I’m INCREDIBLY nihilistic. I just don’t see the point in anything. Is this a common trait in autists?
osanna@lemmy.vg There’s a vast, vast gulf between “life is not imbued with inherent meaning” and “I just don’t see the point in anything”. Nihilism, as a world view, isn’t generally crippling. It just boils down to “this is what this is, and nothing more”.
You don’t sound like a nihilist, you sound deeply depressed. You can be a nihilist and depressed, but what you’re expression sounds much more like depression rather than nihilism.
Exactly. Nihilism is a philosophy—a cognitive approach to understanding the world. It doesn’t mean that nothing in the world has value to me. Rather, I recognize that nothing has intrinsic value. I am the one who must assign value to things. If you can’t see or feel any value in things, that isn’t nihilism. In that case, you have an emotional problem, such as depression.
In the grand scheme there is no point. A few 1000 years and nobody even knows we existed. A few million years and maybe the earth has died. You just enjoy it while you are here , and do no harm to others.
well, in 5B years, the sun will expand and eat the earth. None of this is going to exist after that. in trillions of years, perhaps, the universe may just collapse in on itself. So we got that going for us.
Knowledge and impact are very different things. For example, areas where the Roman Empire used to extend to still fare differently than those outside of it. Our cultures get imprinted onto infrastructure and vice versa and so what we do travels through the ages.
Till its gone. Nothing is forever
I’m not sure that’s knowledgeable yet, since we don’t understand the topology of the universe entirely. If we take this granted for the sake of argument though, I’d still argue that a finity of the universe or existence is unimaginably far into the future and thus cannot inform our worldview beyond mythology - why should I reduce our lives’ created meanings just because humanity, earth, milky way or the universe are ceasing to exist someday? Don’t get me wrong, I like nihilism, but I don’t consider it finished (not in the “There has to be more than nothing” - way, but in the “So what?” - way).
I don’t mean finished in Tue sense of the universe, but life as we know it on earth will be done one day. The universe will be keep going, but the billions of dollars some douche amassed will mean zero inbthr larger picture.
The point of life is to be kind, have fun, and be silly :3
If only more people would share that viewpoint, things would be so much better, the silly is important.
Hmm. I get that.
I highly recommend kurtgesagts video on “optimistic nihilism”
The point of life is that there is no point, so you are free to choose what matters for you.
what if nothing matters to someone? what does that person then do?
Play. Doodle, run, sing, dance, marvel at trees. Climb rooftops and sit in the sun.
Now if you’re numb then that’s something that has lots of possible causes. Depression, emotional processing, exhaustion, overstimulation, trauma-derived survival schemas, ennui, neurological stuff, etc.
If nothing matters to you and you experience little to no joy from anything, that’s called depression and is super common to NDies. Needs professional treatment if it stays for more than a couple of weeks or it might become chronic, contact a doctor
I’m already on meds. I’ve been on meds for decades. DECADES. I’ve been in therapy for decades too I don’t know if this is depression or whatever. I think this is just my personality. I dunno.
If you’re stable on your meds, it’s also to be expected to be a little numb. Most antidepressant treatment tries to dampen highs and lows, you and your medical professionals will know better, but anhedonia is typically an indication the treatment needs adjustment. Good dosage/treatment should let you feel highs, while keeping the lows manageable.
Thanks. That’s what I’m experiencing now. I’ll talk to my doctor. I miss the highs.
This is where I’ve been at for… Well… Years.
I tried ketamine therapy last year. It helped a lot right until I had to stop, then I went right back to feeling nothing about everything. It actually had this side-effect where I no longer derive any joy from taking other psychedelics recreationally.
I’m trying different anti-depressants now and some of them make it worse, none really make it better. Though my ability to focus on things I have to do but don’t care about has gotten a little better.
I’m also basically just draining what little I had in my bank account doing all this bullshit.
I don’t think I’m autistic. But I’ve been a “nihilist” since before I knew that word or what it meant. The absurdism can be both a blessing and a curse.
I’ve always hoped I got it wrong, and there was something I just wasn’t able to see to derive SOME meaning or joy from existence. Watching the world this past year and just going through my usual work-eat-sleep cycle has put me in the “I guess I’ll just do this until I die” mode.
I have a wife and a sister that would be very upset if I killed myself, and I’m too old now to do something like that anyway. I try to read or play video games in my free time to just turn my brain off. It helps a little. Pets also help.
I’m trying to just be honest, genuine, and kind with other people to ease my self perspective until I finally drop dead. It feels nice to be real with people I don’t know, even if it’s a little off-putting to them. My perspective makes it difficult to connect with others. Being honest with anyone in that regard is a good way to “bum people out.” So having friends is mostly out of the equation. I have a few, but those friendships are definitely on their terms and have little to actually do with me. They enjoy my sincerity and honesty, I enjoy getting out of the house a few times a year.
I like to tell myself “Soon it will be just like it was before you were born. There will be nothing, you will be nothing, and it will mean nothing.” It’s like a little mantra, just to take the sting out of monotony.
Basically I’m just trying to do little things to ease others suffering with existing until I can finally be done with it. Seems to be the closest I can get to “peace.”
I typed this all knowing it would be zero-sum, at best. But it’s my very honest perspective on this exact situation. Maybe something in it will be relatable to someone. Sometimes that feels nice. Otherwise it’s just people typing at one another on the internet. Nothing relating to nobody.
I think it’s more extreme realism than nihilism which sometimes looks very similar. Also, we’re trained to people please because our realistic, direct personality can be grating for “normal” people. So we often don’t find pleasure in doing things as even fun activities done around others become draining due to masking and people pleasing.
