I met the most fascinating young man this week. We got into a philisophical conversation and I'm just speechless over his self-definition as a romantic nihilist. I've thought about it a lot and am still at the "isn't that an oxy-moron"? phase. What are love and a life with no meaning doing in the same definition? I DON'T GET IT! But then again, what second sight shows me is a heart with scars, a brilliant mind with a penchant for philisophical wanderings and desire to make sense of a chaotic world, where none of the institutions held dear in our society hold any real value for morality or ethics or anything to beleive in. I also see an artist who, if he were actively creating, would find meaning and purpose to his life.
Romantic: "inclined toward or suggestive of the feeling of excitement and mystery associated with love".
Nihilism: "the rejection of all moral and religious principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless."
What is even more intriguing to me, is the life journey that leads to an embrace of a philosophy that says, "there's nothing here that's important, this whole thing is meaningless". What led the "gen next" generation to an apathetic response to this gift we call life? How much effort does it take to be cynical? Any more effort than it does to live a passionate and self-directed hopeful life? Romantic Nihilism is rocking my world, I'm telling you.
And this is my question: if you found out on the last day of your life that everything you said, did and thought had tremendous meaning, how would you spend the last day of your life??
May all be honored in their quest for meaning in this life.
Connie
6 comments:
Thought-provoking, indeed. Your post reminds me of the wide-eyed wonder in which I embraced my first college philosophy class.
Keep up the great writing.
HI Pollyanna, the wide eyed wonder in the first philosophy class. Do you refer to his self-definition or my incredulity at the it? I'd be might grateful if you had further light to shed. I'm stumped and deeply disturbed.
if i found out that my life had meaning at its end, i would spend the rest of it trying to kill whatever god gave it meaning. i really hate the concept of purpose. the only things worth living for are poetry, sex, experience, and death in my opinion.
That sounds so very lonely.
And I offer you this poem:
"And we are put on earth a little space, that we may learn to bear the beams of love."
William Blake
i'm not lonely at all. i have great friends that i've blown up cars with, taken cross-country road trips with, fought with, cried with, laughed with, made thousands of dollars and blown it all away with. my point is that the universe will always be a brutal everlasting oscillation between all the contradictory states of being, and all i can do is throw myself into it and see the constant self-destruction and renewal of mankind as a thing of beauty. in the end, i'll have tens of thousands of pages of poetry that is special because it adheres to nothing and obeys nothing.
we're really alike, only my beliefs in a unified universe give me the impression that the illusion of finiteness is something to be milked to its last drop until we eventually merge into one and laugh at the memory of atom bombs, famines, disease, and even the sages that spent so much time trying to retreat back into the universal mind in terror.
That was an awesome response! I have no doubt that you are a poet and a mind uncluttered with sentimentality.
Blessings on your journey.
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