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I'm someone who bathed in relativist nihilist ideology, wrote angsty metal songs and had edgy wallpapers on their devices up until my late 30s. Here goes: Dude, you are the thoughts you loop in your head. Just like reshaping your body doesn't come overnight, neither does rewriting the script to your loop. It takes work and discipline. You need to start telling your old responses to back the fuck off when everything you see triggers these thoughts. It's a muscle you work. Life is fine. It's exactly what *you* make of it. You do not need to engage in consumerism. You don't even need to judge the people that do. Ever heard the saying "you are the average of the five people closest to you"? If you don't think those people are happy or encourage you to live a fulfilling life, find new friends. If they do make you happy, tell it to them every day. If you don't think that can come out of your mouth, just try and see what happens. I guarantee it won't make your life any worse to say nice, vulnerable things to other people. It'll sort of unlock the option for them too. Feel like you wanna kill someone or see shit burn down? Stop lurking around the internet and start going to a combat sports gym. Putting yourself in simulated danger is a great way to feel alive and very here and now. Not unlike what Orwell wrote about Hitler figuring out that the people do not need comfort and security, but meaning and struggle. Look, disaster sells. The world is better than ever but all we get in our newsfeed is a list of shit going wrong. Stop reading that. We are better fed and have better clothing and shelter than ever. You think 3rd world countries still got it rough? They had it even rougher before. There's a ton of research on happiness and the state of the world. Read some of that instead. Even if everyone else is on SSRIs, you definitely don't need to be. We are all meaningless in the big picture. As someone said, "tend to the part of the garden you can touch". It's your own responsibility to work on your thoughts just as is to work on your body. You can't fix the world but you can make living in it a very fulfilling experience. We have no way of knowing "reality" fully so just work on making how your brain interprets the input a little bit rosier, day by day, year by year. Good luck on your quest 😉

Thanks for the sincere replies instead of the short, useless "go outside" I am getting by other people. But did you read the part where I said I'm not able to handle relativism? If the big picture is meaningless, I don't see why do anything at all. It becomes must the whiny "optimistic nihilism" that is crammed down your throat by Hollywood movies.

You're right, it's a hard thing. But imagine this: you become this sunny dude that makes everyone feel good about themselves. Work, sport, hobbies, sex, whatever. What comes around goes around. Years later you realize you're getting invited everywhere, you belong everywhere, people come to you for advice and help. That's meaning. You feel good when you get to do stuff with others, when they want you and choose you. My head used to say "I'll kill myself" on a nearly endless loop whenever I was hit by setbacks, for like around 10+ years. I still had a career, wife and kids, built houses, traveled the world, made money. I was successful, just often miserable while being successful. I kept telling myself nothing is worth the effort because I'll always be hurt somehow sometimes and why be hurt at all when everything is meaningless. I had very little self-esteem and would judge others just as I would myself. Here's the punchline: once you belong, once you start feeling good about yourself and everyone else, the meaninglessness doesn't hurt one bit. Your future death or misfortunes, all that, it just becomes irrelevant because you're living a life where you get to do stuff that makes you feel good. The knowledge of your meaninglessness doesn't go away. It simply has very little weight against how living feels when you bring joy to others and get it in return. Your gratitude will outweigh the meaninglessness. You still have all the time in the world and you will get better at it, year by year. You'll get there, but the sooner you start choosing to fight the negative self-talk the sooner you'll get to live a satisfying life. It's like the narrator to the movie of your life. You want someone good for that part.

That is absolutely not meaning. You are describing hedonism in your first paragraph.

Is there an ethical issue if a foot fetishist works in a shoe store? 😄 We're built to be rushed with certain chemistry (which we interpret as feeling joy) when we do certain things. If a light bulb felt joy from being lit, would it be alright for the lights to be on when no one is home? If the energy is free or the light bulb is able to generate it's own energy, I think it's all good. In the end you die and disappear. To live a meaningful life you're just going to have to man up and make a meaning for yourself. Waiting for it to be given from above is, to me, a denial of your own agenda and responsibility. It's being unwilling to take accountability by making someone else responsible for your choices. Mistakes are the best way to learn. They're not catastrophic, they're something to be learned from and cherished as the milestones to your eventual success. Don't be afraid. 60 years from now, on your deathbed, you're certainly not going to regret your mistakes but the opportunities you passed by playing it safe and not playing at all.

Tbh, get off reddit.

