Arguments Against Nihilism

Nihilism has been ever present in my mind for the last few years causing some bouts of hopelessness. But, I believe my actions are meaningful. So I asked myself, do I have good reason to?

TLDR: Just because life has no objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value that does NOT mean life is meaningless.I think it is pretty irrefutable life has no objective meaning. So no grand perspective of good and evil that holds for all possible minds and universes. But really, value systems and purpose only make sense from a certain perspective. Asking “what is the meaning of life?” is like asking “how fast is earth going”. It only means something from a particular frame of reference, there is no absolute perspective. But how can life be meaningful without objective value?

The existentialists or optimistic nihilists would say, yay you get to create your own meaning. The world is inherently meaningless, but you as a conscious being create it. People live meaningful lives. You could imagine many perspectives that make life meaningful and offer a value system and moral framework. But I personally did not find this satisfying, I seem to want more. So what do I want? I don’t really want to know the meaning of life. I want meaning in life. I want to be connected to something bigger than myself, profound transcendence, awe. I want to value and work towards something that is inherently valuable. I want to be subjectively attracted to something objectively attractive. This human tendency to desire inherent value in a world that seems to be devoid of any has been called the absurdism. But, I actually think the world does have what we are looking for.

Jordan Peterson laid it out best in this 2 hour discussion, but I’ll summarize:

"There is a hierarchy of moral value … and its an emergent property of the way complex systems organize themselves…That system of organization has been around for so long that we are biologically adapted to that structure"

Fundamentally, all living beings value at a very deep level, self-propagation, survival/reproduction. There is just no other way life works. And emergent from this core, human nature(our evolutional environment and biology) imbues all humans with a shared perspective beyond survival and traditional morality.  Jordan Peterson lays out somethings. But, I found Sam Harris’s version of this argument in his book “The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Moral Values” more compelling. He also talks about it here. Harris calls human morality an underdeveloped branch of science but points out it is directed towards some abstract sense of wellbeing and human flourishing. And so there is something objectively valuable(for human life). But we layer on our own subjective perspective and eccentricities on top. So, the world is neither a blank canvas we project meaning on to nor does the world have some static, inherent value we must discover. Instead, both meaning in the world and meaning in our lives emerge from a complex interplay between us and the world. The world created us, we change the world, then the world changes us, like a beautiful musical improvisation. A mix of subjective and objective, of rational and emotional. We take our personal human perspective and it is very real.And if that still isn’t enough, you can just stop thinking about it. Creating a meaningful life happens at a level below cognition and like breathing you don’t need conscious awareness. Why constantly take the ultimate perspective that renders everything meaningless? Why not stay at the perspective that imbues your life with the most meaning?

"Objective judgment, now at this very moment. Unselfish action, now at this very moment. Willing acceptance-now at this very moment- of all external events. That’s all you need." - Marcus Aurelius