• porcupine
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    7 months ago

    Maybe Iā€™m missing context by not being invested in Elon Muskā€™s personal blog, but this seems like an overreaction to a pale blue dot meme. The word choice is a bit inelegant, but it seems to be a generic astronomy account, so Iā€™m assuming it wasnā€™t chosen with secret intent to encourage mass suicide for some inexplicable reason. Itā€™s a considerable stretch to get from ā€œyou donā€™t personally have planetary significanceā€ to ā€œyou are unimportant to those around youā€. I donā€™t expect everyone on Hexbear to necessarily be a committed Marxist, but emphasizing the importance of the collective over the individual is a pretty central aspect any vaguely ā€œleftā€ political ideology. Acting as though youā€™re earthā€™s main character and bullying anyone that acts otherwise is already the default behavior weā€™re raised with by liberal society.

    • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      7 months ago

      The context is that the people who tend to espouse this line of reasoning tend to be new atheist types who do have extremely emotional and moralizing arguments they make all the time in other spheres of life. Theyā€™re hypocrites who selectively employ this type of philosophical nihilism (nihilism isnā€™t ā€œyou should commit suicide btw, itā€™s ā€œnothing matters or has inherent meaningā€) when it suits them and ignore it when it doesnā€™t.

      This type of person is very well known and hated on hexbear, the new atheist ā€œsecularā€ chauvinist who also happens to hate Islam and always talks in a clash of civilizations idealist manner. For some reason nothing matters we are just apes on a rock man, but also those brown apes over there have an evil culture. Sam Harris, Hitchens, Musk, Dawkins, Maher, you know the type.

      • porcupine
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        7 months ago

        again, Iā€™ll just point out that youā€™ve inferred an entire personal archetype and detailed political philosophy to get mad at based on an astronomy account tweeting picture of a planet with a caption that can be reduced to ā€œconsider perspectiveā€. itā€™s fair to be upset when Harris, Hitchens, Dawkins, or other pop-sci entertainers espouse white supremacy while hiding behind a scientific aesthetic. I donā€™t think itā€™s reasonable to extrapolate from an astronomy tweet that scientist = atheist = nihilist = hypocrite = white chauvinist = fascist. The white supremacy of those individual entertainers is reflective of and inherited from the hegemony of the liberal societies they were raised in. Theyā€™re not political or cultural thought leaders dragging the Anglophone world into colonizing West Asia out of a personal commitment to science, philosophy, or atheism.

        I promise, most of the people by volume who are committed to ethnically cleansing the global south also want to throw scientists, philosophers, and atheists on the pyre, and they have a lot to say about the dangers of society ā€œabandoning moralityā€ and ā€œembracing nihilismā€.

        • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          7 months ago

          I donā€™t think itā€™s reasonable to extrapolate from an astronomy tweet that scientist = atheist = nihilist = hypocrite = white chauvinist = fascist.

          Itā€™s already starting half-way down that line of inference, at nihilist and hypocrite. Considering itā€™s a western white nihilist account itā€™s not that large of a leap to white chauvinist (thatā€™s the majority of the West).

          I think youā€™re in a bit of denial about how evil and widespread these atheist neocon Liberals are and that they want to ethnically cleanse the global south even more than the local chuds. Most Zionists in the west are not evangelical crazies, theyā€™re ā€œlogical secular Liberal centristsā€. Fascism arises from the warmonger capitalists, not the fringe lunatics. You donā€™t understand the core of imperialism or fascism if you donā€™t think these types are extremely dangerous and our primary enemy.

          • porcupine
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            7 months ago

            Itā€™s already starting half-way down that line of inference, at nihilist and hypocrite. Considering itā€™s a western white nihilist account itā€™s not that large of a leap to white chauvinist (thatā€™s the majority of the West).

            If you assume this is true about an account that (as far as I can tell) exists to post generic space pictures, you could could just as easily make this argument about any tweet. Itā€™s on an American website, so itā€™s probably a white American poster and Americaā€™s fascist, so the poster must be fascist, so the post is self-reinforcing evidence of the posterā€™s white cryptofascism. Somebody posted about math? Bet theyā€™re dogwhistling about the rate of profit and how it must always go up at the expense of the working class. Picture of landscape? I donā€™t see any people in that picture; must be an incitement to genocide. A painting? You know who else liked painting?

