Also nihilism is stupid and self contradictory. Most people I’ve met who claim to be nihilists are just intellectually lazy and dont want to take responsibility over their actions. They make themselves victims. “So why dont you kill yourself?” I tell them. At which they usually cuss me out or shut up. Very intellectual.

Sadly, there is no end to life, as for every clear-headed misanthrope their are twenty idiot breeding-machines, who have never risen above the biological imperative of a slug, and ceaselessly grind out 6.5 billion+ deformed, malefic human sausages like they were going out of style. Sigh… if only they would go out of style.

Even the bomb won’t wipe its vulgar creator out efficiently, but will only add to the suffering. Truly, Humanity is its own crime.

Insteead blame the nihilists for picking the wrong person to follow. But the person this article would have them to follow wouldn’t make it out of his teens.

People like to moan. People like to exaggerate. Some people like to court controversy.

Bring on the bomb.

By the way, even being the oftentimes-non-authoritative source that Wikipedia is, it defines nihilism very appropriately and discusses it in depth.

What Dr. Dolan brings forth as the main point, however, is the potential for existence of the nuclear solution (or “solution,” if you like) – something that didn’t exist during Nietzsche’s time.

So, yes, while the suffering of a nihilist can be qualified as stupid (including by the nihilist himself) – making it a laughing/despicable matter can only be so from the point of view of someone who gave up on or never seriously considered the possibility that someday a nihilistic superhero/supervillain/messiah/anti-messiah comes and saves (or “saves,” if you insist) the world.

Oh, and I would disagree with Sim’s assertion that everyone at some point realizes that life sucks. It’s not quite true. And, yes, it’s a good thing for day-to-day existence, as Nietzsche knew.

I would summarize Dr. Dolan’s position as idealistic nihilism with dramatic undertones. It’s a superb piece writing!

Despite, personally, supporting (non-ardently-enough) animals’ rights, the only thing I disagree with him about is the animals’ relative worth – I believe human suffering and pleasure has, on average, more dimension to it than an animal’s (even an advanced mammal’s such as dolphin). That is due to the complexity of our brains. I also think that Moo put forth a very good argument regarding animals’ relative worth (in post #9) – showing the inconsistency of Dr. Dolan’s assertion in that regard.

Again, though – great piece of writing! But I need to disappoint you, Dr. Dolan – people have this thing called “fear” – and it’s always immeasurably stronger than any intellectual realizations, including ones that are as self-consistent and as empathy-borne as meditations on life’s meaninglessness.

Somehow I feel Sophocles words before own death are appropriate here:

“The long days store up many things nearer to grief than joy.
…Death at last, the deliverer,
Not to be born is past all prizing best.
Next best by far when one has seen the light.
Is to go thither swiftly whence he came.
When youth and its light carelessness are past.
What woes are not without, what griefs within,
Envy and faction, strife and sudden death.
And last of all, old age despised,
Infirm, unfriended.”

P.S. To “Honjaku Osho:” screw your meditation. Read some U.G. Krishnamurti. (Yes, “U.G.”)

Do you see, all of you, do you see how the master draws you in… how so many are compelled (and for each one who begins warily the weary task of compiling his opinions and chaingangbanging them into strident arcs of agreement or disgust; weary laughter or sanguine, jubilant spite…) for each one of them, how many were called to task, or tisk, or conscience… or whatever crass malapropism stumbles into view like a wayward basehead on MLK at 2 am- how many were called by Master Dolan but stepped back from the cry? For each lowly maggot with our pitiful add-ons, our crass collections of mundanities and mendacities… how many were broiled alive and poached in the venomous juices of the master’s spleen but lazily said, “Nay.” Drowsily murmured, “Fuck it.”

Dolan’s art is that he invites, no- demands a response. His interminable rightness demands no less. Glance above my pallid offering- these slipshod words, this paucity of a dedication- look above this gutted carapace that stains the master’s art, look high! Gaze upon the flatfooted assemblage of palsied death throes, forced mumblings and strained thrusts and missteps and salutations… all, in some form or another, bearing their reverence for the Master. For to write in response is to be compelled, first and foremost, to be called to communion, for whatever reason! Bastards! My brothers!

Even I, with my pallid cries of worship and delight. I have earned no place at the master’s table.

Blessed, Blessed be the church of Dolan! For lo, he has come, and yet not come, unto us- his lowly throng- to show us the Church of the New Light, to teach the covenant of The Church of the Long Shadows, the orthodoxy of the psylocibyn cumulonimbus: the holy covenant of the eternal winter of ashen skies!