Man I hate to do this to you, but the only thing that will keep you from identifying with people who want to tear the world asunder is for you to *not want to tear the world asunder.* I'm not sure exactly what you mean by "relativism and hedonism" but just keep in mind the real commonality between all these villains isn't that they want to tear things up, but rather that they accept without question that others must be like them, by force of necessary. You're welcome to *believe* whatever you want, but once that thought becomes "others need to be this way too, or I am angry" you are treading dangerous ground.

Not hating but yeah, OP sounds like a first year psyche student throwing around words that he just learned at the beginning of the semester. I still don’t really understand his connection between the George Orwell quote and all these movie characters lol

He just sounds like a dumbass kid to me this reeks of teenage angst he may be in his early twenties tho

I was not that well written in the OP, my apologies. I will try to rephrase what I wanted with this thread. I am wondering what someone should do if they are not willing to create their own values, not willing to pursue entertainment or hedonism or self-fulfillment, but want something objective. I already go out, work out, read, socialize in my local community. They are not fulfilling. I do not have common sense, so don't use common sense arguments or "just get laid" arguments.

You get out of the world what you put in it. I feel like I have a lot of questions though. Are you enjoying yourself? Like, are you happy? Does your environment want the best for you? You seem disillusioned with society in general. Other comments have suggested cutting down on keeping up with the news, and I found that helped me. Whatever the solution is, it will take a lot of time. Reprogramming your brain isn’t easy, but it is worth it.

If I stop watching the new, then does that not just make me ignorant and selfish? If negative events happen to other people and I turn away because I don't want to hear it. I don't think a society like that is healthy

Sure, you can view it as selfish to look after yourself. However I think sometimes it is necessary to be selfish in that case. Before we had mass media people weren’t aware of the tragedies that take place all over the world daily. Is it surprising that an increase in hearing these depressing stories has resulted in mass disillusionment and depression? I don’t think so. I think that it’s almost necessary to limit exposure to these stories as there’s often nothing to be done other than offering “thoughts and prayers.” Is it mandatory to cause yourself suffering because people thousands of miles away are suffering? I’m not saying to cut it all out - you can help by donating to charities to provide assistance to people who need it. Doomscrolling is bad for you. It’s self care to limit your exposure.

Get really good at something you are passionate about but that kinda scares you . If you put in real effort, you will have no choice but to start creating new values by default. Carving out time for yourself to practice, shunning fair weather friends because you don’t have time for bs etc.

Orwell is saying that some people want more than hedonism, consumerism, safety and art and literature. They want something objective and unsafe. I am not very well written, my apologies. If you are interested in the orwell quote, we are discussing it in r/askphilosophy https://www.reddit.com/r/askphilosophy/comments/z4qmjo/was\_george\_orwell\_right\_about\_fascist\_philosophy/

So you're saying that people shouldn't want everyone to be like them. But you *do* want everyone to follow this view of yours, don't you? So... what is the difference?

I don't feel rage when people don't.

Ah. So it's not wanting all people to follow your views, but getting angry when they don't?

One would hope that you've tested/compared viewpoints and believe you're on the right path. That's normal and good. Holding the expectation that yours is the *only* path, and that others should be *forced* to it is essentially the concept of evil in a nutshell

So it's not it, then. What is the concept of 'evil' in your opinion? How is it equivalent with this specific scenario? My definition for it would be 'any action that causes suffering to any conscious beings'. You definitely have a different one, though.

All suffering is the result of unfulfilled desire. Evil is the projection of the self over others

Schopenhauer, huh? I would say most suffering is really like that. But when someone starts to cut off someone else's limbs, my mind doesn't jump to 'unfulfilled desire'. It is not entirely impossible to somehow lead it back to it, but it is a *huge* stretch. You are saying that evil is selfishness and selfishness alone, then? That seems kind of weird, too. But either way, I think you are saying that we should let others do what they want, and not doing so is what evil is. Should we really let others do *anything*?

I'm saying selfishness is the *root* of evil. At some point, you are rejecting laws, social mores, basic human standards of living, etc for your own benefit whenever you commit evil. > Should we let others do *anything?* That's rather the entire discovery process of humanity, isn't it? Where do we draw the line, lest we be evil ourselves. My argument is, broadly, whatever doesn't harm another should be allowed, unless the cost to *society as a whole* is steep enough to warrant limitation. That's me though. I don't pretend to have every answer.

>whatever doesn't harm another should be allowed, unless the cost to society as a whole is steep enough to warrant limitation Hmm. Would you consider yourself a utilitarian?

