On Nihilism

Nihilism has gotten a bad rap. It has induced panic in god-botherers and atheists alike, and conjures mental images for the perplexed of people fornicating with their pets in public spaces.

But what is the big deal? The version of Nihilism I ascribe to simply states that there are no human values that are not the creations of humans themselves — there is nothing “outside” the human mind that creates those human values.

This gives us the freedom to create our own values. But as Erich Fromm noted, some humans will find freedom to be psychologically burdensome, and retreat into the comfort and security of totalitarianism. If this be true, it is not an argument against Nihilism; physics is not rejected as a discipline because most people don’t know what a quark is.

Embrace the benign indifference of the Cosmos.