…

Oh, and by he way: all you fucktards who, somehow, haven’t figured this shit out yet- Dolan is Brecher. You clowns should see this shit by now. It couldn’t be more obvious. Compare, for example (one example in a veritable litany)- the third War Nerd article, “Tom Clancy is not one of us,” with all the elaborate revulsion of his ilk (and as the man would say, “they are an ilk.”) in Pleasant Hell. Compare the elegiac, studious hymns to “Jane’s” in the columns of Brecher and the chapters of Dolan. Compare their as-yet unrivaled and criminally slept abilities to render into easy-to-understand-paragraphs precisely what’s wrong with our utterly fucked national defense ideology. Contrast their holy, holy hatred of Vile Reagan (Buster Friendly) as a faux-peacenick dipped in the righteous blood of the national lamb.

It’s either Dolan solo, or, possibly writing in tandem with Ames or someone else, though I doubt it. Just as Hank Williams had to record his religious-type-shit under the less-punk (for its time) moniker of, “Luke the Drifter,” so must Dolan adopt different personas and shift his message. May it always be so. But no not deceive yourselves as to the authenticity and origin of The Master’s work.

That one Clancy article (“Swoop, my beauteous eagle! Swoop on yon peasant brat!!!” awesome.) says it all; should be all you need to see this: It’s all Dolan. In that opus, he hasn’t distanced himself from the pose yet. Hasn’t completely taken up the mantle and the mask… Hasn’t dumbed himself down yet to Brecher’s more plodding/less pyrotechnic but equally brilliant and brutal style. The way Dolan/Brecher bounces the thrust of the narrative off of the author and onto Clancy’s ex, “Wanda,” sitting lonely in their mansion (Brecher comparing her to a Far Side character is yet another give away: Dolan constantly references the Far Side as a master archeologist references the cultural mainstays of whatever civilization has caught his exquisitely intractable, incontestable gaze), then- off Wanda and onto that evil talentless, fuckschtick Clancy, then onto the groupie he’s fucking and finally- back to the narrator, for a typically Dolanian piece of polemical denouement full of anarchistic bravado, wherein he quietly calls for us to find Clancy’s mansion, and when we, his brethren, find that pig- “O my brothers, you will know what to do.”

Pure Dolan. One sees this nascent point of view to taking shape in earlier articles like, “In the Land of heroic Leeches,” And “The Book of The Dead-and Dumb.”

They are one and the same. I’ve been saying since double-aught four and will shout it until the centuries fall like Samson’s pillars around me. No matter how many times (twice so far) the powers at the eXile refuse to publish these exultant cries of fealty and homage! Dolan is Brecher! May Dolan smite the swine unto eternity!!!!!

Though I may dislike the essay’s own pessimism-nihilism, I think Dolan is pretty right on in fingering nihilism in modern art as being mostly a pose to attract cachet. Vanity ruined or vitiated mountains of modern art, though I don’t agree that the nihil pose was it’s main characteristic – the recherche pose was the even more widespread mode of vanity. You see the same recherche in criticism and philosophy; recently even in natural science. 1900s artists were the new world-creators and godmakers taking the place of christianity, and it went to their heads. Anytime they fell short of divine creativity and revelatory originality they became frustrated. I’m no theist but I think they needed a dose of the old school anonym soli deo gloria, then they would have remembered to place beauty above fame and above originality.

The bounds of anti-life art are a little subjective. I find it hard to see nihilism in anything beautiful (in the broad sense), no matter how harsh or bleak it is. Beauty makes me want to live and have children. I don’t find Kurt Cobain’s music nihilistic though his painting for Incesticide does look nihilist. “Scentless apprentice” may be one of the harshest things around but it’s beautiful.

I’d love to blather on, but probably few are reading this thread now. Here are some telling quotations about Kurt Cobain:

“Cobain originally wanted to name the album [In Utero] I Hate Myself And I Want to Die, a phrase that had originated in his journals in mid-1992.[44] At the time, the singer used the phrase as a response whenever someone asked him how he was doing. Cobain intended the album title as a joke; he stated he was “tired of taking this band so seriously and everyone else taking it so seriously”.[45] Novoselic convinced Cobain to change the title due to fear that it could potentially result in a lawsuit.”

