German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, the one who is famous for saying "God is dead," predicted the advent of rampant nihilism, an age where human beings live as if their lives are ultimately meaningless. In my view, the philosophy he left behind is shaping up to be one of the greatest modernist prophecies in that his predictions are actually bearing fruit unlike Marx's prophecy. His assessment of religion is complete nonsense, but I must give credit to him for predicting such a massive cultural phenomena. These are some of the things common in our culture that would make him rise from the grave and cheer in arrogant delight.
But first, we should clear up what exactly constitutes meaninglessness and what constitutes meaningfulness to understand why the listed things are signs of nihilism.
In order to live a meaningful life, one must live a teleological life, that is to say live a life with an ultimate and lasting end in sight. The only viable end that can be counted as lasting is the common good. Those who dedicate their lives to the common good dedicate everything one does to contribute positively toward the human society and beyond. If one were to live a teleological life, all the pains and all the pleasures would contribute to the common good even in death. If one were to live a perfect teleological life, even the most mundane things like breathing is for the purpose of serving the common good; to do so is to live a life of a saint. This is a kind of life that a human being should aim toward.
To lack such dedication to the common good is to have a meaningless life. The self-pleasing desires have an end of pleasing the self. When the self dies, those pleasures would have been for naught. If one has lived a life of self-pleasure, one has lived a life without meaning.
1) Excessive Monetary Pursuit
When asked: Why do you want to be what you want to be? one would answer: Because there's money in it. Capital is the prime motivator of the majority. Very few say: Because I like it. Even fewer say: Because I believe that I can contribute to the society with this profession for I have talents geared toward this profession. Capital is conducive to human society and the self only to a point where it is conducive to the common good. To pursue capital without a perceivable end is a mere pursuit of self-pleasure.
2) Intellectual Negligence
When a desired law is passed, people celebrate even when they are ignorant of legal reasoning behind it. They rally behind philosophically challenging concepts like justice, equality, and love to justify what they want without fully understanding the said concepts. When it is obvious that they have been intellectually negligent of the necessary knowledge to make proper decisions, they celebrate nonetheless. This is a sign of selfish desire to be correct, not a deep desire for the common good.
3) Unrestrained Consumerism
Consumerism in moderation can be conducive to the common good. However, the unrestrained consumerism in our culture is not. Modern consumerism feeds urgency into the impulsive pleasures of the masses. With this manipulation of impulses, it urges people to pursue a life of self-pleasure.
4) Widespread Intemperance
Unrestrained consumerism cannot totally be held responsible for the nihilistic tendencies exhibited by the people. The people themselves should be responsible for succumbing to it and failing to be temperate with pleasures. People buy new phones every year, party with a river of alcohol, and flood their wardrobe until full. Do they not know that pleasure is good only to a point where it benefits the common good?
5) Decline in Marriage
This is where the list gets a bit offensive to many. To marry and start a family is to contribute to the human society by way of providing a new member. Better yet, a proper marriage is to use the natural biological bond between parents and a child and the psychological bond between the parents to grow an exemplary citizen of the world. The desire of intemperate self-pleasing pursuits in professional gain or in number of sexual partners blind many from discovering the necessity of marriage in our society.
6) Abortion
By aborting a fetus, one shows no interest in the common good. A child to be aborted can possibly be the one to donate millions to charity, cure cancer, or spread peace throughout the world(an exaggeration, of course). The child may not do such great things, but at least there's a good chance that the child will grow up to be a citizen that can further benefit the common good. Disregarding such possible futures is a clear sign that the one making a choice does not have the common good in her sights but her own pleasure.
7) Rampant Sexual Promiscuity
Speaking of self-pleasing pursuits in number of sexual partners, sexual promiscuity is a sure sign of meaninglessness. Sex is a biological function of ourselves that is designed to bring about a new life and induce deeper union between partners. And the union between the two partners is meant to have a more harmonious environment for the child by inducing a lasting and fulfilling relationship between the two. The modern hook-up culture defies the two-pronged nature of sexual intercourse for the sake of self-pleasure. Further, such practice is contrary to our health, meaning it is contrary to the common good.
8) Unproductive Sexual Practices
Masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, or any sexual activities that are not open to the creation of a new life are deemed without meaning for they are but acts geared toward pleasure and pleasure alone. Even if such sexual activities are aimed toward benefiting the partner out of love, the scope of the common good in a teleological life must aim beyond one's death. To fail to meet this criterion is to have an activity's meaning disappear at the end of the actor's life. In effect, it becomes meaningless.
