# Nihilism and Such



## Bill Mattocks (Jan 12, 2011)

Preliminary information is becoming to come out that the accused Tucson murderer is a nihilist.  In my opinion, this is going to be a tough nugget for the public at large to digest.  Nihilists come in all flavors and varieties, and they run the gamut in terms of behavior; but I believe it can be said that they cannot be fans of any of the popular political parties, or even 'left' or 'right' in that sense.  A basic tenet of nihilism is that everything is baseless; there would be no advantage to a conservative or a liberal political philosophy because it just doesn't matter; politics are meaningless to a nihilist.

I believe that it is human nature to attempt to attach a reason to tragedies like this; something that lets us label and therefore 'understand' what has happened.  People are not just crazy - there has to be a reason.  People do not just murder, there is something or someone to blame.  Without reasons that we can attach, we have to accept that some actions are utterly meaningless, and that is very hard for human beings to do.

If this person is a genuine nihilist and not just severely mentally ill, his actions to himself have no more significance than crossing the street or eating ice cream.  All actions have the same moral value; none.

This may not be something we can put on a right-wing or left-wing radio talk-show host or a political figure or even highly-charged rhetoric.

Thoughts?


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## CoryKS (Jan 12, 2011)

I don't have any problem accepting that this might be a meaningless action.  I think he had a reason, but not necessarily one that makes sense to anyone but him.  People do baffling things all the time, and if they cooperate it can be possible to follow the train of thought back to see how they came to that conclusion, but will that knowledge help us the next time somebody puts two and two together and comes up with potato?


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 12, 2011)

CoryKS said:


> I don't have any problem accepting that this might be a meaningless action.  I think he had a reason, but not necessarily one that makes sense to anyone but him.  People do baffling things all the time, and if they cooperate it can be possible to follow the train of thought back to see how they came to that conclusion, but will that knowledge help us the next time somebody puts two and two together and comes up with potato?



I agree - he had a reason - at least one that made sense to him.

As to putting two and two together, I also agree.  I think the actual flaw in the currently-popular reasoning is one of_ 'Post hoc ergo propter hoc'_, or temporal appearance being mistaken for causation.



First: a noted rise in heated rhetoric; some say the worst ever; but we just came out of a very ugly election season.



Second: A man shoots many people, the primary target was clearly an elected official.

Therefore: *the first caused the second*.  Some will _'admit'_ that perhaps the first only *influenced* the second.

Unfortunately for this argument, there has been no link established at this time, and it is becoming less likely that there will be one.  Bad logic doesn't make a conclusion untrue, but it does make it unsupported, and it makes it a logical fallacy.  Unfortunately, many people do not have trouble with poor logic of this sort.  It makes for 'easy answers'.


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## Empty Hands (Jan 12, 2011)

Bill Mattocks said:


> If this person is a genuine nihilist and not just severely mentally ill, his actions to himself have no more significance than crossing the street or eating ice cream.  All actions have the same moral value; none.



In my experience, true nihilists are rare-to-nonexistent.  Perhaps it would take a mentally ill person to be a true one.  To anyone professing nihilism, demand to punch them in the face, take their stuff, or smack their kid.  I think you will start to find out what their values are then.  To a nihilist who might claim that the desire not to be hit or stolen from represents preference with no moral weight, I say that they are making a distinction without a difference.  Their preferences involve proscriptions on the actions of other people - at the end of the day, that's a moral value with a different name.

That is why the argument that someone cannot be moral without a belief in an authoritative structure like God carries no weight.  By their very actions and day to day lives, nearly every person displays that they have moral values.  The argument is disproven by prosaic everyday life.

Some people sure like to _claim _that they are nihilists however, for the shock value, attention, or their own misguided sense of profundity.  Their everyday lives prove the lie of that claim.

Maybe Loughner is the real deal though, a real life version of the Joker without the face paint.  I personally would not assign blame to any other person than Loughner for his actions.  He is responsible for what he does, at least as far as his brain is capable of responsibility.  Everyone else is responsible for what they do too though, and the behavior that is now being criticized and sometimes linked to Loughner deserves criticism in its own right.  That criticism is not the equivalent of censorship, silencing dissent, a "blood libel", or any such nonsense.


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## crushing (Jan 12, 2011)

There were suggestions that George Sodini, the man who killed three women at a fitness center in 2009, was also a nihilist.

