Try upbeat nihilism in 2022 – The Boston Globe

COVID-19 crashed into our lives with enough force to dislodge most of us from the center of our own universes. It asked us to consider others, our impact, and the futility of our individual success and happiness in the context of other peoples suffering.

For many people, this was a fresh existential exercise. But for a new generation of nihilists, it was familiar territory: We had discovered our own pointlessness long before anyone had heard of the pandemic.

Nihilism historically hasnt had a great reputation. To be fair, the elevator pitch that life is meaningless is a tough sell. But if you can see past the gloomy associations and stock figures of depressed 19th-century Germans, there is a glimmer of light to be found. Broadly, nihilism is skeptical of systems of meaning. It reminds us that ideas that feel as inherent as gravity religion, traditional notions of family structures, attitudes toward work are in reality just human constructs we choose to believe in and abide by.

Questioning these codes feels like a recipe for chaos. But approached correctly, it can be a call to interrogate why we see the world the way we do and why some people are so invested in maintaining a status quo.

Id argue that were already answering this call. Those of us who grew up amid the crumbling ruins of systems that were supposed to reinforce a sense of purpose have developed a new perspective on our own comfort. We understand that even if we were able to locate meaning within our lives, it would exist inside structures that still largely exploit and ignore so many other lives. Rather than continue to perpetuate fading myths of individual greatness, a new generation considers an alternative.

The search for meaning is of course not an inherently bad thing. Our quest for it has driven civilization forward. Quivering lovers swear that prior to their fateful meeting their lives were missing it. Weary heroes are propelled by it in times of exhausting crisis. Fallen villains interrogate it and find their blackened hearts lightened. Foundational concepts of community, ethics, logic, morality, consciousness, and equality were born from the investigation of it. The urge to wrestle with meaning has inspired great works of art, literature, and film. A lot of the time, were better for it.

Problems arise when the promises and expectations tied to meaning begin to eclipse the concept itself. Which I would argue is exactly where we find ourselves today. Somewhere along the line, that noble, deeply personal, perhaps lifelong quest began to feel more urgent and commodified. The pursuit of meaning shifted from an epic journey to a scavenger hunt. Its not enough to try to locate purpose in love, family, work, or religion (although, readers beware, those areas hold their own traps). Now were being asked to find meaning in everything we do. From our morning coffee to our weekend laundry load, each event or chore needs to be elevated into a clear-eyed statement about existence.

Daily newsletters flood our inboxes, prescribing never-ending tasks and goals to meditate over and mark as complete. In the shower we listen to podcasts about making this day matter, then towel off and cram in a few minutes of mindful journaling about what we managed to meaningfully achieve the day before. When we exercise a formerly (and pleasurably) mindless pursuit we cue up playlists on slick apps designed to interrupt our solitude with a voice telling us what this exorcism of calories really means. And how with every step were remaking ourselves and darting toward some unspecified new life thats only another 1.5 miles away.

The myth of meaning is seductive. It infuses the boring or stressful parts of our lives with a sense of purpose and offers a way to soften the tougher realities of our working existence. When the size of your paycheck or the pleasure of your job isnt enough to get you out of bed, the dream that the job is meaningful might be.

Youd hope that all this self-obsession would at least result in a level of pleasure. But the kicker is that the search for meaning through the endless examination and worship of ourselves is only making us feel worse. Even with so much of our waking lives being reoriented toward meaning and purpose often packaged as obsessive self-care and the rise of therapy speak as a fluent second language few of us appear to feel demonstrably better for all this effort. Rates of depression and anxiety are rising across every age group and social demographic, with spikes being particularly sharp among young people.

So whats the alternative? Return to those lingering nihilistic questions although Id recommend doing so in a considerably sunnier way and dare to admit that in the span of all time our presence is meaningless. Yes, at first its a stinging thought. Sit with it, though, and youll notice how it eases fixations on legacy, ego, and purpose, allowing us to shift focus from one day to the immediate moment and take pleasure in the random existence we were wildly lucky to be gifted at all.

