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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Are you a Nihilist? How often do you look at things through a Nihilistic Lens?

I'm more of an absurdist. I've heard just about every idea and ideology for saving the world/civilization/society and they're all repeated so often and with so little variance that it just sounds like everyone is just desperately clinging to ideology. They're all either reactionary, reformist, or both. It's the absurd.

Why do Nihilism and extreme action go together so often?

Presumably because nihilists are the last people to believe in bringing about change through state reform or mass revolution; so they aren't wasting time with recruiting others or gathering political power.

Is there anything in your world that would drive you to extreme measures?

I'm kind of at the edge now, but an immediate tipping point would be the sudden mass disarmament of my country's militarized, lionized police force.

And lastly what is Nihilism to you?

Disbelief in abstracts like value, meaning, ect.

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ziq wrote (edited )

Everyone keeps telling me I'm not nihilist enough.

I think I'm nihilist in the sense that I do anarchy to do anarchy and not because I expect to receive some kind of mythological reward at the end of the rainbow (either Christ's paradise or Kropotkin's communism).

Everything around us is on in fire and I know there's no putting the flames out, but I'm still going to finish reading the page of this book I'n reading before the heat consumes me.

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[deleted] wrote

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ziq wrote

I just know post leftists have said my writing is too left.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Nihilism, as a relation to positive projects (that they inevitably are coopted by civilisation/capitalism and so negative projects are better), and in its relation to futurity (the No Future approach), both appeal to me a lot, and I use them as one of many lenses that inform my approach.

That said, I'm more focused on Deleuzean stuff, which is obviously close to nihilism in its rootedness in Nietzschean critique, but I think is more developed. There's a lot that can be said here and many directions it could go, so I'll leave it at this for now. Happy to talk more about it if people wanna engage!

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yaaqov wrote

Would you be willing to go a little more into what Deleuzean stuff entails? And where YOU go with it? I’ve never read any Deleuze (/and Guattari), and I can’t say I really know anything about their work besides “rhizomes” haha

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

Would you be willing to go a little more into what Deleuzean stuff entails?

Probably the best thing I can do is to link to the following reading, Children of the new Earth – Deleuze, Guattari and anarchism, written by the other green anarchist Aragorn. Because it's not simple and there are so many ways to start talking about this. Aragorn also recently published a book with his partner on Deleuze and Anarchism, sadly I don't think it's been made accessible free online.

And where YOU go with it?

My anarchism has grown through many stages. I started with post-left anarchy, went very green, and moved through critique after critique to arrive at a Deleuzean decolonial anti-civ queer anarchism (which I say now just to be descriptive, [I think that all of these words should imply all the others], usually I just call myself anarchist or anti-authoritarian). Deleuze's metaphysics is inherently anti-fascist, anti-policing (in the sense that specific kinds of norms are policing) and literally anti-conservative. It gives us a complete basis from which we can have an anti-authoritarian ethics, politics, and even cosmology to live as anarchists, and I find that invaluable.

can’t say I really know anything about their work besides “rhizomes”

There are whole worlds more. It takes quite a lot to get into it, but Deleuze has been picked up by almost every good theorist coming out now and is showing itself in wonderful new places (I'm thinking Saidiya Hartman's work, Achille Mbembe's work, and Kathryn Yusoff's). Basically it's at the foundations of all the cutting edge theory I'm interested in. Which is to say, I'd completely recommend it, if you have the privilege of time and energy to go on that journey. You will literally walk away with a completely different way of perceiving being, that will reverberate through everything you value.

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submerged wrote

Nihilism is an important tool for sure. The negation of ideological superstructures helps with executing any desire you have.

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asbestosstar wrote

I consider myself a nihilist. I gothrough life thinking that what I do will not matter after I die , and tht everything may not even exist , it maybe An illusion for all we know, I just do what benefits me best (egoism) and don’t value my life and look at suicide as a way to solve problems. I don’t know exactly what actions you mean but the reason nihilists probobly do them because they realise it does not matter. To me nihilism is the denial that anything anything matters or even exists , you can have any form of knowledge especially moral knowlage , but we can try our best with the unreliable senses we have.

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MHC wrote

I turned out to be feminist!

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