From his journal, Sodini apparently had a problem with attractive women that are doing well, or at least seemed to be doing better than him.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x6223848

Could there be similarities?


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## granfire (Jan 12, 2011)

If he was truly a nihilist, them doing better and being pretty would not matter, no?

(sounds like bending a philosophy to fit the need. What novel concept)


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## CoryKS (Jan 12, 2011)

granfire said:


> If he was truly a nihilist, them doing better and being pretty would not matter, no?
> 
> (sounds like bending a philosophy to fit the need. What novel concept)


 

Or perhaps they were nihilists as a coping mechanism because they didn't know _how_ to better?  Sour grapes and all that.  "I didn't want to go to your lame party anyway."


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## crushing (Jan 12, 2011)

granfire said:


> If he was truly a nihilist, them doing better and being pretty would not matter, no?
> 
> (sounds like bending a philosophy to fit the need. What novel concept)


 

You are probably correct, if he were a textbook nihilist....    Are you saying that one doesn't become nihilist, but that they just are or aren't?  Can there not be degrees, or does it happen suddenly?

What do you mean by "What a novel concept"?


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## granfire (Jan 12, 2011)

crushing said:


> You are probably correct, if he were a textbook nihilist....    Are you saying that one doesn't become nihilist, but that they just are or aren't?  Can there not be degrees, or does it happen suddenly?


does it matter? 



> What do you mean by "What a novel concept"?



Heavy sarcasm....


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## crushing (Jan 12, 2011)

granfire said:


> does it matter?


 
In the grand scheme of things, not really. Thanks anyway.



granfire said:


> Heavy sarcasm....


 
At first I wasn't sure it was meant as an insult.


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## Tez3 (Jan 12, 2011)

As you'll get more news than I, has there been any *definite* confirmation of whether he is mentally ill, politicaly motivated, a nihilist or anything at all or is it just all literally supposition, gossip and conjecture?


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## granfire (Jan 12, 2011)

crushing said:


> In the grand scheme of things, not really. Thanks anyway.



In the spirit of nihilism...


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 12, 2011)

Tez3 said:


> As you'll get more news than I, has there been any *definite* confirmation of whether he is mentally ill, politicaly motivated, a nihilist or anything at all or is it just all literally supposition, gossip and conjecture?



I can't say that it is one thing or another, or that anyone will ever know, but I read this, which I found interesting:

http://motherjones.com/politics/2011/01/jared-lee-loughner-friend-voicemail-phone-message



> Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords  event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the  same one mentioned in the chargesLoughner "might have gone to some  other rallies," he saysbut Tierney notes it was a significant moment  for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and  he asked a question. The question was, *'What is government if words  have no meaning?'"
> *
> Giffords' answer, whatever it was, didn't satisfy Loughner. "He said,  'Can you believe it, they wouldn't answer my question,' and I told him,  'Dude, no one's going to answer that,'" Tierney recalls. "Ever since  that, he thought she was fake, he had something against her."



...



> As Loughner and Tierney grew closer, Tierney got used to spending the  first ten minutes or so of every day together arguing with Loughner's  "nihilist" view of the world. "By the time he was 19 or 20, he was  really fascinated with semantics and *how the world is really  nothingillusion,"* Tierney says.



There's a lot more; I think his friend is key to the investigation and understanding how the shooter thinks.  It's a lot more than just nihilism; but it also appears not to have been influenced by any particular political ideology or party that I can see.


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## granfire (Jan 12, 2011)

Tez3 said:


> As you'll get more news than I, has there been any *definite* confirmation of whether he is mentally ill, politicaly motivated, a nihilist or anything at all or is it just all literally supposition, gossip and conjecture?



But you probably get _better news._


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## CoryKS (Jan 12, 2011)

> Tierney, who's also 22, recalls Loughner complaining about a Giffords event he attended during that period. He's unsure whether it was the same one mentioned in the chargesLoughner "might have gone to some other rallies," he saysbut Tierney notes it was a significant moment for Loughner: "He told me that she opened up the floor for questions and he asked a question. The question was, *'What is government if words have no meaning?'"
> *


I blame Jacques Derrida.


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## Empty Hands (Jan 12, 2011)

Tez3 said:


> As you'll get more news than I, has there been any *definite* confirmation of whether he is mentally ill, politicaly motivated, a nihilism or anything at all or is it just all literally supposition, gossip and conjecture?



