LYCOS RETRIEVER
Nihilism
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Nihilism is the soft earth at the start of a wooded path toward seeing life in a more developed way. Before this path, life seems to be suffering and boredom punctuated by horror (paraphrased from H.P. Lovecraft), without meaning or direction, even when one creates an absolute God and corresponding Heaven where things are otherwise. This state of depressed mind must be like that of the inhabitants of Plato's cave, who find themselves bored at an endless procession of shadows yet unaware of another way. A nihilist is annointed with knowledge, and must return to the world at large to speak of the sun which filters through the woods toward the end of the path. There is hope; there is meaning; there is reason and purpose to life.
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Nihilism is a rejection of philosophy and the metaphysical nebulae such reasoning inevitably descends into. Yet if one wants this out of nihilism they can construct it, even more so than other idea sets, but to do so only leads to paradox and contradiction like finding value in no-values or a literal belief in nothing; try the disbelief in gravity for instance. Nihilism is not absolutist voiding of values to create an imaginary milieu neutered of good or evil, up or down because those are absurd situations, indeed idealistic situations that are both impossible to achieve and dangerously delusional as goals. Unfortunately some nihilists get caught in this dim labyrinth of ethics and morality. Others jump head first into the maw as a demonstration of supposed mental prowess which explains existential nihilism's effervescent popularity among certain academics and similar insulated atoms of fantasy. Nihilism is the destruction of philosophy not the magnification of it!
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Nihilism has nothing to do with Islam - they believe in a god after all, which is anything but nothing. To call it nihilism is simply a way of ignoring the belief system behind it.
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Nihilism has no grounds for moral values. This is not to say that nihilists are amoral รข€” like many atheists, nihilists acknowledge the need for moral standards, but based on their own worldview, nihilists have no grounding for morality.
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Nihilism brings with it the questions of meaning and purpose. Sexuality contains nihilism since it usually directs the person outside of himself to other people. Meaning is sought within social groupings instead of within oneself. Politics expresses nihilism through the doctrine of might is right. The powerlessness of oneself is hidden from view by seeking to establish power over others. The first refinement of this doctrine produces chivalry, or the belief that nobility is right.
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It was through the plight of these beaten, illiterate, and uncreative people that Nihilism first caught the attention of the Russian public. The movement known as populism, begun in the 1870s, saw hundreds of educated young men and women go out among the peasants to try and discern their needs, particularly in the summer of 1874[4]. They incorporated the peasants' "age-old conviction that the land ought to belong to those who worked it"[4] within their own vision of a reborn Russia, based on "free, decentralized, democratic and egalitarian peasant socialism"[4]. Recalling how the announcement of redemption payments accompanying emancipation had provoked violent resistance among some peasants, the populists identified their own frustrations with the state and its reforms with the peasant restiveness[4]. They saw the peasants as "good, simple, trusting as children [who] not only did not mistrust, but welcomed them with open arms and hearts"[1]. The populists felt it their duty both "to enlighten the rural folk whose vast numbers would compel the tsar to relieve their plight"[3] and to "repay the debt they felt educated society owed the toilers"[4].
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