Nihilism at least describes reactions to negative idealism. Obviously everybody has some degrees of discontentment and satisfaction with life. Perfection is never attained, hence people re-imagine the world according to their own subjective beliefs, values, and worldview. The ‘nihilistic’ aspect begins with solipsism, when, people are either too powerless or cowardly to conceive of how their ideal can match reality, or simply, reject reality altogether. The complete rejection of reality, a refusal of confronting challenges and hardships in life, avoidance of pain rather than confronting it, leads to a stunting effect.
When modernity is defined by sensationalism, commercialism, hedonism, and attention-seeking, lives of luxury, then what little is left of a “harsh reality” is even too much to bear for an average person. Hence nihilistic ideals, impossible to realize, or never intended to be realized, are a type of crutch. They are the “safe spaces” of society, that people harbor their more private resentiment and contempt, for others and themselves.
It’s pretty obvious, for example, how beliefs in the afterlife or “for a better world”, are generally nihilistic and life-annulling. For example, if people actually abide by what they claim, what they say, then those who truly believe in the “afterlife” ought not have fear or hesitations to die. But they do, and because they do, this demonstrates the hypocrisies and contradictions of nihilism.
Even despite all the claims people make, instincts are strong, and people act according to animal nature.
That’s why I characterize and pinpoint nihilism as a herd-instinct, a compulsion and tendency of any individual to bury his or her head in the sand. To swarm in numbers and a flock. Thus “humanist” ideology, that “we are all human”, is nihilistic. Because it is the death and destruction, sacrifice of an individual, to “the whole”. To give up your independence, in exchange for the benefits of society, to “become one” with humanity.
People ought to recognize how judeo-christian these conceptions are, to “become one with humanity (christ)”.