My view of nihilism from the cheap seats... and then found from the other cheap seats.

[AgentStepford]

Hello, good people; and I trust that you are.

What are "the cheap seats"? In my view, they can be two very different things, and from either it cost you nothing to cast judgment.

One is late arriving or distant spectator, who might shout with little reprisal.
The other is backstage or in the wings, or on the stage itself.


Mon Oct 19, 2015, 12:05 PM
My response to Armstead,

I've yet to meet a nihilist who wasn't a coward.

They'd like to think that they are brave by staring down the vast emptiness of Space (and the solitary exercise of typing a response to a message board) and then declaring that Humanity is ultimately useless. As I see it, they are people who don't have the courage to define themselves as a living force... as opposed to a chunk of driftwood. It takes an act of character to view the ebb and flow of life and society, and decide to swim towards a goal.

I'd dare say that's what we are doing on this and other message boards. Defining ourselves. As individuals and perhaps buoying up like-minded people. As a force for social involvement.

Perhaps brooklynite would be happier posting on the "I'd just as well be literally Underground" message board? I could be wrong. This is just my second thread.

Sorry... too much wine and cheese in the '80s.

7/27/21 8:30 AM.
From the void of the archives, I revisit and seek to redeem my categorical dismissals.

But perhaps not all cowards are nihilists. We might find a subset of coward that has merely been annihilated.
I had been knocked down, but I got up again, ad infinitum; but after all, I found out I was in fact finite.

It is not lack of courage that had kept me from being driftwood…. For I am in fact now driftwood; once petrified, and once-removed from a stone.

It might be lack of heart that kept me from finding animation to reclaim myself, and be a force of nature. In my silence of never receiving affirmation of my courage, I wondered at my voice, and why I could not be heard; and was left adrift with sparse venue.

To cry “life and love and joy” and never hear an answering call has left me, not nihilistic, but bewildered. My lack of drive and focus to missions was manifest by the lack of response I have received. I live in the shadow of passion, in the memory of caring. Perhaps I can reclaim my life on a borrowed wind, of a spirit that was once much of my own; but by nature, that cannot sustain. A force of nature might only go into hibernation, or become a parasite.

A thread of my own work may yet sustain me, a “carrier wave of a carrier wave.”

My own story of resolve held merit, but I had not the heart to do more than my leap of denunciations; of the poisons of false regard that I had embraced like a sleepwalker. No. Waking up to my back-eddy of life was not enough. I needed to actively disengage and remove myself.

I know now I have had no proving ground and was left only artifacts of myself. And at this stark juncture, in this clarity of bare wasteland that I have struggled to find, here I shall sustain myself as I recall myself. My efforts had amounted to a fall, but I am removing myself from the chimera of parasitic regard and quitting the stream of hubris. Being perhaps clearer in the environments’ past and present impact, I might now heed my own advice, and quit my dying…. To in fact, live.

My steadfastness of heart, once abated, might now renew.

[ShazamIam]

1. Is that equivalent to when accepting the human frailty of others we can finally accept our own?

[AgentStepford]

2. Your question surprised me.

I had to read it a couple of times. But the answer is, "No, quite the opposite."

I honestly felt bulletproof, and somehow assumed that everyone else was as well. It genuinely perplexed me when anyone would give up on anything for any reason - or no reason - because I never gave up. Ever.

I'm elemental. Which I guess is to say I am uncomplicated and/or immensely stupid. But I got tired of being betrayed. My husband finally managed to do what literal serial killers whom I escaped could not... make me lose heart. He persisted in marginalizing my situation, and the killers are still free. I had to see this, and walk away. Prior to three months ago, I had been frozen for years at a stretch. But my paralysis was a stunned denial. I would catch my breath... to then turn to a new effort.

So... I've come to accept: to want to throw it all away is not necessarily the worst tactic to have in a situation. Even as I finally realize that so much is NOT worth dying for.

But now a question, if you (or someone) would...!


A.) Am I a nihilist for wanting to condemn swathes of humanity; to hang them and in turn be (and promote being) a healthier, happier person?

B.) Am I in fact getting on a page of equilibrium, and a natural balance of nature and order is Justice, and a valid life-affirmation?