            I think youā€™re misattributing your feelings about a particular subreddit to the demographics of the United States. Reddit (and X dot com) as a whole arenā€™t reflective of US demographics. Every US president in history has been a Christian. Fewer Americans would vote for a ā€œwell-qualifiedā€ atheist nominated by their own party for president than would vote for a Muslim across Democrats, Republicans, and independents. 70% of the US identifies as Christian, and the 20% that could be broadly be considered atheist plummets to around 3% if weā€™re going by strict self-identification; thatā€™s the highest itā€™s ever been, and its disproportionately younger generations with less political power. On US support for the Zionist genocide on Gaza, Muslims and black Protestants are the only groups with lower support for Israel than the religiously unaffiliated. US Protestants (evangelical and mainline, and excluding black people), Catholics, and Jewish people are by far the most likely to justify Zionist violence and condemn Hamas self defense.

            ā€œYou have a moral duty to bully atheist nerds for their nihilistic immorality!ā€ (the explicit premise of this post) is an attitude thatā€™s always been considerably more popular in mainstream American liberal society that whatever inverse you seem to imagine is happening. Add ā€œsocialistā€ to your list of things that are ā€œpoisoning our countryā€ and youā€™ve got the makings of a generic bipartisan congressional campaign. It would take a pretty remarkable feat of mental gymnastics to attribute the US attacks on reproductive freedom and LGBTQ people to politically organized Kierkegaard fans, or suggest that the proletarian revolutions that liberated millions in the Soviet Union or the Peopleā€™s Republic of China were driven by people embracing faith in the divine and rejecting godless materialism.

            • zed_proclaimer [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              7 months ago

              The Nazis and Italian Fascists and Japanese Imperialists were not religious zealots. They all espoused scientism and secular theories of racial/cultural conflict. It is not Joe Brandonā€™s catholicism that is driving his Zionist bloodlust and islamophobia, as heā€™s much more extreme than the vast majority of catholics and catholic leadership on these matters. He is a zionist because of the secular Israeli projectā€™s influence in the political system and his hollow sell-out nature making him a vessel to be filled with the first monied interest to cross his path. He is a secular fascist, despite being a catholic. Obama was a secular fascist. Trump was a secular fascist. Nixon was a secular fascist. Are you noticing a pattern? Itā€™s nothing to do with their christianity, itā€™s their ā€œpro-westā€ secular views that fascism emerges from.

              • porcupine
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                7 months ago

                Obama identifies as a Protestant Christian and regularly attended church. If you were politically active at the time, you may recall a particular controversy about his longtime pastor. Trump identifies as a nondenominational Christian, and is currently selling Bibles. Joe Brandonā€™s Catholicism is more bloodthirsty than say the pope or many European Catholics prefer, but itā€™s right in line with mainstream US Catholic attitudes. Calling the Zionist project ā€œsecularā€ is pretty wild claim Iā€™m not sure you could get any credible ā€œIsraeliā€ to get behind. The Zionist government (and a majority Jewish people in the US) isnā€™t exactly shy about itā€™s position that Zionism is Judaism and vice versa. A German census in 1939 has 95% identifying as Protestant or Catholic, and 3.5% identifying as nondenominational Christians. The Nazi regimeā€™s incorporation of Christianity into its political rhetoric and association of atheism with Bolshevism is extremely well documented. ā€œGott mit unsā€ wasnā€™t a Nazi PSA about wearing gloves in winter while fighting the godless communists. Mussolini made Roman Catholicism the state religion of Fascist Italy. Iā€™m not particularly well read on Imperial Japan, but they did codify Shinto as the state religion. You seem to equate the big three Axis powers as a single homogeneous ā€œfascismā€ (a reductive premise Iā€™d disagree with) while claiming it arises from ā€œpro-West secular viewsā€, but apart from none of those being secular states, Japan wasnā€™t considered ā€œWesternā€ by any measure until after colonization by the US.

                Iā€™m going to bow out of this conversation now, because itā€™s hard to imagine this discussion taking a turn for the respectful or productive when most of your premises are verifiably inaccurate as a matter of historical fact.

    • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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      7 months ago

      Iā€™m actually extremely mad that nihilists are using the pale blue dot this way.

      What I always took away from it is weā€™re all the same. The pale blue dot is us, not just humans, but the whole biosphere is all an interconnected ā€œusā€ that unites Earth as the only world to harbor life in a huge and lonely universe. There is nowhere else.

      Or as Sagan said: ā€œTo me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home weā€™ve ever known.ā€ That shit makes me tear up, still, 16 years out of highschool when I first heard it.

