Purpose of this thread is to collect and dissect the many variations of Nihilism, as these manifest within Modern systems.
Having been “freed”, intellectually, from past/nature, Nihilism finds its highest point in the Modern, the most up-to-date, the most popular populist current.
This noetic detachment from a determining, and limiting, past/nature, permits the individual the luxury of subjective escape - the only cost to this benefit is service to the institution that provide it with the protection, from its own detachment, and the errors this produces, and a strict adherence to the social rules that places the subjectivity of the other ([size=85]neighbor[/size]) as the only limit to the subjectivity of the individuals freedom.
This creates an inter-subjective codependency… a matrix-like cocooning, where each pod ([size=85]subjective mind living in its private reality[/size]), inter-connects in a network of co-dependencies, with the institution (State, Church) being the nexus of inter-conenctivity.
A sort of SuperOrganism - Hive Mind.
From gene to meme…
The individual is now like a cell in the organic body.
A specialized worker, unable to survive outside the collective.
Language are its neurological pulses, each word a neural pulse carrying data to and from the cell, towards and from the “brain”, the Institution.
This is akin to schooling, herding, or the gathering of flocks.
Each individual jostles for the center position, the ideal position, the popular position, because it is the furthest form the edge, from the threatening outside.
The flock behaves like an organism…as a whole.
Politics is the rules governing this internal inter-subjective, inter-relating.
Philosophy, as it is practiced in our Modern Nihilistic age, is about establishing and solidifying the rules of engagement - frequency of the neural pulse and what rules will be used to collect and transmit data.
The lowly cell, the individuals, seeks the “how ought I to live” as a way of establishing its role within the collective.
The self-esteem of the individual dependent on the evaluation of his/her utility within this collective - its word, and the value to the many, of this product ([size=85]popularity, communal acknowledgment and appreciation[/size]).
Remaining true to the collective myths and beliefs is a prerequisite for communal acceptance.
Liberating the mind form the limitations and determinations of past/nature, manifesting as presence/appearance, with only the previously mentioned restrictions, releases the mind to fantasize, to construct an identity anew… as if reborn.
Urbanization also make reputation an insignificant factor. the only reputation that mattes is your credit core, and your payment behavior - economic.
The system keeps tabs on those.
all else is liquefied… relatively irrelevant… shamelessness cynicism begins to liberate the individual from the judgments of his/her peers - having rejected past/nature the individual feels no shame before his/her ancestors, family etc.
Decadence.