My advice is to find other neurodivergent people to do things with and avoid people who you have to mask with when doing fun things. Then train yourself to drop some of the masks to make activities less exhausting. Once you’re able to enjoy things more, then there’s more of a “point” to doing them (i.e. fun and stress release).
That’s just one way of handling it, but it’s how I have been working on it and it has helped. But it takes years to find and trust those groups and train yourself to be yourself (alcohol helped me open up some, but definitely not recommended for everyone).
I can only speak for myself but I do see life as inherently meaningless and that’s perfectly okay. In some ways it’s actually quite liberating. Life is a multiplayer sandbox video game and you’re free to play it how you wish but ideally in a way that doesn’t ruin the experience for other players.
existential awareness & concern in general is common in Neurodivergent people in general.
not exclusive to nihilism nor autistic people.
I mean I really feel people, at least in the us, are seeing such a breakdown in the social contract thatt its hard to see meaning in modern life.
Not sure if common but yeah I’ve been that way too since I was young. The only purpose is if you have an intrinsic goal that makes you happy to pursue and that’s about it. I think this could be where the special interest thing comes from.
Honestly, I don’t really even have any special interests anymore because I just don’t see the point of it anymore. I mostly just sit around doing nothing all day except watching the same movies all day, coming on lemmy. I think I’m depressed as well as nihilistic. No idea
I mean for me nihilism is a perspective that I have in general, i.e. there is no purpose to anything really in the grand scheme of things. But when that also means that you can’t find personal joy in anything, I think that becomes a depression thing. I have also been in that position and after a lot of therapy I realised it was because I was so burnt out on doing what people wanted me to because I was ‘supposed’ to rather than actually asking myself what gave me enjoyment if you took everything else out of the equation. It took me a while to realise what I actually personally cared about because I’ve spent so much of my life masking basically.
From a somewhat external perspective (I’m an ADHD enjoyer), it seems to me like the lack of “final answer” found through pure reasoning, because at the end of the day this can only be answered through belief (not just religious belief but belief in general, it’s kind of a matter of intuition to conviction) might veer them into nihilism, at least in the ideological sense (which can then affect one’s mood negatively). Likewise for the free-will v determinism “debate”.
that’s just it, i don’t believe there to be a “final answer”. I think shit just happens for no reason at all. Sometimes I go through periods where that’s freeing, and other times, like now, I go through feeling like it’s all fucking pointless anyway, so why even bother.
DANGER - OPEN PROSELYTISING AHEAD!
I unironically recommend monotheism. Like with many things of this category, logic can only get you too far. Once you’ve understood that this complex entity we’re part of called the universe, light and matter in spacetime, either was just always there (or at least the foundations, idk) or wasn’t, and that there really cannot be any material evidence for or against it because we’re constrained in what we’re examining, you’re forced to take a leap of faith one way or another.
If you believed in God as preached by Moses, Solomon, Jesus and Muhammad, for instance, you’d know the reason for your existence (to be a good slave of God so we please Him and can fearlessly return to God, the Creator, the Gracious and Merciful; and don’t worry, you’ll have fun regardless in this world so we don’t need to write it down), and the fact that it’s God’s will would make it as objective as possible (if you believed in all of this, ofc).
Now, you could believe in (agree with on a fundamental level) some philosophical schools of thought like, idk, a mixture of absurdism with Kantian ethics (“life’s a meaningless chaos but I still wanna be a good boy”), or something a bit more positive like a Platonic (the meaning of life is acquiring knowledge) or a Cynic (be virtuous and live honest to yourself within your natural bounds/in harmony with nature), and it could work well but these can still be rejected by the mind as they’re just “things other people said” and feel a bit “not-final”. And, again, even if you keep “digging” logically you’ll never get to something final (to this and many other things, check “Agrippa’s trilemma”!) and this can lead to very depressing thoughts easily. In conclusion: for pragmatic reasons, because you’re still alive and whilst that’s going on you might never shake away your desire to have answers to these questions that feel satisfactory and final, I think you should at least dip your toes into Abrahamic monotheism.
So yeah, TL;DR: don’t get bellcurved (and needlessly sad) and believe in God today!
For a long time I was very nihilistic. I didn’t understand what anything actually was, when you get right down to fundamental truths. I started meditating and slowly have come to appreciate the universal self (non-dual true self). Basically the internal and external aren’t separate, that is to say the universe and myself are actually the same thing, even though there are disassociated relative experiences. The churn of causality is our universal cosmic will and you experiencing the relative pointlessness of it all is something that you should fully cherish while keeping in mind that nothing is permanent. Then again, who’s to say, there are no blueprints.
I’m only a single extra data point, but I certainly feel that way a large amount of the time.
I am in ways. Someone mentioned the optimistic nihalism video, which I was using to describe myself before the nutshell video, people used to say “thats stupid, thats not nihalism”. So I felt pretty validated when I saw that. But in other ways im definitely not. At work, I wont tolerate unfairness, and have got my union involved a few times (living in the uk with a protected characteristic can be boss - but I dont abuse it, I have experienced actual discrimination in a few different ways and got it sorted out). I also won’t tolerate cups too near to the edges of tables, and if thats where you put your cup I will move it back 2 or 3 inches so you dont knock it off by accident with your elbow - dont try to stop me I will invest way too much time and energy and arguing my case over this.
thanks everyone. I’m seeing my doctor today about getting some new meds.
It doesn’t really matter, I don’t care.
In a sense, im kidding. But this is legitimately my take on most things, especially other people’s bullshit