9) Disregard for Human Dignity
People these days are quick to cry out for the dignity of a human being. But I fear that this tendency is but another symptom of intellectual negligence; they want it but they do not know it. The practice of BDSM and pornography are increasingly being accepted. But they neglect once more that such acts are damaging to one's dignity. An actress working in a porn industry is willfully subjecting herself to be used for the sake of another's fruitless sexual satisfaction, and a watcher of pornographic material is using the actress via screen for the sake of his fruitless sexual satisfaction. In the same way, the practice of BDSM requires a submitter to willfully submit one's body for the sake of another's desire, and a dominator to use the other for the sake of one's own deviant desires. None of these are conducive to the common good in the slightest; they are rather quite damaging. If anything, the abandonment of our own dignity is perhaps the most fearful sign of nihilism.
10) Increasing Secularism
Secularism is an increasing phenomena across most cultures in this world. In the West, Christianity and Judaism are on a sharp decline. In the East, Buddhism and Confucianism also face the same problem. Even in the heart of India people are choosing secularism over religion. Why is this? This is because these religions teach against self-motivated pursuit of pleasures, the same pleasures the people refuse to abandon. As the people live in increasingly industrialized environments where excessive consumerism quickly follows, their moral judgments become clouded. Their condition succumbs closer to the condition these religions fight to stop: clouded judgment due to being intoxicated by pleasures. As he becomes intoxicated by excessive pleasures, the modern man say, "God is dead and I have created happiness" and drifts away toward meaninglessness like an overdosed heroine addict.
11) What I Feel Matters
Lastly, the sentiment that entraps many of the society's youths is a sure sign toward nihilism. It is called emotivism, a moral view that makes moral judgments based on emotions. To see the truth of this, one must look to how college students react to the prevalent moral matters; their brains are absent of moral principles but full of (rather hostile) emotional impulses; they cannot even define justice yet they cry out for it with religious zeal. To see more of this, one just has to remember the slogan: #LoveWins. It was a propaganda measure to rally the people toward the cause using an abstract yet emotionally attached word that even philosophers have difficult time cracking... The majority hopped on the wagon without questioning it. This prevalence of emotivism in effect leads to moral relativism whether or not the person making a judgment is aware for feelings vary by individuals; the moral truth has no solid and unchanging rock it can stand on. And, of course, moral relativism leads to the logical conclusion that there is no ultimate morality... that morality does not exist, that God is dead, etc. The underlying cultural assumption that there is no morality, that there is no right way a human being ought to live, is the most obvious sign of nihilism.
9) Disregard for Human Dignity
People these days are quick to cry out for the dignity of a human being. But I fear that this tendency is but another symptom of intellectual negligence; they want it but they do not know it. The practice of BDSM and pornography are increasingly being accepted. But they neglect once more that such acts are damaging to one's dignity. An actress working in a porn industry is willfully subjecting herself to be used for the sake of another's fruitless sexual satisfaction, and a watcher of pornographic material is using the actress via screen for the sake of his fruitless sexual satisfaction. In the same way, the practice of BDSM requires a submitter to willfully submit one's body for the sake of another's desire, and a dominator to use the other for the sake of one's own deviant desires. None of these are conducive to the common good in the slightest; they are rather quite damaging. If anything, the abandonment of our own dignity is perhaps the most fearful sign of nihilism.
10) Increasing Secularism
Secularism is an increasing phenomena across most cultures in this world. In the West, Christianity and Judaism are on a sharp decline. In the East, Buddhism and Confucianism also face the same problem. Even in the heart of India people are choosing secularism over religion. Why is this? This is because these religions teach against self-motivated pursuit of pleasures, the same pleasures the people refuse to abandon. As the people live in increasingly industrialized environments where excessive consumerism quickly follows, their moral judgments become clouded. Their condition succumbs closer to the condition these religions fight to stop: clouded judgment due to being intoxicated by pleasures. As he becomes intoxicated by excessive pleasures, the modern man say, "God is dead and I have created happiness" and drifts away toward meaninglessness like an overdosed heroine addict.
11) What I Feel Matters
Lastly, the sentiment that entraps many of the society's youths is a sure sign toward nihilism. It is called emotivism, a moral view that makes moral judgments based on emotions. To see the truth of this, one must look to how college students react to the prevalent moral matters; their brains are absent of moral principles but full of (rather hostile) emotional impulses; they cannot even define justice yet they cry out for it with religious zeal. To see more of this, one just has to remember the slogan: #LoveWins. It was a propaganda measure to rally the people toward the cause using an abstract yet emotionally attached word that even philosophers have difficult time cracking... The majority hopped on the wagon without questioning it. This prevalence of emotivism in effect leads to moral relativism whether or not the person making a judgment is aware for feelings vary by individuals; the moral truth has no solid and unchanging rock it can stand on. And, of course, moral relativism leads to the logical conclusion that there is no ultimate morality... that morality does not exist, that God is dead, etc. The underlying cultural assumption that there is no morality, that there is no right way a human being ought to live, is the most obvious sign of nihilism.
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