Optimistic Nihilism

by David Landers

  I may not even need dreams to get by. I may not even have to aspire for a legacy at all. Perhaps if I live moments heroically, in the here and now, the legacy will take care of itself. And if it doesn’t, perhaps my life is still valuable enough. I don’t even have to be particularly productive, as long as I’m not destructive. Sure, I can still have aspirations if I want, but I shouldn’t give them so much credit. My aspirations are not me, and they don’t make my life any more worthwhile than my life without them. And they sure as heck aren’t going to make me immortal.

  Now, as much as I appreciate Camus’s Sisyphean metaphor, I must dissent on one point. I’m reluctant to go as far as calling Sisyphus “happy”; I’m leaning more towards resolved. Indeed, it was apparently Sisyphus’s passion for life on Earth that got him into this predicament in the first place; he must be longing for Earth while trudging up and down his hellish mountain. Sure, defiance (in lieu of hope?) is giving him strength, but I don’t think there’s any reason for him to feel “happy.” I can’t help but wonder if Camus himself was being overly optimistic in his assessment of Sisyphus’s emotional state, perhaps in an effort to soothe himself! That’s right: We should entertain whether Albert Camus was being emotionally defensive when he said, “One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”4

  In any event, Camus’s contemporary, Bertrand Russell, seems to reflect his more general sentiment, as do so many atheist writers:

  In action, in desire, we must submit perpetually to the tyranny of outside forces; but in thought … we are free, free from our fellow men, free from the petty planet on which our bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we live, from the tyranny of death.5

  Italics added. It’s a beautiful perspective, paradoxically contrasted to the spiritual view. Instead of our earthly life being a “necessary evil” to trudge through while we await heaven, the tables are turned. When there is no hereafter, it’s our consciousness of this life that is so magnificent and precious. As long as I’m not dead, I’m alive. This is the mantra of the faithless: The miracle is happening right now, and you’re gonna miss it if you don’t slow down and stop fantasizing about the future.

  Russell adds that hostility towards our fate is not an optimal stance, as some have accused Camus of harboring (for example, note Jeffery’s use of the words “revolt” and “scorn” above when discussing Sisyphus’s motivations):

  But indignation is still a bondage, for it compels our thoughts to be occupied with an evil world … [In contrast,] the Stoic freedom in which wisdom consists is found in the submission of our desires but not of our thoughts … from the freedom of our thoughts springs the whole world of art and philosophy, and the vision of beauty by which, at last, we half reconquer the reluctant world. But the vision of beauty is possible only to unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not weighted by the load of eager wishes; and thus freedom only comes to those who no longer ask of life that it shall yield them any of those personal goods that are subject to the mutations of time.6

  When Russell talks about subduing our “desires,” he clearly is not referring to subduing our passions; he’s talking about subduing our desperate wants, such as the objects of our superficial and unfulfilling materialism.

  These attitudes of Camus and Russell illustrate an unexpected outcome of converting to atheism, and even to nihilism. We learn that hope is not necessary to proceed, as long as we have some courage. Now that our vision is no longer clouded by defenses, we see the truth more clearly: Hope does often disappoint, regardless of what the Bible says. No, we don’t stop experiencing hopes altogether, just the irrational ones. We can embrace harsh assessments of reality and the human condition and keep moving forward nonetheless. Not only that, we learn to appreciate existence in its own right. We find every moment of life more precious than before, because “experiences are all we have” now. We lose our attraction to materialism and rat-racing, because we can now perceive them for what they are, clingy acts of desperation to avoid these thoughts—these nihilistic thoughts that won’t kill us after all—and which may actually enrich us, to our amazement.

  The simplicity of this approach is wonderful. It’s accessible to everyone and takes little effort, just realization. Realization that you are a miracle, a conscious being who is able to witness, experience, and consume the universe, so much of which will never even be perceived by a sentient being. You don’t really have to do anything else other than indulge that privilege, and just be; the one caveat being that you shouldn’t destroy. The rat race for meaning ends here.

  I remember rationalizing when I was younger, still very immersed in Christianity but starting to doubt, that believing in God and following him was less risky than rejecting Him, regardless of whether he existed or not. If he was real, then of course I’d earn eternal life, which was indeed the plan that I felt was unfolding at the time. If—just for conversation’s sake—I had been deceived and he wasn’t real, then I’d still have led a wholesome life, and nothing would be lost. But I just don’t see it like this anymore, as there is something to lose by believing in God when he isn’t real: The deepest appreciation for life and existence that can only come with a non-defensive acknowledgment of its transience.

  Besides acknowledging how life becomes more precious in general when it is no longer eternal, various philosophers have noted that the finitude of our lives has no bearing on the value of the specific things we do each day, both big and little. American philosopher Thomas Nagel:

  First, life does not consist of a sequence of activities each of which has as its purpose some later member of the sequence. Chains of justification come repeatedly to an end within life, and whether the process as a whole can be justified has no bearing on the finality of these end-points. No further justification is needed to make it reasonable to take aspirin for a headache, attend an exhibit of the work of a painter one admires, or stop a child from putting his hand on a hot stove. No larger context or further purpose is needed to prevent these acts from being pointless.7

  Similarly, in a provocative blog entitled “Death and the Meaning of Life,” a Keith Augustine cites the value of other finite tasks, such as working on political campaigns to having relationships with others to raising a child.8 I know few parents who seem to believe that their experience of having raised a child is somehow less meaningful for them because the process had to effectively end.