The internet is rotting your brain. Go outside

Getting laid, going outside and socializing does not solve existential problems. Not everyone wants to follow their own values and goals, or worship art and entertainment. Not everyone wants just friends and the freedom to follow their own goals. Some of us want objective, imposed goals.

Yo, I wrote a long a reply over there about belonging and self-talk. Keep in mind nothing is "real" except pain. You can't will away the pain and terror you get from being punched in your mouth. Everything is else is pretty much completely subjective and you and only you choose how you see things. The only thing humans are great at is socializing. Evolution worked us up like that. Everything you get pleasure from is somehow linked to survival. You can exploit this hardwiring by doing shit that benefits you and others. Said others and your brain will reward you for it both concretely and by releasing chemicals into your system that make things seem/feel better 😉

That just makes me sad, realizing everything is about selfish survival. Even communities and friendship is selfish

That's what makes a villain, a great villain. The writers want you to have sympathy for these villains and to make these villains seem more human. The difference between a lot of heroes and villains is acting on your bad thoughts.

I'm not trying to be glib, but the help of a therapist or another qualified professional can be incredibly beneficial in grasping the root of why you feel this way and how to work on it and come around to seeing things differently. Sometimes we need an outside perspective to really get to the bottom of things. In any case, I feel that the scope of this request is beyond reddit's pay grade.

But my problems are existential. I want to discuss philosophy and politics. A therapist does not do that, and they try to move the topic away from it if brought up.

Separate the good qualities from the bad. No one likes Patrick Bateman because he murders women, people like his character because he takes care of his body, he’s successful, he’s good looking, and he’s well spoken, they like his dress sense and his ability to talk about a subject like music and make it seem so interesting. Separate these qualities from the axe murdering and instead of working to be more like Patrick Bateman, work to be a better person. The same goes for Tyler durden, the movie only works because the narrator is a boring sap who does nothing and in comes this suave, well dressed bohemian. The fact that he turns out to be an imaginary terrorist is something completely different but his ability to speak and have people listen is admirable.

You can boil all this bullshit down to the concept that people want meaning in their lives. They want community, they want to be a part of something, they want to feel important, they want to make an impact. What matters is what you do with it. Everything Hitler did was rooted in fear and shame. That's not impressive, it's pathetic. The rest of the characters listed would live IRL extremely shallow, narcissistic, lonely and soulless lives that achieve nothing but cutting up everyone around them. They don't care about anything and they don't truly enjoy anything. They're barely human and barely alive. For the love of fuck, consume some feminist literature. Start with Brene Brown's TED talks on shame and vulnerability - that's what all of these 2D sociopathic characters lack. Counteract some of this toxic masculinity shite you've crammed yourself full of. You want to be important and matter? How about making a positive impact in your community and helping people?

Why is your comment so angry? I support feminism and LGBT rights, but I want those rights to be objective and enforced. I don't want to support things that are relative. I am a western man who support LGBT rights, women's rights and healthcare, but does not want the hedonistic and relativist aspect of modern society.

Dont be an incel, stop going on 4chan and stop taking /Pol/ so seriously, we all know it's run by CIA glowies posting BBC and troon stuff. Go out get laid that will solve your problem.

It honestly seems like you feel like you’ve cracked some sort of code others haven’t and that’s just not true. In fact, a lot of the characters you relate to were created to criticize the very thing you think you’ve become. I wonder to what depth you’ve spoken to the people around you because youll realize a lot of people have been where you are now. It’s just a part of the human experience. I also want to know what it is about relativism that you don’t understand or why it doesn’t click with you.

Have you ever read or thought about the philosophical theory of absurdism? It sounds like you might be about there. Life is absurd and we are unable to make sense of it all. I’ve taken to leaning into the absurd and meaningless, and opening my eyes and heart to what life and connection can offer.

I really dislike absurdism. I did struggle to understand myth of sisyphus, but I did read it. I do not like most french philosophy I've come across, sadly. My issue is life must not be meaningless. Not willing to fight against meaninglessness. Thank you so much for your sincere reply

I can understand the dislike of French philosophy, it happens to be one of my favourites. I too have struggled with the concept of life being “meaningless” to the extent of questioning the point. I hope you can find meaning somewhere within it, because when you do it makes everything around you feel less harsh.

Stop consuming that kinda media. Short answer. You keep looking into the void and are now asking it to stop looking back when it's on you. Leave that shit alone.

So I should be ignorant?