit to politics and real change.

And yet most of us remain complacent and perpetually default to a benefit-of-the-doubt attitude, which is ultimately nothing more than a form of wishful, even magical thinking - opium of the masses as Marx once put it. What to do? How to come together and act without merely waiting for mass-scale catastrophes and the exposure of unbearable crimes to prompt urgent civic responses and leadership from the ground up?

Brilliant political theorist and ecologist William Connolly illuminates this problem from a global perspective in his new book: Facing the Planetary: Entangled Humanism and the Politics of Swarming. Here's a passage that captures some of his aims and orientation. Notice his use of the phrase 'passive nihilism' which speaks to the concerns just articulated:

"The challenges of today solicit both an embrace of this unruly world and pursuit of new political assemblages to counter its dangers. Today the urgency of time calls for a new pluralist assemblage organized by multiple minorities drawn from different regions, classes, creeds, age cohorts, sexualities, and states. This is so in part because the effects of the Anthropocene often hit the racialized urban poor, indigenous peoples, and low-lying areas hard, while its historical sources emanate from privileged places that must be challenged from inside and outside simultaneously. Militant citizen alliances across regions are needed to challenge the priorities of investment capital, state hegemony, local cronyisms, international organizations, and frontier mentalities. Some adventurers I will consult already record and pursue such countermovements.

What follows is a series of attempts to face the planetary. Not only to face down denialism about climate change but also to define and counter the passive nihilism that readily falls into place aft er people reject denialism. By passive nihilism I mean, roughly, formal acceptance of the fact of rapid climate change accompanied by a residual, nagging sense that the world ought not to be organized so that capitalism is a destructive geologic force. The ought not to be represents the lingering effects of theological and secular doctrines against the idea of culture shaping nature in such a massive way. These doctrines may have been expunged on the refi ned registers of thought, but their remainders persist in ways that make a difference. Passive nihilism folds into other encumbrances already in place when people are laden with pressures to make ends meet, pay a mortgage, send kids to school, pay off debts, struggle with racism and gender in equality, and take care of elderly relatives. Or, similarly, they may eke out a living in the forest and try to figure how to respond when a logging company rumbles into it. Or, on another register, they may teach students who both want to believe in the future they are preparing to enter and worry whether that lure has itself become a fantasy. The sources of passive nihilism are multiple. Under its sway, as we shall see, many refute climate denialism but slide away from stronger action. That is the contemporary dilemma. Few of us surmount it completely. But perhaps it is both necessary and possible to negotiate its balances better" (2017, p. 9).

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To the editor: Regarding this opinion piece, Ronald Reagan probably would not be considered conservative enough in today's Republican Party, yet Fredrik deBoer contends the problem is liberal academics. (Re This trend wont end well, Opinion, July 24)

Today's conservatism is nihilism.

Trump is practicing burn it down"while the GOP rejects the scientific method.

Republicans don't believe colleges are valuable because science and skepticism are counter to their orthodoxy. And yes, this trend won't end well.

David Greene, San Pedro

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To the editor: In attempting to explain the lack of respect for universities among conservatives, DeBoer notes the medias amplify[ing] every leftist kerfuffle and the imbalance of liberals vs. conservatives among professors.

No one would object to that imbalance if the university were able to maintain open inquiries regardless of majority affiliation. Hecklers did not shut down liberal speakers in the 50s, and The Communist Manifesto was taught as an historical document, without safe spaces for Republicans.

As to kerfuffles, the frequency of black-masked thugs setting fires, throwing bricks, violently suppressing opposing views, and other acts of overt fascism cannot be amplified enough.

David Goodwin, Los Angeles

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To the editor: I hate to sound to like a broken record, but a large part of the blame for this attitude of Republicans denigrating education can be placed squarely at the doorstep of Fox News.

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It beats its audience 24/7 over the head with lies and misinformation, constantly berating colleges and universities as hotbeds of liberal thought. As if learning and higher education are bad things, Fox spews this nonsense day after day, week after week.

Of course universities slant liberal, thats why people go there to learn stuff.

Scott W. Hughes, Westlake Village

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To the editor: Leftists have politicized all learning: scientists who alter data to conform to leftist orthodoxy; scholars with a nonconformist viewpoint who are shunned, banned, and ignored; labeling anyone who presumes to disagree as a reactionary. None of this is either science or expertise; this is Marxist cherry-picking of people and information to conform to preconceived ideas of what is acceptable as a fact.

If I want an expert, I'll go elsewhere than to one of our typical, brainwashed college professors.

Donate money to one of their institutions of narrow learning? Ridiculous.

Patrick M. Dempsey, Granada Hills

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To the editor: I agree with the op-ed by DeBoer about the decided anti-intellectual trend of the current GOP and the attitudes of Republicans and especially Trump supporters toward higher education in this country.

