- Joined
- Jun 27, 2026
- Messages
- 62
- Reaction score
- 85
- Awards
- 1
"It is a measure of one's strength of will to know how far one can do without a meaning to things‚ how far one can bear to live in a totally meaningless world˸ for then one will organize a part of it․" ... "The power to create‚ to will‚ can be developed far enough that one has no further need for a general interpretation of existence‚ or the introduction of a meaning into it․" - Friedrich Nietzsche
I know a lot of people are instantly turned off by Nietzsche because his work is so viral, however I don't think the majority of people that are introduced to his ideas actually understand them correctly. Most of the people I encounter who are already quite bitter toward Nietzsche, when I interrogate them to find out what their basis for that is, it often comes from some pop cultural misunderstanding that has been perpetuated by those who only engage in a very superficial reading of his work, or who are only introduced to it by an AI or only in passing and not really given a rigorous explanation.
But I'm not here to focus on that issue, I simply want to present the issue for your consideration and as a disclaimer for why I think it is still useful to have a small discussion about some of Nietzsche's ideas. Particularly, I want to focus on his rather zen-like proposal of a way to approach life without going crazy and with supreme clarity.
When you have read Will to Power, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Gay Science, and you fully understand his famous statement "God is dead", you will understand what the quote I started this post with is trying to convey. There is a phase of one's spiritual development that one arrives at eventually, where all the endless searching and questioning and fabrication of one answer after another, of one framework for understanding after another, starts to run out of steam. The process of paradigm shifting, going from one "truth" to another, of "learning" and "progressing" in this world, starts to slow down, and you realize that you are actually just messing around. You have been messing around this whole time, and you will continue to simply mess around, and at the end of it all you actually do not really know why you exist, why you do what you do, what any of this means, or what the purpose of any of it is.
People who are low-key psychotic or neurotic (and don't even know it) and cannot accept the utter and absolute meaninglessness of their existence, of all existence, will crack very quickly. They lack the willpower to endure such total irrationality, such PURE experience. It is too overwhelming, and so they must invent some meaning, some purpose, some rationalization for their behavior, for what they are observing, for whatever they are experiencing. They cannot simply exist, simply experience, and simply act. There must always be this injection of a nihilistic projection of the ego that replaces the experience with an escapism or a fantasy. This is how almost everyone operates ordinarily, wasting so much of their limited energy on futile attempts to transmute the very essence of this cosmos into its total opposite.
There is, in fact, at this very moment, a very popular thread on this forum that demonstrates this exact kind of neurotic behavior I am talking about. This thread has many replies from many people, and many of them all voice the same tired attitude, of not wanting to deal with the hubris of this person who is clearly projecting their own ego into their framework of understanding, taking it far too seriously, and trying to force everything in the cosmos into their limited and narrow, personal, subjective perspective. They do not understand that what they have invented amounts to a child's finger painting, or what is essentially merely fine art. They have produced a work of art, not a work of fact or meaning or purpose or wisdom or knowledge. It is entirely for entertainment purposes, and recreational, nothing more.
Even this, right now, this entire process I am engage in, of trying to "explain" things, of trying to make things seem rational, of trying to fit experiences into frameworks of understanding, to impart meaning to them, purpose to them, is fundamentally and ultimately nihilistic. It is not so much a "waste of time", rather, it is purely an exercise in relief and relaxation. It is not "work" that is aimed at producing or creating something of value that helps me evolve or get something done. It is "off time", rest, where I can no longer sustain my absolute willpower to carry out tasks I have committed myself to, and I crack and give in and must stop and consider my actions, stop and evaluate them somehow. As soon as I start to do that, as soon as I switch into "analysis mode" and I am trying to fabricate some kind of opinion or perspective on my experiences so I can explain them or talk about them, even to myself, I have fallen back into the trap of nihilism.
There is no shame in it, it is important to realize, this is just how it is. As Nietzsche said, it is the supreme test of one's willpower to sustain focused intention without doubt and without evaluation, to just act with a totally clear-mind and complete zen-like clarity. That is actually really hard to do. Thoughts creep in, doubts creep in, feelings creep in without you even realizing it, and before you know it, your will falters. You have to sneeze, and then you do, and then you sneeze again, and so you do again, and now you feel another sneeze - and that third sneeze, now the thoughts creep in "how long is this going to continue, what is this, am I sick..." etc. The anxiety of facing the unknown, like this, in every little moment of life. We don't even stop to think about this sequence, but this very sequence happens all the time. We just have to become aware of it and learn not to worry about everything so much, we have to let go of the existential anxiety and existential dread we constantly feel whenever there is a moment where we miss a beat or get knocked out of our flow states.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this idea with you guys ("post-nihilism") because I have found it to be a really useful idea in my life. I have found the strength to let go of a lot of things that I have come to realize are not really as important as I thought they were, and as a result, there is considerably less stress in my life and far less neurotic behaviors I feel I have to commit to in order to survive in this world.