“Throughout most of his life, Cobain suffered from chronic bronchitis and intense physical pain due to an undiagnosed chronic stomach condition.[23] This last condition was especially debilitating to him emotionally, and he spent years trying to find its cause. [...] Cobain claimed that he was “determined to get a habit” as a way to self-medicate his stomach condition. Related Cobain, “It started with three days in a row of doing heroin and I don’t have a stomach pain. That was such a relief.”[28]“

(I liked the Ted Hughes column by the way. The Coen’s really do suck ass. Perfect decadent twats. I think it’s hilarious that they are considered the height of serious commentary in America in these times. Cream of a shitty crop.
On Nietzsche: have any of these people actually read him? Doesn’t seem like it. Or else it’s going in one ear and out the other. )
Deleuze on Spinoza with something closely related to Nietzsche’s conception of reactive nihilism:
“[...]It’s in the scholia that he says what an ethics is, to make an ethics is to make a theory and a practice of powers of being affected, and an ethics is opposed to a satirics [satirique]. What he calls a satirics is tremendous enough: it’s everything that takes pleasure one way or another in sad affects, everything which is depreciating and depressing. That’s the satirics. It’s obvious that all of morality goes under the name of satirics. What exactly does powers-that-be mean? And in what ways do the powers-that-be take hold in order to depress, to affect people with sad affects?[...]”
http://www.webdeleuze.com/php/texte.php?cle=176&groupe=Anti%20Oedipe%20et%20Mille%20Plateaux&langue=2

The only way to imagine a post-annihilation world as better than this one is to posit an observer to appreciate it. That’s silly of course, and self-centered. Not selfish, though it is that, but self-centered. As in foolishly, pathetically incapable of shedding the self.

Nihilists join the ranks of stupid cunts because they rationalize the universe from the privileged position of their own existence. Baby stuff. Sooner or later everybody notices that life stinks. Take off your diaper already.

Nietzsche, by his own account, understood this about himself and tried to kill, or at least cordon off as much as possible, various suffering or pathological aspects of himself, so that he could go around achieving shit as much as possible rather than being a total whiny bitch. (Which he could be sometimes, particularly in his private letters.)

I think some of you have been confused by ambiguous terminology: when you see “nihilism” attributed to Nietzsche, this virtually always refers to the allegation that he was a “moral nihilist” because he didn’t believe any eternal absolute truths existed (particularly moral ones). This charge is a little excessive, first of all because few people are are actually moral absolutists, and second because he certainly did believe in moral truths; he just didn’t think they would be the same for everyone, and he thought contrary truths would just have to fight it out by the pen and by the sword. Anyways, the “nihilism” he often discussed was different: it meant simply finding no value in life and more or less wanting to die. He unambiguously thought that such a feeling had to be rejected and overcome as much as possible if you wanted to live, though obviously sometimes life is untenable and you could choose suicide. The one thing he hated though is someone becoming a an anarchist or nihilist retard just because they are suffering – something he suspected happened a lot.

What the censors added to my post above is true. This time I’ll spare them some effort by just adding that I’m going to go blow some major horse cock now, as I do every day around this time because I can’t seem to ever get enough. I also lick pictures of Nietzsche.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xsI1aioXNuA

I would suggest that Exile writers get into meditation. It will help you, but you may not have any incentive to write the Exile anymore.

nihilism is something you can experience, but must move through, otherwise see above.

Like Crumb noted in one of his few great cartoons – “the meaning of life? Go fuck yourself.”

That said there’s still a pretty broad consensus that:

1. Modern Hinduism derives lineally from the Brahamanic practices of Buddha’s day but has evolved considerably. For instance animal sacrifice has largely disappeared. (This evolution thing is probably the most controversial thing I’m going to say)

2. Buddha did not generally repudiate that early Hinduism. He did specifically denounce animal sacrifice and the caste system, and he employed a doctrine in his teaching (“no-self” or “no-soul” it’s usually called in English) that was, and still is very much a point for philosophical debate between Buddhists and Hindus.

3. Whatever the pasts of the two religions, and whatever doctrines their learned elites may adhere to, the practices of ordinary believers are mostly devotional and very similar. Switch the statues around and I imagine most outside observers couldn’t tell the difference.

4. Actually sometimes the statues are already the same. Both traditions are extraordinarily syncretic and already resemble one another so much that it’s probably pointless to try to tease out who influenced whom.

5. The Muslim conquests in India ended Buddhism there. Why this was true of Buddhism but not Hinduism is usually attributed to Buddhism having become a largely monastic religion. But that (by the contrapositive) is another way of saying that what the common people were doing was no longer Buddhism. That’s probably unknowable, which makes it a natural jumping off point for those inclined to argue. Buddhism did hold on in places like Tibet of course, and it’s interesting to note that the Buddhism practiced in those places is pretty darned magical. “Hinduesque” one might say.