The mirage of purpose

Unfortunately, the belief that nothing matters doesnt free you from the need to participate in the exchanges of time, money, and energy that make a society more than a scramble of philosophers walking around wondering who is going to make lunch. Yet sunny nihilism leads you to ask: If I dont matter and am therefore not the center of everything and the priority, then what is? If I will be forgotten and lost to time, what will be remembered, at least for a little while?

Walt Whitman asked something similar in his 1882 collection Specimen Days & Collect. He posed the question: After you have exhausted what there is in business, politics, conviviality, love, and so on have found that none of these finally satisfy, or permanently wear what remains? For Whitman, the answer was nature. He recognized it as something so much larger than himself that it deserved the love and attention he might otherwise pour into more insular pursuits.

For each person, the answer is different. Personally, Im with Whitman. Like many millennials, Ive found that accepting the futility of my small life has deepened my commitment to environmentalism. Understanding that the only constant (at least until its absorbed by the sun in a few billion years) is Earth itself, I find its protection becomes more important than any singular interests of mine.

Id encourage you to try the exercise for yourself. If you accept that you dont matter, that your name, ego, reputation, family, friends, and loves will soon be gone, how does the way you understand your own time, money, and energy change? Maybe the process reframes your attention to things you hope will last a little longer than yourself: Nature, art, culture, institutions, and causes you believe in will benefit generations who have long forgotten your name. Or perhaps the question draws you back to that present moment: the small pleasures you can access today, the people you love, their right to feel safe, respected, well, and heard.

When you look at the things youre supposed to want whether its a perfect partner or a job people are jealous of and consider that they and the meaning within them are constructed fantasies, they suddenly seem hollow. But when you turn the same attention to what really makes you happy loved ones, nature, a quiet afternoon they retain all their luster without having myths of purpose mapped over them. A generation that has seen through the futility of meaningless systems understands this. We begin to prioritize these quieter delights, considering the planet, the well-being of others, and a future where all people are able to shelter in such gentle pleasures.

The truth is, we obsess about life to save ourselves from death. We make the question of meaning impossibly big to balance how impossibly small we are. We inflate ourselves to distract from the reality that being good to others is a lot of work. We wish for a magic rule of happiness because the things we need to do to be happy arent the things that bring attention, praise, direction, and reassurance.

But sunny nihilism can induce an alternative state, one that says, Dont worry about locating the meaning of life; instead, ask yourself: What is my obsession taking me away from right now? How is it trying to make me think and behave? Where could that energy and focus be better spent?

Across history weve sought meaning in God, love, work, and ourselves. Its not lost on me that in many ways Im repeating the same trick by writing this. Dedicating words to the power of pointlessness is in essence just another grasp for meaning. Understandably, humans find it impossible to abandon the idea altogether. But that doesnt mean we need to be swallowed by it.

Few people get to the end of a period of deep, honest, private contemplation and think, Well, that was a waste of a decade. But sunny nihilism offers an existence that at least isnt consumed by this quest. It invites us to resist the urge to dress up the actuality of our own lives and blur the existential insanity of existence the cacophony of mutations that occurred over billions of years to bring us here. Fully embracing the surreal miracle of our life makes it easier to resist asking too much more from it. The danger of meaning is that it can condition us to feel dissatisfied with the absurd beauty of existence, to endlessly ask, Is this it?

Sunny nihilism reminds us that this is, unavoidably, it. Our lives are a meaningless twist of chance, a bundle of luck and random events. But to exist, to have been able to experience a moment of this pointless planet, feels like such a bizarre gift, it requires no point at all.

Wendy Syfret, a journalist in Australia, is the author of The Sunny Nihilist: A Declaration of the Pleasure of Pointlessness, from which this essay is adapted.

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Try upbeat nihilism in 2022 - The Boston Globe