Perfectly pointless in every way
Everything does not happen for a reason, and other liberating lessons from nihilism
Perfectly pointless, says the Teacher, perfectly pointless. Everything is pointless. — Ecclesiastes 1:2 (Common English Bible)
Last week I wrote about my growing interest in identity formation in an Age of Authentic Individuality. How, I wondered, do we make sense of who we are as the institutions we have culturally relied upon for hundreds of years to assist us in the process of meaning-making are crumbling and losing credibility? To continue along the same vein this week, I want to talk about a very fun topic:
Nihilism! Yay!
No, really — it will be a good time! At the very least, this essay won’t end in despair and hopelessness! Promise.
I was watching this TikTok video (fun promised, fun delivered!) recently in which humanist spiritual director Brittney Hartley responds to Australian journalist Wendy Syfret, aka The Sunny Nihilist, about the growing trend toward nihilism amongst Gen Z.
Nihilism is that philosophy which sees human life as meaningless, and Syfret sees this perspective as an antidote to a society that is hellbent on meaning-meaning, even to the point of absurdity (because if everything has meaning then nothing is truly meaningful):
“In the past maybe you’d have a couple of meaningful things in your life… but now there’s a sense that every single thing you do in your life has to be meaningful: your job has to be meaningful, your relationship has to be meaningful, that mascara you bought has to somehow be, like, a statement about pure self-expression. And it isn’t really leaving anyone feeling better — it’s kinda making us all feel feel super fried, right? Because suddenly if everything you do isn’t meaningful, then you’re like, a big gross failure.”
Meanwhile, Hartley expresses curiosity about whether society can act quickly enough to build robust secular structures to help develop “identity and belonging and purpose” in the absence of religious institutions, and thus withstand the surge of “depression, anxiety, and numbing behaviors” amongst young people who don’t see much point in living.
It was Friedrich Nietzsche (notably the son and grandson of Lutheran pastors) who famously asserted nearly 150 years ago that “God is dead.” Nietzsche saw an increasingly nihilistic society — both freed and uprooted from religious structures and strictures by the advancements of science — heading on a crash course toward existentially threatening levels of pleasure and self-numbing. Nihilism was a problem requiring rigorous engagement; a critical opportunity for significant human development outside institutionally sanctioned bounds.
Nietzsche wasn’t the first to reckon with nihilism. Shakespeare did so before him, most notably when Macbeth laments about life being “a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,/Signifying nothing.” And long before the Bard was the Teacher in the biblical book of Ecclesiastes, whose search for meaning in every corner of life turns up a whole lot of… nothing. “Perfectly pointless,” “vanity,” “meaningless,” “breath,” and “vapor” are just a few English translations of the original Hebrew, attempts to get at the narrator’s profound sense of void while trying to find meaning in life.
Nihilism is not a new, scary philosophy — there’s precedent for wrestling with it throughout human history, and I hear young people today describing their sense of despair over the state of the world in similar ways to these thinkers of centuries past.
While I’m not prepared to go so far as to call nihilism the antidote to what ails us, I’m immensely curious about what this cultural shift entails. I wonder what this societal pendulum swing from ravenous meaning-making toward resignation to meaninglessness will unveil about the idols and ideals of the age we’re leaving behind.
Perhaps we can start speaking honestly about how:
Everything does not happen for a reason. I am of the mind that God wastes nothing. Trauma experienced can be transformed. Shit becomes fertilizer. And, I don't think this means that “everything happens for a reason,” insomuch as this statement expresses a belief in the divine orchestration of all things. I don’t need to believe in a deity who cares about my parking spot on a random Tuesday for my world to make sense. Sure, there are natural consequences to human behavior (take the climate catastrophe as Exhibit A), but there are also absurd accidents and experiences that happen. Like the fucking absurdity of childhood cancer. Leaving more room in our collective imagination for the absurd feels like human development to me. Maybe even a step toward true compassion. Maybe we stop inadvertently blaming God for our suffering with throwaway cliches that are really just a form of self-numbing? A girl can dream…
The imposition of meaning is a ruthless form of domination. White-Supremacist Capitalist Patriarchy (as bell hooks described the interlocking power systems governing our society) imposes meaning upon us and expects us to go along with the definitions we’ve been given. This includes providing rationales for the social construction of race and gender, as well as bootstraps narratives for socioeconomic stratification. Those who have been best served by these imposed definitions are most earnestly seeking to maintain the status quo by any — and often violent — means. Meanwhile, the nihilist sees white supremacy as absurd and billionaires as making no sense. I wonder if oppressive social structures will come to be seen as more ephemeral and changeable as nihilism gains steam, because the power conferred on these systems by meaning-making narratives has been deflated.
