Abhinav prompted me to write about nihilism. The reason for this is likely because I end up having an "optimistic" outlook towards most things. I'm an unusually cheerful fella.What I know about nihilism came from the second-hand casual use of the word, rather than what it actually meant as a philosophical position.I initially predicted that I'd look up nihilism and realize that my impressions of it would be completely wrong and that there would be some value to it. Unfortunately, that is not the case. As a philosophical position, I strain to see how it's not at least a little garbage.1I will extend this disrespect to other positions adjacent to them: blanket pessimism, cynicism, "everything sucks," etc. Among them nihilism is perhaps the least bad. At least I don't find the core premise disagreeable.Nihilism, which from my understanding most commonly refers to existential nihilism, is the rejection of a meaning to life. Okay? Yeah? So?There was probably a time where I might have been sympathetic to this. But today it just seems to me that a lot of mostly pointless rumination in western philosophy has happened over this. Might I suggest: maybe it's fine for there to be no meaning, and for anyone to figure out a new set of values to fill this void of meaning. It's okay if there's no meaning. Why do you want meaning. Say you find "meaning," now what?nihilismNow for general pessimism. I don't quite like the optimism vs pessimism framing with the whole half-filled glass metaphor. I'd say a better phrase for what I'm describing is "negative outlook." The archetype here is someone who looked around them (or more like, looked into the polluted information environment in their screen), didn't like what they saw, and concluded "everything sucks." They stare at the abyss and flinch.Actually this disease needs a name. Big Lifesucksism is my ideological adversary. Like the COVID virus, it is invisible and diffuse. It evades a clearly packaged catch-all descriptor like capitalism, communalism, technofascism, effective altruism, petloverism or whateverism that people often rally behind to hate on. I have seen friends lose themselves to this disease.Big Lifesucksism has a lot of promoters and a massive decentralised grassroots network, but no leaders. It has its share of grifters (like that zerodha zero1 guy), but most people are sincere, and its promoters are mostly victims, who are in psychological pain, and inadvertently inflict psychological pain to other people via the projection of valid aversive feelings.All of this makes Big Lifesucksism a potent adversary. There are no easy ways to counter it. Think about it:The proponents of Big Lifesucksism are often in pain about real problems of modernity. In a sense, the proponents are also the victims. Attempts to reason against Big Lifesucksism are often perceived as denial of these problems, or a denial of the validity of their aversive feelings.The religiously-held doctrine of Big Lifesucksism is that real problems should only ever be processed as suffering, anxiety, anger or other aversive feelings.Suffering is equated with empathy. Caring for other people and wanting things to improve has only one fuel which is pain, anxiety, or anger. If these go away, it means no problem can be solved.Trying to tell Big Lifesucksists that it's actually possible to process issues without holding onto suffering is a statement that is likely to induce more aversion or deepen their (validly held) pain. So actually trying to attack the root cause directly actually achieves the opposite of what one would want (which is to reduce suffering).When I say I am optimistic person, some can interpret it as a problem denialist. That's not the case, it is more like, "everything is fixable." It forces you to look at the problem deeper, and actually admit that there's action to be taken there.We are conscious beings, we experience things, and how we frame things to ourselves affect our behaviour, and thus our propensity to fix this. No one is immune to this. While I'm not belabouring myself to think optimistically (I don't actually choose my thoughts at all, and neither can you), trying to steer my brain cycles into being curious and understanding of even bad things makes one see that there's a lot to improve structurally and a lot to improve in this world, and that does not suck.A common defense to lifesucksism is that this public vibe defecation of the commons with the "everything sucks" refrain actually improves things, and stirs the people into revolt. This is perhaps the most compelling argument. But it still conflates optimism with passivity, and lifesucksism with activity. I believe there are long-term negative costs and externalities to being angry and repeating and spreading the lifesucksism virus, and in my observation most people inflicted with it are far more passive than you'd assume. In fact, to drive change, to actually improve things, often requires imagining a better world and a better future. That is actually how I see the world, and it's fundamentally a positive outlook.hall of fame"In the 1970s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death.""Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make... India couldn't possibly feed two hundred million more people by 1980."Paul Ehrlich, 1968"... it seems probable that most of the grand underlying principles have been firmly established ... An eminent physicist remarked that the future truths of physical science are to be looked for in the sixth place of decimals."Albert A Michelson, 1894You must in the first place know this, that the world has now grown old, and does not abide in that strength in which it formerly stood; nor has it that vigour and force which it formerly possessed.Whatever is now born degenerates with the old age of the world itself; so that no one ought to wonder that everything begins to fail in the world, when the whole world itself is already in process of failing, and in its end.St Cyprian of Carthage, c. 252 AD“Our parents’ era, worse than their ancestors, bore us still worse, and soon we will give more wicked offspring.”Horace, c. 23 BCI expect the rest of the note is likely going to be a a frustrating read for people who are really into modern philosophy. I am a bit dismissive and don't really see what all the hair pulling is about. ↩