Nihilistic Murderer

[CapnAwesome]

All the stuff you said.*

I apologizing for dodging your point then. Also if I don't address every thing because the editing becomes a pain when it comes to the point by point style of replying on a forum. I hope my definition of Nihilism is clear now. But speaking of dodging a point you didn't address whether or not you would ever want to kill someone. I guess I could see how the question would be an uncomfortable one, but for me the lack of wanting to kill someone is just as good or even preferable to having a desire to kill someone and having some moral code that keeps you from doing it. How you said that the fact I agree with the serial killer is scary, I find it far more frightening when people say that their morals are all that prevent them from killing someone. Morals for most people are fairly flexible where as I don't think that nihilists who don't want to kill anyone are really going anywhere.

Obviously I can't demonstrate the meaningless of life. That's like asking to demonstrate that there is no god. I'm arguing for the absence of something: meaning in life. You are arguing that exisits so the burden of proof is definitely on you. Now you might very well have satisfied that burden of proof for yourself, which is fine, but I still believe that life is ultimately meaningless.

So -- you have a better quality of life due to acting in accordance with your morals ... but at the same time, you think they're irrelevant?

Yeah, I mean that's pretty accurate. I don't think my quality of life is really relevant, nor anything else for that matter. I have morals simply because I have them through nature and nurture, not for complicated philosophical reasons. I think most people are probably the same way and just add the philosophical reasons later. That's why nihilists have morals just like everyone else.

I have a statement and then a question for you: I would posit that our sense of morality comes from a combination of nature, the things we have evolved to feel as moral because it helps us survive as a species, and nurture, what we are taught is moral by our society. Thus most nihilists have the same morals as anybody else. I just don't think that those morals matter. Where do you think your morality comes from?

Final thing, I think there is a world of moral difference between Ted Bundy and that guy. I'm not sure how familiar you are with Bundy, but he fought his own death to the very last, wept at as they were dragging him to the electric chair and by all accounts felt very strongly that wrongs could be done to him. He definitely had a sense of right and wrong when it applied to himself. Bad things that happened to him were wrong and everything else was okay. Feldman on the other hand just doesn't seem to care one way or another what happens to him. It all doesn't really matter. Maybe he was the only true nihilist.

*obviously mine.

---

That's fair. I bet there are a fair amount of angsty teenagers running the internet around calling them nihilists and talking about how they have no morals and quoting Friedrich Nietzsche. For the sake of this argument lets just go with "life and everything else doesn't matter.'

The problem with this seems to be how meaning is affected in respect to time. I think it is entirely possible for something that is meaningless in the long term to have short term value. This definition of nihilism doesn't recognize that meaning is contingent upon the time-frame which it exists within.

I guess the perception and importance of time important to nihilism. Would it be fair to say that you are a long term nihilist but believe that in the short term things have value?

I think although I'm very good at living in the moment I just take a long term view of things. Often times when I make a mistake in my life that seems very important at the time my nihilism is extremely helpful to me. This is part of why I think it's an enabling and empowering philosophy rather than a depressing one. If I make a bad mistake, I recognize that eventually I'll be dead anyway, no matter how bad I screw up. At the same time I savor the good moments because I have the freedom to do as I wish. Where as some people say 'might as well go kill people' I say 'might as well behave well and enjoy my time here on earth.' Even though ultimately it don't really matter either.