Meaning-making is a form of consumerism. We want everything to mean something, and in late-stage capitalism we generally attempt to buy our way into purpose. Our “activism” becomes simply the products we consume, rather than the content of our lives and the shape of our relationships. Under nihilism, materialism and influencer culture are ridiculous. It’s all a vapor anyway.
Meaning-making can serve as an abdication of power. Belief in a god who is making it all make sense can serve to get us off the hook from doing anything about the injustices of the status quo. If it all works out in the end — if I’ve already tied up the whole story with a lovely bow — why do anything at all? While participation in an overarching story is compelling for some (as I know it is for me in many ways), I wonder if the absence of a metanarrative might catalyze collective action. Perhaps more people will come to see themselves as agents of history, rather than perceiving history happening to them unidirectionally.
And, sometimes, meaning-making is just plain cruel. It’s the worst kind of privilege to stand around pontificating about how “surely this serves some greater purpose” when another person is experiencing the effects of absurd suffering. (Job’s friends come to mind). Stripped of the compulsion to make meaning of suffering, we might simply abide with those who suffer (including ourselves).
In light of all this, I am curious about cultivating the capacity to live with and name the absurd as an expression of resilience and resistance to the status quo. Might a cultural shift toward nihilism be a means of seeing through a glass darkly, abiding in the mysteries of life without needing to control life? Might an appreciation of the ephemeral nature of life help us cultivate a deeper gratitude for being human? Could it help us loosen our tight grasp on outcomes to simply be in solidarity with our neighbors here and now?
Welcoming a little nihilism, might we feel a little lighter to live in love, without the compulsion to make everything make sense?
What do you think? How are you seeing this cultural shift impact your community, especially the young people around you? As meaning-making within institutional contexts becomes less central to how we form identity in our culture, what costs and gifts do you observe?
Lauren, this article touches on something (many things) really profound. So much to think about, I'm not sure where to start. I do think there's something there in nihilism that's serving a needed purpose, especially with young people. That burn out to find meaning in everything is so real. I feel it. I believe nihilism isn't the ultimate answer, but it's the one that's fulfilling a need. My thoughts then go to how can we fulfill that need, once we name it, in a way that doesn't "throw the baby out with the bathwater" i.e. get rid of all meaning. As I think about this a lot of my thoughts come from dialectic thinking. Dialectic thinking is something we don't have enough of in society, which might be able to fulfill a lot of our needs in a healthy way rather than a destructive way. It may be something else though, something new (or more likely very old we need to re-introduce ourselves to). Or in the spirit of dialectic though, it may be many things, and different things for different people.
Another point, the phrase "everything happens for a reason." has bothered me so much. The idea that God would let it all happen while in reality is "true" as he has the power to stop horrible things, goes further for some in God actually willing it to happen for his purposes. The fact he lets it happen doesn't mean he likes it or even wanted it. The Bible has all kinds of things happening God doesn't want or like. And even in knowing this (or perhaps we don't know) we rail about, "Why then, ohh Lord, why?" as if he's the only one making choices. He's not. Though he is in fact making choices, when to help and when not to, so when we find ourselves in the "not helping us" category (or at least feel we're there), this is where trusting in God's choices combined with the Christian belief "God will make all things new. Wipe away every tear," provides much needed comfort in times of distress. Yet often this doesn't guide us in what we do next, how we react to the reality, especially for people who do not believe in God, which is why I prefer the statement, "everything has a cause." It doesn't imply that the event (or cause) is good, right or even bad, it simply is. Often times, even in the childhood cancer example, knowing the cause can help us find a way through horrible situations and also allow us to repeat the wonderful ones.
Thank you so much for writing this. It got me thinking a lot about a lot. If anything is confusion ask me about it. I'd love to talk. Keep writing.