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Your comment reminded me of the Optimistic Nihilism video by Kurzegesagt [1]. I highly recommend it, as they explain these concepts very well in a short 6min video.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14

⬐ fellowniusmonk

I appreciate that video but after watching it I'm definitely not an optimistic nihilist as described in the video, I think while the video does caveat a lot of it's statements and I do overall agree with its sentiment it's too definitive and confident in certain areas.

"Existential hope" is definitely my position, no confidence, certainty or belief in nihilism required, just inject even more uncertainty and the nihilism goes away as well.

It means that in contrast to the video summing up its point by saying "do what you want and bonus points for helping others", I say that discovering and investigating and progressing is actually an imperative task.

I think the divide may be that I neither presume or reject as default materialism as the final truth, the video doesn't explicitly either but it does frame things in a way that I never would and it's conclusions for a meaningful life are also a narrower subset of my position in some areas and broader in others.

My possibly false impression based on the video is that optimistic nihilism takes for granted that materialism is a starting assumption.

I think while materialism is our current empirical observation I don't know if that will hold up long term as the underlying nature of reality.

Existential hope works equally well for those who lean or suspect that this underlying nature is deist, theist, atheist, materialist, metaphysical or dualist.

I found Kurzgesagt's video on Optimistic Nihilism helpful.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14

⬐ Agamus

Awesome link, thank you. Nietzsche's career was an exercise in creating and promoting the concept of 'creative nihilism' as an alternative to existential pessimism, which works for me!

⬐ arvinsim

Also shown in this XKCD[1]

[1] https://xkcd.com/167/

Watch this; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14&vl=en

> The thought may be freeing to you, but many others become paralysed by it, obsessing about “the right choices” at every moment.

I had been struggling with the same issue. The opposite (“our choices don’t matter”) is depressing.

However, two things help me:

The first is “Optimistic Nihilism” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14) - a view very close to Zen/stoicism. The second is that ALL choices matter, but their impact is finite and subject to randomness. I used to think that all of my choices were forever and set in stone. While technically correct, it misses that the future changes only a bit. We might be tempted to think that “the grass is greener”, or “I should have bought Bitcoins”, but it is like “I miss I didn’t join my friends when they went to a cassino”. Moreover, it is FAIR that a finite effort results in a finite result.

Absolutely. Thanks for this. It's telling to me how dismissive/judgemental are about nihilism, and that's been a good signal for me in other areas that it's getting a lot closer to a basic truth and people are threatened with it and want to push it away. Which is what we shouldn't be doing.

Optimistic Nihilism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14) or Absurdism (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQOfbObFOCw) are maybe more accessible takes if nihilism seems too "scary".

Perhaps this helps answering the question "Why Bother with All This"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14

There is a beautiful video by Kurzgesagt. It makes a similar point and I feel better every time I watch it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14

I like the notion of "Optimistic Nihilism", as explained by Kurzgesagt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14

For me, it is about stoic/Zen acceptance of things we cannot change.

Contrast it with "American optimism", which is for me close to gaslighting, or at best - a "flight" reaction from suffering.

Related Kurzgesagt video: optimistic nihilism https://youtu.be/MBRqu0YOH14

Thanks for that! I got carried away and sank an hour watching stuff.

Totally off topic - My favourite was 'Optimistic Nihilism' - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBRqu0YOH14