Nolen Gertz at the Aeon online site
Nihilism is a constant threat. As the 20th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt recognised, it is best understood not as a set of ‘dangerous thoughts’, but as a risk inherent in the very act of thinking.
On the other hand, in what context?
But point taken. Imagine a world where everyone thought about human interactions as I do!
It's one thing to deal with all the human pain and suffering that comes about as a result of conflicts revolving around Gods or around No God ideological, objectivist, moral, political agendas. The conflicts that ensue between those deemed to be one of us or one of them. But at least there are still behaviors said to be right or said to be wrong.
What if you started out instead by concluding that, in the absence of God, all things really are permitted? That morality revolved solely around sustaining your own perceived wants and needs? That the whole point of it all was in not getting caught in the act of doing precisely that? Or, in a might makes right world, having the power to do what you please, others be damned.
Of course out in the real world everything is always considerably more complicated:
If we reflect on any specific idea long enough, no matter how strong it seems at first, or how widely accepted, we’ll start to doubt its truth. We might also begin to doubt whether those who accept the idea really know (or care) about whether or not the idea is true. This is one step away from thinking about why there is so little consensus about so many issues, and why everyone else seems to be so certain about what now appears to you so uncertain. At this point, on the brink of nihilism, there’s a choice: either keep thinking and risk alienating yourself from society; or stop thinking and risk alienating yourself from reality.
Nihilism is no exception.
There are simply far, far too many combinations of existential variables in far, far too many social, political and economic contexts [over time historically and across space culturally] in which any particular one of us might find ourselves. Endless combinations of childhood indoctrination, countless contexts in which our own lives would be almost unrecognizable to those brought up in very different sets of circumstances.
Consequently, even the author's "general description intellectual contraption" above can only be truly grappled with out in a particular world, given a particular context understood in a particular way. All the points I argue in my signature threads.
So, in this respect, nihilists are much like everyone else: the embodiment of dasein. At least out in the is/ought world.
And now we are sinking down into a profoundly problematic abyss that is the coronavirus. What does it mean then to, for all practical purposes, "either keep thinking and risk alienating yourself from society; or stop thinking and risk alienating yourself from reality."
In other words, there is still the gap between what you believe in your head is true and what you are able to demonstrate to others is in fact true. That doesn't change just because you call yourself a nihilist.