this post was submitted on 05 May 2024
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Chapotraphouse
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That's very clearly the message: you don't matter on the scale of the Earth, everyone disappears when you zoom out far enough.
And that's exactly the ethos of so-called effective altruism, longtermism, extropianism, etc. The idea is that you should zoom out and ignore all the individual people because they don't matter on a large scale, instead we should focus on growing the economy for a technological-utopian future where the number of humans can grow exponentially by living in space and trying to colonize all parts of the universe.
This dominates Silicon Valley and has become a driving force in the tech industry.
Why are you talking to me like that?
This isn't just a space pic. This is, specifically, a nihilist space meme. I think the venn diagram in this case has a lot of overlap.
I reject that!
Everyone matters. When you zoom out, we're all the same. We're all connected. An injury to one is an injury to all.
What this meme does and what you are doing is flipping that around to then say "When you zoom out, we're all irrelevant. We're all nothing. No one matters at scale." I refuse! Every single person matters to all of us, because we're all the same. When you zoom out you can't tell us apart, all you can see is a pale blue dot. That's us. That doesn't mean that no one matters at scale, that means everyone matters as much as everyone else. No one is more important or more valuable or more human, we are all the same, we all matter equally. We are our home.
I refuse to accept that no one matters, no matter what scale we are talking about. Every single person matters as part of that pale blue dot.
It sure has been a long time since Philosophy 101 huh? I'm pretty sure you are confusing existentialism with existential nihilism.
Existentialism is the belief that we construct the meaning of our lives through our own awareness, will, and reason. Nihilism, on the other hand, is the assertion that there is no meaning to life including whatever meaning we try to make for ourselves and that it is pointless to try to give life meaning. The man climbs the tree because he wants to, there's no deeper meaning behind it because meaning doesn't exist. He's not making a new meaning for himself, he's just doing what he wants because there's no reason not to and nothing is stopping him.
I'm sympathetic to the nihilist view, but rather than reject giving life meaning as pointless I just recognize that it is absurd and then do it anyway.
One must imagine Sisyphus happy, yeah?
And now we return to that pale blue dot. That's home. That's us. I choose to give that meaning and acknowledge that I am choosing to do so, despite the meaningless universe in which we find ourselves. I am part of something bigger than myself, and so are you, and together we give the world meaning. Nihilism rejects meaning, and I don't think you're actually a nihilist.
You're right, “only I matter” and “only I and [subgroup] matter” are not nihilistic either, but that's that's not what this meme is implying or what I'm rejecting. A truly nihilistic stance is "I don't matter, no one matters, nothing matters, and there's no reason to create meaning because that doesn't matter either." If I ask "should I kill myself" then nihilism can not provide me a reason to survive. Earth before, Earth after, nothing changes. That's why Camus considered suicide to be the only really serious philosophical problem.
Now of course, nihilists aren't necessarily suicidal (although it's not uncommon). The nihilist philosophy tells us to reject meaning and to pursue personal pleasure and satisfaction and self actualization i.e. the Will to Power, not because that is the meaning of life, but because in a meaningless universe there's no reason to do anything else. The person who can achieve this becomes the Übermensch, able to overcome the limits of religion and reason to pursue ambition and no longer burdened by the sorrows of ordinary people.
And again, this isn't something that gives life meaning. It's a supposedly rational solution to the question "should I kill myself" i.e. the Übermensch wants to live for life itself and does not need a reason to do so or to find meaning for life to be worth living.
All of this is to say that, yes, real people believe this stuff and they should be discouraged from doing so whenever possible.