What Nihilism Is Not
Huh.<p>I did maybe a couple decades of applied nihilism, as presented by Landmark Education. It helped me a lot, given that I&#x27;m bipolar and prone to pessimism and depression.<p>So this makes sense to me:<p>&gt; If, as I suggested earlier, nihilism and pessimism are opposites, then nihilism is actually much closer to optimism.<p>But not this:<p>&gt; Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it.<p>As Landmark taught it, it&#x27;s not so much hiding from despair as cultivating the awareness that despair is an illusion. That is, despair isn&#x27;t about what happened. It&#x27;s about our story about what happened. And our stories by default just reflect our programming.<p>This does, however, but it&#x27;s too ambiguous:<p>&gt; But the nihilist has feelings. It’s just that what the nihilist has feelings for is itself nothing.<p>It&#x27;s not that it&#x27;s &quot;nothing&quot;, exactly. It&#x27;s that it&#x27;s indeterminate. By default, it&#x27;s however we&#x27;ve been programmed. But it can be whatever we choose freely.