From Nihilist to superman

Want to get out of the quicksand of nihilism ?

( शून्यवाद की इस दलदल से बाहर निकलना चाहते हो ? )

If you are stuck, the only way out is by making up your own code of conduct. If you are week you will need a book to lay down one for you. Choose your book. chances are your heritage made that choice for you. If you are strong and think you can make up your own, good for you. I found a way out by making up my own code of conduct which i detail in the following passages.

Catalyst (उत्प्रेरक):

This enquiry about the purpose of life started from having the luxury of "free time"*. No pass-times like alcohol, hash, classes, project- submissions and a strong desire to think.

* I found later this same sentiment expressed by 2 different sources. My mother said ( खाली दिमाग शैतान का घर/ empty mind is devil's workshop ) and an essay on existentialism from stanford encyclopedia of philosophy said " For the existentialists engagement is the source of meaning and value".     

First Stage - Options ( पहला चरण - विकल्प ):

I listed various avenues available to me and whether any avenue can be said to be greater than the other. Filmstars, scientists, economists, entrepreneurs, CEO's and inventors and they were all there. no one was in any way bigger or smaller than the other. I am free to do anything and there is no way in which one thing is worse than the other. I had tested many notions of success like fame, money, endurance and they were all equally flimsy, equally vacuous and equally important. Fame can't be said to be a true yardstick for success.  I mean how many people now know Einstein. your deeds no matter how big would fade to darkness. If your invention creates a huge change in the world then for sure you have changed the world but no one can prove to me that the world has become better. Different doesn't imply better or worse.

What this means is that there is no magical standard. By realizing that there are no universal intransigent standards, no big purpose behind our life I realized true emptiness . I found myself in a void. TOTAL VACUUM*

    *Ofcourse this conclusion in also not novel people like nietzsche, sartre and kierkgaard called this angst. the title of the book "the unbearable lightness of being" refers to this.  Infact The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard is regarded as the father of existentialism. He maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely, in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.

    * Also it is written in wiki about this that Existentialist philosophers often stress the importance of Angst as signifying the absolute lack of any objective ground for action, a move that is often reduced to a moral or an existential nihilism.

Zero pressure ( शून्य दबाव ) :

    This complete vacuum gave me a feeling of tremendous freedom but no guide to act in a certain way. It freed me to do anything and to do nothing at all but didn't guide my choices. This was my first exposure to Angst, post modernism.*

    * I wrote down thoughts like : You are free to do what you want if you don't care what you leave behind for future, whatever you do right now is the best that can be done and you can only do stuff for yourself because even though because of countless contributions our life is now different it cannot be said to be better or worse, whatever you do will make a small change which cannot be judged as better or worse, the quest to make a big impression is stupid  (dont care about the future generations)

To answer the question what one should do , what one is doing , should i do this or do that? People look for a higher meaning in life. People come up with answers like god. God gives us a set of rules.

    * Some argues hinduism is an exception but they are just being a douche. They would say that vedas are not about gods at all (Sam - music, Atharv - medicine, Rig - way of life, Yajur - how to perform yagya) but that is not the practiced form of hinduism anyway. Hindu is a race. what we practise is sanatan Dharm or Arya-samaj. We practise the idol worshipping form. where giving alms to brahmins is prescribed and lots of rituals are happening

My prescribed "true Solution" ( मेरा सुझावित समाधान ) :

    The following is the first version of the true solution that i came up with. 

The only acceptable purpose to live would be to become better so that you become perfect, to live as long as it takes you to do that, other joys sexual, dietary are important only as long as they do not become an impediment.*

    * turns out that this is a special case of "will to power". the power being perfection. Will to power , will to pleasure and will to meaning were 3 different psychological theories proposed by nietzsche, freud and frankl respectively. Read about logotherapy on wiki

    * The following list of tenets represents Frankl's basic principles of Logotherapy:

        •    Life has meaning under all circumstances, even the most miserable ones.

        •    Our main motivation for living is our will to find meaning in life.

        •    We have inalienable freedom to find meaning.

        We can find meaning in life in three different ways:

        1.    by creating a work or doing a deed;

        2.    by experiencing something or encountering someone;

        3.    by the attitude we take toward unavoidable suffering.

the point was that once you die thought you would not have made a difference but you would have lived. To want to make this life mean anything grand is futile. no i should not say that. to search for an objective criteria outside your own self according to which you would say that you have lived life successfully would be stupid. Of course one could submit to god then this problem would not arise but if you don't believe in god then you must believe in yourself.

At this point i remembered fountainhead and i had always felt close to howard roark* though i cant be exactly like him. I am not asexual. i do not feel completely unhurt from people. I do try to understand them. "I want to fit in"** but not at the cost of giving up on some of my ideas. This concept of what holds dear to me, what should be preserved, what should be done, what should be created, how i would behave is going to define me***.

* I actually reread fountainhead and copied paragraphs which are strongly agree or disagree with, both reveal something about me, since it is long i have kept it in a separate page. here.   

** Is Apathy a possible solution for me ? ( क्या मेरे लिये उदासीनता एक सम्भव उपाय है ? )

The following is a chat i had with a friend of mine

" even if u didnt reach were u thought u should have, how does it matter to the world ?  or to u even ? cause u want ever step of ur life to be perfect!! every step that u take to fall at the right spot!! to lead to to ur goal of being at the top of the world some day. If u consider life as a series of events and a certain permutation and combination is gonna lead u to the ultimate achievement and that is being at the top and even a little of a tumble and u miss everything "

in different words he basically says that "We think we are too important, and my life is too important, and when stuff doesn't happen the way that i want it to happen life falls apart, but the point is that life is pointless" And he tells me to watch this song on Youtube which i did and it really calmed me down

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHFDa9efCQU "Don't worry be happy"

This chat made sense to me sometimes, some times it seemed wrong. But now i can say with mountain moving conviction that apathy is not a solution. Only calculated distancing of yourself from superfluous is possible not a fuck all aloofness. Whoever shows that is just doing an act which can be destroyed by pushing the opponent to his/her limit. If he/she doesn't retaliate then they are obliterated and if they do then their sham is destroyed.   

*** This was my own approach to the concept of ubermensch, something which now seems so appealing to me. Nietzsche basically said that in absence of god, you don't have an outside source of morality. If you analyze too much then you will realize the emptiness and maybe fall into nihilism. But the truly great one will make up his own ideas, his own morality, free from all influence. Of course there are people who act like only their ideas are correct and they don't haven't thought too much about it, but i am not one of them so that's that. The will to power, pleasure and meaning and the fact that only my own brain is available to me means that i must try to act in this way

Complete Conclusion ( सम्पूर्ण निष्कर्ष )