Mostly conjecture, albeit informed by some salient facts.  He was kicked out of his community college, and an animal shelter he volunteered at, for disturbing behavior.  Family and acquaintances claimed that he was acting more and more disturbed, and that they didn't know what to do about it.  He has posted a number of YouTube videos, written works, and other media revealing his obsession with governmental mind control via the control of language.  He appears to be a fairly nasty misogynist, with writings calling women who get abortions terrorists and works that appear to justify or defend rape of women.  He appeared at an event with Congresswoman Giffords 3 years ago, and asked a question about the legitimacy of government given that language was meaningless or something like that - she responded in Spanish and moved on ignoring him, which doubtless did not improve his disposition (awesome response though).

The signs do seem to point towards mental illness, although you can never know for sure.  He also looks pretty twisted:






  I mean just look at him.  He even went with The Wall route and shaved his eyebrows.

It isn't unusual for the mentally ill, especially schizophrenics, to latch onto ideas around them in society and incorporate them into their altered thinking.  My aunt for instance is schizophrenic, and manages to combine a belief that government lasers are being fired at her and her property with a blind, extreme faith in the Republican party and extreme conservatism.  Oh, and religious extremism too.  All kinds of ideas can get mixed up in there.

At the end of the day though, the mentally ill are far more likely to have violence and crime perpetrated against them (seriously, like 5-20 times as likely depending on the crime) than perpetrate it.  Mass institutionalization punishes the many for crimes that haven't even been committed yet by the few.


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 12, 2011)

CoryKS said:


> I blame Jacques Derrida.



Gorgias of Leontini and Solipsism probably had more to do with this particular line of reasoning.  The idea that one can only be certain of one's own existence, and that there is no evidence that anyone or anything exists other than the self, seems to permeate the shooter's thoughts; it also helps to explain his fascination with his own dreams.  Even solipsists find it difficult to constantly believe that nothing exists except themselves, though.


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## Blade96 (Jan 12, 2011)

Nihilist? as someone else said i find it hard to believe cause a true nihilist is rare. I studied nihilism to a point in russian history as there was a nihilist movement in that country in the 19th century.


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## granfire (Jan 12, 2011)

Blade96 said:


> Nihilist? as someone else said i find it hard to believe cause a true nihilist is rare. I studied nihilism to a point in russian history as there was a nihilist movement in that country in the 19th century.


I would guess eventually the hormones kick in and the carnal urges make it all look very real :boing1::boing1::boing1:


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## Blade96 (Jan 13, 2011)

haha no doubt


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## crushing (Jan 13, 2011)

Blade96 said:


> *Nihilist? as someone else said i find it hard to believe cause a true nihilist is rare.* I studied nihilism to a point in russian history as there was a nihilist movement in that country in the 19th century.


 
This has been suggested and is why I asked the question as to whether there are degrees of nihilism, or a path.  I thought the answer or answers would add to the discussion.  I know there are bright people on MT, like you, that are much more informed about nihilism and nihilists than I.


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## Bill Mattocks (Jan 13, 2011)

crushing said:


> This has been suggested and is why I asked the question as to whether there are degrees of nihilism, or a path.  I thought the answer or answers would add to the discussion.  I know there are bright people on MT, like you, that are much more informed about nihilism and nihilists than I.



I believe that there are all sorts of nihilists out there.  Like atheism, it frequently defies strict definition.  I have met atheists who state that they do not believe in an anthropomorphic 'God' that created us all intentionally as many religions state, but they're open to the concept that the universe had an original cause that was intentional, denoting intelligence of some unknowable kind.  Others simply disregard the concept of any cause whatsoever.

By the same token, many are the atheists who define their own flavor of atheism as 'atheism' and other concepts as 'not atheism'.  Likewise for nihilists, I've found.  _"You're not a real nihilist, I am,"_ was a common declaration amongst the black-beret wearing, clove cigarette-smoking college kids when I was in school.


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## Blade96 (Jan 13, 2011)

crushing said:


> This has been suggested and is why I asked the question as to whether there are degrees of nihilism, or a path.  I thought the answer or answers would add to the discussion.  I know there are bright people on MT, like you, that are much more informed about nihilism and nihilists than I.



I'd have to know more about this fellow before i could say whether he a real nihilist or not but i would say yes, there are different degrees of it.

as for calling me bright, Awe, thanks. :angel: You're sweeeet.


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