  We could go on forever, as virtually everything we do that makes up our human lives is temporary, regardless of whether the lives they constitute are eternal. Some more of my favorites are eating meals, hiking, going to school, working, visiting friends and family, vacationing … Transience is the nature of all human experience, and all non-human experience as well. Even the cosmos will die, eventually.

  For a brief aside, Keith specifies an interesting incongruity: “If human beings were naturally immortal—that is, if there was no such thing as death—there would still be a question about whether or not lives had meaning.” I agree, but I suspect that people would not be so obsessed with the question, and many would not be asking it at all. The question would not be so emotionally charged, that’s for sure. We might be much less contemplative overall if there was no more death. It makes us wonder what exactly do people mean when they ask, “What is the meaning of life?” It seems that some may really mean something more like, “Why even continue living, knowing that I can’t live forever?” Perhaps we’re expressing a fear more than asking a question.

  Well, if you subscribe to a religion, you don’t have to ask the question, because not only do you believe in immortality but you are prescribed a meaning to your life: serving your god. For the religious, it should be enlightening to consider the scenario in which your religion was real but the immortality was not: Would you still care about serving god? Probably not so much, to put it lightly. It’s because worship and religion are less about serving God and more about earning eternal life. I suspect that very few people really want to serve a god. Most are just after the eternal l
ife part.

  I’m closing this section with lovable scholar of religion and myth Joseph Campbell:

  People say that what we’re all seeking is a meaning for life. I don’t think that’s what we’re really seeking. I think that what we’re seeking is an experience of being alive, so that our life experiences on the purely physical plane will have resonances with our own innermost being and reality, so that we actually feel the rapture of being alive … this is it … this point now is the heavenly moment.9

  In Existential Psychotherapy, Irvin Yalom outlines various ways in which even us secular folk can experience “meaning” in our lives, or, as I prefer, value. The first of two that I’d like to share is the hedonistic solution. No, he’s not suggesting that we run amok in the streets masturbating, shoveling down pizza, and looting electronics stores. Instead, he quotes a college student who was asked to submit his obituary as an assignment for a philosophy course:

  Here I lie, found no meaning, but life was continuously astonishing.10

  Very well put, kid! I would have given you an A+. Irvin elaborates:

  The purpose of life is, in this view, simply to live fully, to retain one’s sense of astonishment at the miracle of life, to plunge oneself into the natural rhythm of life, to search for pleasure in the deepest possible sense … On this one point most Western theological and atheistic existential systems agree: it is good and right to immerse oneself in the stream of life.11

  When Irvin Yalom (or anyone else) talks about living “fully” and immersing oneself in “the natural rhythm of life,” we smile and nod but I’m not sure that we’re always aware to what we’re agreeing. Many people overestimate what needs to be done, as they assume that immersion involves frenetic or sensational activity, like traveling the world or skydiving. Sure, these may have their merits, but we don’t have to set our sights so high. In fact, we might be missing the point when we do! If we truly appreciated the more fundamental aspects of living, we probably wouldn’t be so driven to travel or skydive and such. We wouldn’t be so desperate to do those things, that’s for sure.

  Instead, we’re talking about appreciating the mere act of existing. Whenever we can do this, boredom becomes obsolete, as the most fundamental activities become worthy of our time and attention. Taking a walk. Marveling at nature: trees, birds, stars, your own consciousness. The simple fact that we are here at all, along with oceans, comets, Facebook, government conspiracies, and gridlock.

  Once we learn to appreciate existence in its own right, so much else begins to seem trivial and superfluous, things like shopping, fancy cars, and even fashion and winning arguments. Other things become much more relevant and rewarding, things like bicycling, charity, ecology, and barbecuing with friends for football games. Overall, life simply becomes more precious, even more so than conceptualized in religious schemes. Although there is no objective meaning to life, its value is immeasurable.

  Paradoxical to some, evolution may provide some guidance on how to live fully and immerse oneself into the natural rhythm of life. Natural selection has endowed us with fundamental drives and needs necessary for survival. Once we appreciate how non-trivial this process has been, we can find all the “meaning” we need in indulging them.

  First, it’s telling to consider that our evolutionary ancestors were probably not preoccupied with having a meaningful, enriching, or exciting life like so many of us are today. They probably didn’t have the time to obsess over such matters; instead, their time and mental energies were necessarily focused on activities directly related to survival, such as finding food, caring for children, and ensuring shelter. When they did have downtime, they weren’t being barraged with commercials advertising how much better off the rest of the world was, so they were never lured into rat-racing. Our evolutionary ancestors were living on a much more level and symbiotic playing field than we find ourselves today.