I know a lot of people are instantly turned off by Nietzsche because his work is so viral, however I don't think the majority of people that are introduced to his ideas actually understand them correctly. Most of the people I encounter who are already quite bitter toward Nietzsche, when I interrogate them to find out what their basis for that is, it often comes from some pop cultural misunderstanding that has been perpetuated by those who only engage in a very superficial reading of his work, or who are only introduced to it by an AI or only in passing and not really given a rigorous explanation.
But I'm not here to focus on that issue, I simply want to present the issue for your consideration and as a disclaimer for why I think it is still useful to have a small discussion about some of Nietzsche's ideas. Particularly, I want to focus on his rather zen-like proposal of a way to approach life without going crazy and with supreme clarity.
When you have read Will to Power, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, the Gay Science, and you fully understand his famous statement "God is dead", you will understand what the quote I started this post with is trying to convey. There is a phase of one's spiritual development that one arrives at eventually, where all the endless searching and questioning and fabrication of one answer after another, of one framework for understanding after another, starts to run out of steam. The process of paradigm shifting, going from one "truth" to another, of "learning" and "progressing" in this world, starts to slow down, and you realize that you are actually just messing around. You have been messing around this whole time, and you will continue to simply mess around, and at the end of it all you actually do not really know why you exist, why you do what you do, what any of this means, or what the purpose of any of it is.
People who are low-key psychotic or neurotic (and don't even know it) and cannot accept the utter and absolute meaninglessness of their existence, of all existence, will crack very quickly. They lack the willpower to endure such total irrationality, such PURE experience. It is too overwhelming, and so they must invent some meaning, some purpose, some rationalization for their behavior, for what they are observing, for whatever they are experiencing. They cannot simply exist, simply experience, and simply act. There must always be this injection of a nihilistic projection of the ego that replaces the experience with an escapism or a fantasy. This is how almost everyone operates ordinarily, wasting so much of their limited energy on futile attempts to transmute the very essence of this cosmos into its total opposite.
There is, in fact, at this very moment, a very popular thread on this forum that demonstrates this exact kind of neurotic behavior I am talking about. This thread has many replies from many people, and many of them all voice the same tired attitude, of not wanting to deal with the hubris of this person who is clearly projecting their own ego into their framework of understanding, taking it far too seriously, and trying to force everything in the cosmos into their limited and narrow, personal, subjective perspective. They do not understand that what they have invented amounts to a child's finger painting, or what is essentially merely fine art. They have produced a work of art, not a work of fact or meaning or purpose or wisdom or knowledge. It is entirely for entertainment purposes, and recreational, nothing more.
Even this, right now, this entire process I am engage in, of trying to "explain" things, of trying to make things seem rational, of trying to fit experiences into frameworks of understanding, to impart meaning to them, purpose to them, is fundamentally and ultimately nihilistic. It is not so much a "waste of time", rather, it is purely an exercise in relief and relaxation. It is not "work" that is aimed at producing or creating something of value that helps me evolve or get something done. It is "off time", rest, where I can no longer sustain my absolute willpower to carry out tasks I have committed myself to, and I crack and give in and must stop and consider my actions, stop and evaluate them somehow. As soon as I start to do that, as soon as I switch into "analysis mode" and I am trying to fabricate some kind of opinion or perspective on my experiences so I can explain them or talk about them, even to myself, I have fallen back into the trap of nihilism.
There is no shame in it, it is important to realize, this is just how it is. As Nietzsche said, it is the supreme test of one's willpower to sustain focused intention without doubt and without evaluation, to just act with a totally clear-mind and complete zen-like clarity. That is actually really hard to do. Thoughts creep in, doubts creep in, feelings creep in without you even realizing it, and before you know it, your will falters. You have to sneeze, and then you do, and then you sneeze again, and so you do again, and now you feel another sneeze - and that third sneeze, now the thoughts creep in "how long is this going to continue, what is this, am I sick..." etc. The anxiety of facing the unknown, like this, in every little moment of life. We don't even stop to think about this sequence, but this very sequence happens all the time. We just have to become aware of it and learn not to worry about everything so much, we have to let go of the existential anxiety and existential dread we constantly feel whenever there is a moment where we miss a beat or get knocked out of our flow states.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this idea with you guys ("post-nihilism") because I have found it to be a really useful idea in my life. I have found the strength to let go of a lot of things that I have come to realize are not really as important as I thought they were, and as a result, there is considerably less stress in my life and far less neurotic behaviors I feel I have to commit to in order to survive in this world.