Is there such thing as cheerful nihilism? If there is then I guess that'd be the best way to describe how I look at things. This viewpoint is very openly appropriated from my love of both John Campbell's Pictures for Sad Children (Read it! It's all online! I'd put the link but fuck links.) and Randall Munroe's XKCD (Though that love is waning because honestly the dude isn't all that funny most of the time I just like this one character that wears a beret. He is so cheerful and existentialist and awesome. Ditto on the link front.). If you read either of those you might know what I mean by cheerful nihilism. The comic currently on the front page of pictures for sad children is a rad example. My view on this very serious philosophical and moral perspective is probably giving some members of my readership aneurisms, since I am probably completely and utterly misrepresenting nihilism and all it stands for. I'll just state my case and if anyone wants to cock slap me or assign a new label to what I believe then go for it, I probably deserve it.
Even the basic dictionary definition of nihilism is going against what I personally believe, except for the last bit of it. The full definition is "the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."Actually I guess I'm more existentialist, but whatever, let's continue. Life is meaningless. This is my starting point in so much that I do. Life is meaningless. Which means that everything I do in my life is meaningless. How could I not believe this? Have you ever stopped to consider precisely how small you really are. I did today, and probably for the first time I really realized it, and even what I realized wasn't the truth. I started to imagine myself as a figure in a scale model of whatever. I was that small, and so was the rock I was sitting on, and so was the bridge I was beside, and so was the tree above me, and so was the creek below me, and so on. I felt tiny. I am tiny. I mean, I'm 6 feet tall, which I guess is tall, but there are so many trees bigger than me, and there are so many mountains bigger than trees. And even mountains are just tiny bumps and contours on the Earth. Like a fingerprint. It's impossible to have perspective and not think that your life is meaningless. And I guess it's scary to have that perspective, to realize that a lifetime isn't really all that long, and that humanity isn't that big of a deal no matter how much damage we cause, and so on. I guess.
But I don't really know how anyone can look at the world in this way, with this perspective of no rules that really matter and no consequences past a few years, and not think, "fuck that sounds exciting." (I think I totally stole that from Joey Comeau but whatever.) That's where the cheerfulness comes in, in my mind. Because there's no reason to do anything there's also no reason not to do everything you can. And sure it might be futile, but whatever, man is meant to do things, so even with the knowledge that every breath won't accomplish anything, we'll still take those breaths. And I'm not saying that living without rules means you should go out and kill someone and steal shit because NO CONSEQUENCES. I guess it's kind of hypocritical that I'm talking about living without rules when I have rules, (No violence, no meat, no hate, et cetera.) but those rules are my rules, they aren't there because of the government or because of God, they're there because I want to live like that.
I kind of lost track of where I was going there, and man I am really goddamn hungry. So I guess I'll go have dinner at midnight because NO RULES DUDES!
peace,
Lee
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