  But what could be more fulfilling and rewarding than a life devoted to survival? Ironically, it seems that our modern craving to find a meaningful life is a bit of a function of—well, having a life that is already fulfilled! Again, I don’t mind humbling myself to illustrate: I’m quite sure I wouldn’t be so obsessed with writing this book if I was hungry and wondering where I was going to sleep tonight. I’m writing because I do have a roof and food in the fridge, and therefore a lot of time on my hands, which makes me restless. In fact, I have so much time on my hands that I spend too much time thinking. And when I think too much, I sometimes feel scared or empty or small. So, I’m writing—and doing so many other things—to feel full and significant.

  All is not lost. We don’t have to force ourselves into poverty or abandon projects like book writing and such. But the more we can resonate with our evolutionarily endowed needs, the more we can take some of the pressure off and ease the desperation.

  Assuming our basic needs for food and shelter are met, we can reach the next level of fulfillment through social interaction and belonging. Evolution honed humans as social creatures: We were simply more fit to survive together versus alone. Today, however, our world is so luxurious that we no longer need others to survive so, for one reason or another, some of us gravitate to solitude—and this is our undoing; this is why we feel so empty. For many who do engage the company of others, they just don’t appreciate the significance and magnitude of what is transpiring: that they are in the process of surviving. The irony is that when we’re sitting around with our friends conversing about the meaning of life, maybe even feeling frustrated and unsettled because we can’t agree upon a satisfying answer, the meaning of life is unfolding right there at that moment! If your stomach is full and y’all have a safe place to sleep later, and this person who you’re with cares enough about you to pay attention to you and help you when you need it, you have arrived. It’s happening. You are there, living a full life. Demanding much more is being greedy, and actually spoils the beautiful simplicity that’s literally right in front of our stupid faces. I like to imagine this is what Voltaire meant in the last line of Candide by (spoiler alert!): “Now, let’s tend to our gardens.” Let’s just live, and survive, and do what we need to do to eat. It will work best if we work together, and depend on one another, and appreciate each other for it. Let’s have communion, and marvel at the indescribable magnificence of nature and the cosmos (without having to posit gods behind it, now that we know better).

  In light of the sentiment that prosocial interpersonal engagement is as fundamental to human survival as eating and sexing, it’s not surprising that of all the routes to meaning that Irvin Yalom outlines, “both religious and secular, none seemed more important than altruism.”12

  He describes Eva, a woman dying of cancer who “found meaning until the end of her life in the fact that her attitude toward her death could be of value to many other patients,” those “who might be able to use Eva’s zest for life and courageous stance toward death as a model for their own living and dying.” She volunteered on a hospital ward for terminally ill children, was in a support group for patients with metastatic cancer, and even seemed to administer some informal but productive psychotherapy to her own oncologist, a “cold, steel-spectacled man,” softening his defenses and allowing him to experience some previously hidden emotion with her before she left us.

  Now, we have to be careful so that if we do find some good in suffering we don’t become so overwhelmed with cheer that we forget that the context is suffering. Just because Eva was able to cope with the cruelty of nature doesn’t make the cruelty worthwhile. I would be thoroughly offended if someone would suggest—and they certainly would, at least implicitly—that Eva’s purpose, the meaning of her life, was to counsel fellow cancer patients. On the contrary, I suspect even Eva might have rather done without the cancer and her associated ministry if she had had a choice. She may have had several more decades in which to do nothing but knit and spend time with her grandkids. Sure, not as sensational of a story, but at least she could have had more life. And being tender
with your grandchildren—that’s meaningful, too. Eva didn’t need cancer to demonstrate her value. I suspect most of us would rather be alive and uninspiring than inspirational and gone.

  Another reason we have to be careful not to overemphasize the silver linings of such tragedies is that we don’t want to ostracize the countless other victims who are unable to find meaning in theirs, whether it be cancer, natural catastrophe, trauma, mental illness, or poverty. Many victims are unable to make the best of it, and do not die courageously but instead debilitated with fear. While we’re happy for Eva for finding strength, we should simultaneously validate the experiences of those who are unable to cope. The weak victim is no less of a person. Indeed, he may warrant our attention more than the Evas of the world.

  * * *

  1 Pp. 208-209.

  2 The God Delusion, p. 213-214.

  3 Olen, J. (1983). Persons and their world: An introduction to philosophy. New York: Random House. The discussion and quotes that follow come from chapter 23 of the text, “The Meaning of Life,” pp. 432-441.

  4 The Myth of Sisyphus, p. 123.

  5 Russell, B. (2008). A free man’s worship. In E. D. Klemke & S. M. Cahn (Eds.), The meaning of life: A reader (3rd ed., p. 57). New York: Oxford University Press.

  6 Ibid., p. 58.

  7 Nagel, T. (2008). The absurd. In E. D. Klemke & S. M. Cahn (Eds.), The meaning of life: A reader (3rd ed., p. 144). New York: Oxford University Press.

  8 Augustine, K. (2000, December 2). Death and the meaning of life [Web blog post for The Secular Web]. Retrieved from http://www.infidels.org/kiosk/article55.html

  9 Konner, J., Perlmutter, A. H. (Producers). (1988). Joseph Campbell and the power of myth (episode 6). [Television documentary miniseries]. US: Public Broadcasting Service.