Forty years ago, it was President Reagan's trickle down economics that asked Americans to suspend common sense and believe that giveaways to the rich and powerful would somehow improve their employment opportunities and overall well-being.

Then it was the phony tax cut philosophy that only benefited the 1%.

Then it was the tea party that wanted to dismantle all government protections of the poor and middle class regardless of the wisdom involved.

All benefiting from an anti-intellectual approach.

From immigration to voter fraud, from climate change to Russian election interference, it is the uneducated and undereducated that Trump has hornswoggled.

During the campaign, Trump declared "I love the poorly educated!" No wonder he and his supporters have turned their backs on higher education.

He is the master of dumbing down the American electorate. It doesn't take a college graduate to see that.

Tim Geddes, Huntington Beach

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To the editor: I read the op-ed with great interest. The writers concern about the potential crisis facing educational institutions is an issue of great importance.

But there is another issue at stake: the terrible disservice being done to today's students. By hearing only one side of a political or social position, students are not equipped to differentiate between disparate points of view. I dont think they have the opportunity to contrast or to weigh the pros and cons.

How can a student ever decide what to choose to believe if no alternatives are ever presented?

Without that type of discussion, there is no intellectual stimulation that leads to choosing what to believe, instead of merely parroting their professors.

Naomi Feldman, Beverly Hills

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Liberal academics isn't the problem, it's 'conservative nihilism' - Los Angeles Times

The 80-year-old senator was recovering from a craniotomy in Arizona and reeling from the diagnosis of brain cancer, but duty called: He got on a plane and flew to the nations capital to appear on the Senate floor. A frail Senator John McCain entered the room yesterday afternoon to bipartisan applause, captivating the crowd with a rousing speech : Make no mistake: My service here is the most important job I have had in my life. And then he gave the Republican party an enormous win: He voted to open the debate on health care.

Meanwhile, protesters were arrested , journalists fought the Capitol Police for the right to record, President Donald Trump cheered on camera in the Rose Gardenall due to a 5150 motion to proceed debating the Affordable Care Act, as if the Republican party hasnt already been debating Obamacare all day every day since it passed in 2010. Hours later, the GOPs plan to repeal the act, which was rushed to a vote by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (likely looking to capitalize on the partys momentum) itself failed enormously , nabbing only 43 of the necessary 60 votes to overcome a parliamentary objection.

For all the attention he received, and all the drama he created by voting yes for beginning debate, McCains speech was in fact about why the latest Republican effort to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act was actually dead on arrival. I will not vote for the bill as it is today. Its a shell of a bill right now. We all know that, he said. But do we ?

Its increasingly difficult to hold nihilism at bay under the sway of the Trump administration. Hes reigned over this nation for just six months , but every hour seems to bring fresh dramawhether its some Twitter gaffe or a terrifying executive order; whether hes going back on his campaign promises, or making vague assertions that he is, in fact, effectively above the law . Just this week, the president attended a Boy Scout Jamboree in which critics likened his rousing, bizarre speech to a Hitler Youth rally. When an administration cares more about television ratings than its constituents, openly denies the patently obvious as partisan vitriol, and attempts to weaponize the Boy Scouts, its hard to understand what really matters anymore.

Health care matters , because every American citizen has a human body that breaks down sometimes and requires upkeep. Its an easy thing to care about. Except right now, because the constant threats are becoming meaningless, a furious storm of pointless noise, and a solid analogue to any number of fairy tales we share with children to teach them how not to behave. The sky is falling! Here are the political parties that cried wolf!

Should you call your senator now ? Should you take to the streets this afternoon? Should you leave work to stand in the Senate gallery and scream, Dont kill us, kill the bill! as protesters risked arrest to do yesterday? Well, sure. If you want to. But yesterday afternoons vote wasnt the most important one, nor was last nights. Each is yet another failed clone of the same Extremely Important Legislative Attempts (some even get names, like the Better Care Reconciliation Act) to repeal and replace Obamacare, efforts that have been taking place since 2010. The fact is, Obamacares opponents dont seem any closer to providing a new plan, even though they control all three branches of government . As ever, its easier to tear something down than build something new. They seem closer to passing the Free Unicorns for Every Taxpayer Act, not that it makes their efforts any less nefarious.

For the past 17 years, Obamacare has wreaked havoc on the lives of innocent, hardworking Americans, Trump complained in a speech on Monday. Of course, it hasnt been 17 years since Obamacare passed. Seventeen years ago, Barack Obama was a 30-something guy who lost a congressional primary race in a landslide. It just feels so much longer, because the Republicans wont stop fighting against progress. Arent they tired of swimming against the tide?

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Surprise! Yesterday's Dramatic Health Care Vote Meant Nothing - Vogue.com