Greentext

Fuck yeah I am. I've got a living playlist of lectures I can add this into, thank you!

Actually I see a yt video at the top of the page here, can I watch all the episodes there as an option?

"Must be exhausting!"

Spitting fire!

I mean, hedonism isn't the only option, what about Epicureanism?

Nietzsche was explicitly, spitefully against asceticism. On the Genealogy of Morals is largely about how church clerics valorized ascetic lifestyle in order to trick the public into always believing they are not doing good, when actually the church has explicitly created two moralities because the rich, powerful, and aristocratic were not expected to (and Nietzsche was not in favor of) living ascetic lives.

The whole point of this meme is that Nietzsche was a life-affirming philosopher. He absolutely did not advocate for an ascetic lifestyle because he believed the joy was the highest pursuit of human life.

Now, if you find this contradictory, well Nietzsche is an extremely contrary and frustrating writer. His writing is beautiful and prosaic, but he's endlessly skeptical In one line he is saying something so profound and affirming, and the next line ascerbic and devastating. He flatters you, makes an airtight case for the flattery, then rips it to shreds; then he rips that to shreds and he is back to flattery. I'm sort of unconvinced that he even is a philosopher, but I love his writing and prose.

Right! I'm glad to see someone thinking critically about what hedonism to fundamentslly means, rather than relying on the more pejorative usage of the term.

I realised once that, even tho I was a drug free tee totaller who didn't party or have sex much, I was still a hedonistic at that time because I played videogames as much as possible.

Lol what even is this?

(my body is devoid of worldly power but I low-key agree because physically building personal meaning and protecting the wilderness trumps all)

There is a quote from Futuristic Violence and Fancy Suits that I think of every time this comes up.

“You can lie to yourself, say that you never had a choice, that you weren’t cut out for this. But deep down you’ll know. You’ll know that humans aren’t cut out for anything. We cut ourselves out. Slowly, with a rusty knife. Because otherwise, here’s what’s going to happen: you’re going to die and you’re going to stand at the gates of judgment and you’re going to ask God what was the meaning of it all, and God will say, ‘I created the universe, you little shit. It was up to you to give it meaning.’”

“You really think God uses that kind of language?”

“Yes.”

You just do, Freddy.

A lot of people don't.

There's a whole superstructure to religion - culture, ethics, public infrastructure, social networks, financial networks, a common history and language - that you need to supplement as you dispose of the older system.

What the European socialists discovered at the turn of the 20th century was that you can't just burn down all the churches and start over from scratch. Anarchism without some new common social foundation just ends in civil war and foreign occupation.

Subsequent generations still need a scaffolding to cling to as they mature. And if that scaffold isn't rooted in some new existential or moral foundation (or if it's rooted in a rotten one) you end up with ultra-nationalism, or Victorian mysticism, or whatever paint Ayn Rand was huffing.

my take on life is that yeah it doesn’t have inherent meaning, but you don’t need a meaning for everything you do. you can just enjoy being alive despite the meaninglessness, it actually gives you a lot of freedom to do whatever you want to do for the sake of it.

for the morals: just don’t bring in needless suffering, nobody choose to be here and nobody wants to suffer, the only thing we can do is to make the existing lives better

Yet here we are, celebrating people whose moral purpose is nonexistent at best and usually completely evil.

Yeah and Kierkegaard already solved this decades before him, in exactly the way you describe (although he didn't personally think it was possible).

If you accept that caring for the wellbeing of your kids is inherently meaningful then you must also accept there is meaning inherent in taking care of your own self :3

Nihilists can have, and love and care for, children.

It's all about making your own meaning, and I imagine having kids is one way a lot of people do that.

I don't think nihilism and pragmatism are mutually exclusive