Nihilism: the Cynic | Archetypical Philosophies 4
a Short Essay for the Modern Existentialist
1 | Nihilism: To Fell the False World
Our hero steels himself, and leaps—vaulting over the edge of the wall. He falls, plunging to the earth, where stands a horde of fearsome, horned demons with patchy fur and discolored flesh, howling and screaming in an infernal tongue. He brandishes his sword of Order, locking eyes with the closest one—but discovers not a monster, but instead just a man who wears a strange hat and bears a strange stench, and who seems obsessed with throwing rocks at the wall.
Confused, our hero thus calls out to this weird, stinky man, demanding to know what’s going on.
“I’m gonna knock this wall on its ass!” The stinky man replies.
“But why?” The hero asks.
“’Cause walls are fake—unnatural! Can’t you see?” The stinky man replies. “If someone had to make it, then that means that it was never real in the first place!”
“Well… stop it!” The hero cries. “That wall protects us—it’s always been there! In fact, what’s unnatural… is for you to want to knock it down at all!”
The Idealist is the Faithful; a man who believes that the nature of the world is one of inherent Order. A world in which everything naturally abides by the rule of law—in which everything already makes sense. He is the one who chooses to believe in the story which he’s been told all his life: that is, that he holds the knowledge, responsibility, and power to defend what’s Good and right against the Evil and the Chaos of the false world which attempts to knock it down.
The Nihilist, meanwhile, is the Cynic: he who believes that the nature of the world is one of inherent Chaos—that laws are something that people just make up, and that nothing makes sense. He is the one who has realized that the Truth he’s been told is a lie—that there’s no such thing as “responsibility”, and that someone somewhere is trying to manipulate him and turn the whole world upside down.
And so, the Nihilist is the one who believes that there are two kinds of people in this world:
The enlightened, and the sheep.
There are those who are weak-minded—unable to cope with the cold, uncaring, Absurd reality of the world, and so who retreat behind the safety of a lie: that Order is what’s natural and True. And then, there are those whose eyes have been opened—who know, understand, and embrace the fact that Chaos is the true nature of the world.
The Nihilist believes that the sheep are the ones who hide behind false words and false walls—who can continue to live a sad, sheltered, carefree existence only through their faith in fake meaning and fake Truths. And so, he makes it his mission—his obsession—to attempt to tear down that wall. To expose their Eden to the outside world, and to show them all once and for all that he is in the right—
That nothing means anything at all.
2 | Onward
And so, the Nihilist stands tall and proud, declaring the meaninglessness of existence and the futility of human Agency. Yet still, there he stands, putting everything he has—every fiber of conviction within his being—into his project of throwing rocks at a wall. And soon, hopefully—or perhaps, one day—he’ll grow either tired or bored. It might take thousands of years, after all, to really knock that wall on its ass… no matter how good his throwing-arm may be. And a Nihilist is, in reality, not a monster or a demon—but instead, simply just a mortal man. And mortal men get tired, or bored—distracted, or hungry—and they wander off to go do something else instead.
After all, if nothing means anything anyway… then what was even the point of trying to knock down some stupid wall in the first place?
Philosophy: a mindset. An attitude. The way that a person chooses to see the world, and therefore to approach living their life.
Αρχή | archí: origin
Τύπος | týpos: form
An Archetypical Philosophy is the bare-bones, logical basis of a person’s mindset or attitude, inferred from observation of the way in which they choose to live their life.