Tuesday, May 31, 2016

As a rationalist, how do you avoid nihilism?

Sometimes I get depressed about how life has no objective meaning. Then I remember I'm late for lunch and now I'm gonna have to bike like hell to make it on time.

This question is nothing more than a cute toy to contemplate to anyone who isn't clinically depressed. We are social, active creatures, descended from badass hunter-gatherers who walked ten miles a day in search of game animals and roots to eat. No, it goes further back than hunter-gatherers. We are all the final link in a chain of unbroken cellular reproduction stretching back 3.6 billion years. Not one link in that chain withdrew from the world and failed to engage with life. Otherwise, you wouldn't be alive right now.

Such philosophical questions are irrelevant to a healthy mind, whose instincts provide more than enough appetite for the trials and tribulations of daily life. You might, like me, be a nihilist in theory, but nihilism is hardly a practical philosophy.


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