Nihilism is a bitch. Despondency in the soul, denial of Truth in the mind. God is dead in the heart of the nihilist; not only the God of Christianity, but all transcendent ideals. In the 2020’s it is hard not to fall into nihilism. Dreams of a harmonious new world order, an order to be accepted with open arms by the people, close enough to taste in the 90’s, have been abandoned with the realization that censorship and street mobs are necessary to keep the population in check. Hopes that a vangaurd for America’s founding stock would triumph died as he was quickly discovered to be ineffectual and counterproductive, much like the hope for an alternative right, one freed from economism, liberalism, and cowardice, fell apart (for most) with the circular firing squad that emerged after the summer of 2017. Both establishment and dissident forces had their trascendent ideals shattered in the 21st century, and an understandable despondancy took hold.
To effectively combat the nihilism of the 2020’s cannot be done with a political proposal, to do so would be presenting a dream to those who lost faith in dreams. This is not to say that political proposals are worthless, far from it, but it is to say that curing a wounded heart cannot be done with a policy paper.
What, then, can be done? An answer many 20th century philosophers, in particular in Iris Murdoch and Martin Heidegger, gave was beauty. Beauty is not a distraction from reality, escapism is nowhere to be found here, but, rather, a re-orientation towards reality.
Murdoch
What we attend to is what we become. As persons, we are constantly attending to one thing or another. I am currently attending to this post, with slight attention to the blueberries I am snacking on…and not attending to the grad work that I should be doing right now. Morality relates to attention in the following way: if a generalization is allowed, immorality is habitual selfishness and habitual selfishness is the product of habitually attending to the aspect of things that can serve me. Attending only to how my girlfriend can me happy will make what is supposed to be a two-sided relationship into a situation where I am using her. Attending, to use another example, to only how Covid lockdowns can benefit my business or further my polical aims will habituate me into seeing other’s sufferings as opportunities for my own success. While this is a simplification of morality, it is a coherent simplification.
What does morality have to do with nihilism? Part of nihilism is a dibelief in all transcendent reality and ideals, and morality is on such transcent reality. To no longer believe in goodness, and to only see power relations or people in terms of usefullness, is indicative of nihilism. Those who saw the new world order fall flat quickly pivoted from utopian openness to totalitarian measures, they ceased to believe in transcendent ideals of goodness and came only to believe in power. Those who saw the crushing defeat of populism in the aftermath of 2017, both for the alternative movement and for the vanguard candidate, often went on to embrace accelerationism of one variety or another, whether that meant assisting acceleration or trying to build enclaves to survive the coming collapse, both, though the former more so, came to see society falling apart as a means to a better future.
Combating nihilism, if it is proper to identify it, habitutally attending to the aspects of things that can serve me, would mean attending to something that is not self-serving, nor could be. Beauty is this something. A painting, piece of music, or poem, cannot be used for my own manipulation. I can not utilitize a Rembrant painting if I pause and look at it with complete openness. A T.S Eliot poem, or a piece by Mozart, will surely lift me beyond myself as it will surely resist any selfish gaze. To truly attend to beauty means I shift my gaze from my ego to the object infront of me, it means to do erode the habit of immorality…it means to submit myself to what is good. Attending to beauty is fundamentally a metanoia (the Koine Greek word for “repentence”), a re-orientation.
Heidegger
Nihilism is a reduction of all things to mere use because faith in God, and all transcendent ideals, is lost. Heidegger spoke of the death of God as “the flight of the gods”, meaning that all that was sacred has left modern man. Gods used to populate the earth, they were in the trees, the rivers, in the fires, and in our hearts. Gods smiled on our weddings, aided us in the founding of cities, and brought wrath upon the wicked. Now, in the 2020’s, it appears that the gods have taken flight and all that is left are cold, impersonal, power relations, and what was sacred has withered away.
In his What Are Poets For?, Heidegger argues that the task of the poet is to reach for the traces of the lost gods, and to plunge into the void (where the gods have presumably went) and bring back bits of their grace. Someone like Holderlin or Rilke, to name two of Heidegger’s favorites, or Eliot and Gibran, to name two of mine, speak the truth of the Rhine, nature, Christmas day, and sorrow. Good poets tell us what things are beyond their mere use and utility. Like an optometrist, a good poet removes the speck in our eye and helps us learn to see again. I can think of no better way to explain this than by giving you a poem by Holderlin, who told us what the Rhine is better than any geologist could.
I sat in the dark ivy at the forest’s gate
Just as golden noon came down to visit
The spring from the steps of the Alps,
The divinely built citadel of the gods,
As I hear from ancient legends,
Where much that is devised in secret
Comes to men. Unsuspecting,
I learned from there something portentous,
For after freely pondering many things
In the warm shadows
My mind drifted off to Italy,
And to the distant coasts of Morea.*
But now in the mountains,
Deep below the silver cliffs
And cheerful greenery,
Where the shivering forests
And the cliff tops one over another
Look downwards all day upon him,
There in a frigid chasm I heard
A youth clamoring to be set free.
His compassionate parents heard him
Roaring and complaining
To his Mother, the Earth,
And his creator, the Thunderer.
Mortals however fled from the place,
For the rage of the demi-god
Was terrible, as he thrashed about
In chains in the darkness.
It was the voice of the noblest
Of rivers, the freeborn Rhine.
His hopes changed when he parted
From his brothers the Ticino
And the Rhone,**
And wanted to travel off,
And his kinglike spirit urged him
Impatiently toward Asia.
But inclination is unknowing
When confronted by Fate.
Humans know where they’re at home,
And animals know where to build one,
But sons of the gods are blindest of all,
When the failure of knowing where to go
Is given to inexperienced minds.
To conlcude, beauty is a powerful weapon against nihilism for it lifts us beyond the self-serving attitude so common with nihilism and brings us back fragments of the lost gods.