RE: Is it possible to be a nihilist? (Part 1 of 'The Meaning of Life' series)
I think nihilism must be true, but used as a platform.
Nihilism must first be discovered, and used as a foundation to build upon.
I do not think there is an objective purpose in life, but I think you must find a subjective objective instead.
The nihilist in the comic above? He can comprehend that we are just evolved beings, collections of self-replicating chemicals, living upon a piece of rock orbiting a star. But there are nearly infinite stars in the universe.
There is no value here. Not to the substrate of the universe.
But the nihilist will realize that he will jump out of the way of the car. His life has value to his own life. The nihilist will seek to better his life.
He wants to be happy. The nihilist will seek to find love. He wants another person happy. The nihilist will seek to enrich his community. He wants the world happy.
The nihilist is the most wise person, but only if he builds upon nihilism with his own hands. A nihilist who does not build upon nihilism will be depressed, thus, it is the quest for the mere mortal to build a throne, a throne-room, a castle, and a kingdom around him or herself, to create value.
Not objective value, for the universe will carelessly throw asteroids, earthquakes, tornadoes, and whatever else into the kingdom.
But subjective value, and to create a purpose, a subjective purpose, and to find meaning. But only a subjective meaning. It is subjective to the nihilist.
That fact that it's subjective doesn't make it lesser to something objective.
Rather, because it's subjective, it is far more precious, because it's unique to the mind of the nihilist.
The meaning of the nihilist's own life, values, and purpose, are precious to the nihilist, for completely subjective, personal reasons.
I never said Nihilism isn't true (unless I did, but then it was a mistake). I said no one can be a nihilist. I.e. even if nihilism is true, you can never comprehend such a truth. You could maybe enter all the information we have into a computer and program it to decide the question, and then the screen will blink and the result will be "yeah nihilism is so true you wouldn't believe", and then you'd blink, and say "well then I guess it's true", but you'd still be unable to comprehend this. Cos no living conscious organism can exist without values. Nirvana, as the Buddhists define it, would be a true state of nihilism, but it's unattainable in my view. Unless by Nirvana they just mean "dead", in which case okay.
As for the rest, I don't see how the nihilist can find value in all those things if objectively there is no value in them. You can't just throw "subjective" in there and declare the problem solved: either there is meaning and value in the things he does, or there isn't. If there isn't, why is he doing them? These French flaneur types who sit in bistros sipping cafe au laits declaring the truth of nihilism but living just like everyone else are hypocrites. I wanna see their words become action (hint: noose).
Why would death represent nihilism?
Only dead things can lack values.
Life itself is an illusion.
We are just chemicals replicating. There is no life.
We exist as fire exists, only far more complex and focused. The illusion is easy to fall for, but the truth here is now revealed.
Evolution has forged us into complex creatures, but at the core, we are chemical-physical in origin, and life is only a useful word to categorize genetic code and beings produced by genetic code vs less ordered chemicals.