      To flip this around as ā€œlol no one and nothing mattersā€ is an abomination, a total perversion of the pale blue dot.

      These people are not well.

      • porcupine
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        7 months ago

        To flip this around as ā€œlol no one and nothing mattersā€ is an abomination, a total perversion of the pale blue dot.

        These people are not well.

        I mean, sure. Art is open to interpretation and all, but I think ā€œlol no one and nothing mattersā€ would be an odd takeaway from pale blue dot. Do you genuinely believe that thatā€™s the message that a generic astronomy account is intentionally trying to communicate? If so, why? Iā€™m not aware of any global political groups with power that are motivated by an adolescent misunderstanding of nihilism.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          7 months ago

          Thatā€™s very clearly the message: you donā€™t matter on the scale of the Earth, everyone disappears when you zoom out far enough.

          And thatā€™s exactly the ethos of so-called effective altruism, longtermism, extropianism, etc. The idea is that you should zoom out and ignore all the individual people because they donā€™t matter on a large scale, instead we should focus on growing the economy for a technological-utopian future where the number of humans can grow exponentially by living in space and trying to colonize all parts of the universe.

          This dominates Silicon Valley and has become a driving force in the tech industry.

          • porcupine
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            7 months ago

            Thatā€™s very clearly the message: you donā€™t matter on the scale of the Earth, everyone disappears when you zoom out far enough.

            Yes. I agree this is what itā€™s communicating. This seems straightforward, empirically correct, and philosophically basic. Things look different when you look at them from a different perspective. Isnā€™t it interesting to look outside ourselves for a moment and consider things from a different point of view.

            the ethos of so-called effective altruism, longtermism, extropianism, etc. ā€¦we should focus on growing the economy for a technological-utopian future where the number of humans can grow exponentially by living in space and trying to colonize all parts of the universe

            Iā€™m sure you can find people in real-life who believe those things, and maybe even some who will admit to knowing what the fuck those specific terms mean. Iā€™m sure some of those people even like looking at pictures of space. Iā€™m sure some of those people look at pictures of space and think to themselves ā€œall that will be mine some day! I shall rise above the puny mortals and claim my rightful place among the stars! galaxies will tremble at my unrivaled splendor!ā€

            I just donā€™t believe that the Venn diagram of people who like looking at space pics and people who are seriously committed to leading a post-human space empire is a circle. I know a lot of people who like looking at pictures of space and considering how small we are on a cosmic scale, and I can think of maybe a few people in real life that are making serious financial decisions about fucking the planet to colonize Mars. For that Venn diagram to be a circle, it would require most of the people Iā€™ve ever interacted with during my life to all secretly hold the same specific and detailed political philosophy that theyā€™ve deliberately kept hidden from me. When I find myself seriously considering things like that, I remind myself to go outside and touch grass. Or look at pictures of space.

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              7 months ago

              Isnā€™t it interesting to look outside ourselves for a moment and consider things from a different point of view.
              When I find myself seriously considering things like that, I remind myself to go outside and touch grass.

              Why are you talking to me like that?

              I just donā€™t believe that the Venn diagram of people who like looking at space pics and people who are seriously committed to leading a post-human space empire is a circle.

              This isnā€™t just a space pic. This is, specifically, a nihilist space meme. I think the venn diagram in this case has a lot of overlap.

              you donā€™t matter on the scale of the Earth, everyone disappears when you zoom out far enough.

              Yes. I agree this is what itā€™s communicating. This seems straightforward, empirically correct, and philosophically basic.

              I reject that!

              Everyone matters. When you zoom out, weā€™re all the same. Weā€™re all connected. An injury to one is an injury to all.

              What this meme does and what you are doing is flipping that around to then say ā€œWhen you zoom out, weā€™re all irrelevant. Weā€™re all nothing. No one matters at scale.ā€ I refuse! Every single person matters to all of us, because weā€™re all the same. When you zoom out you canā€™t tell us apart, all you can see is a pale blue dot. Thatā€™s us. That doesnā€™t mean that no one matters at scale, that means everyone matters as much as everyone else. No one is more important or more valuable or more human, we are all the same, we all matter equally. We are our home.

              I refuse to accept that no one matters, no matter what scale we are talking about. Every single person matters as part of that pale blue dot.

              • porcupine
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                7 months ago

                Why are you talking to me like that?

                I apologize. I was going for levity, not insult. Itā€™s easy, in niche internet subcultures like this, to fall into the idea that everyone outside the subculture all uniformly believes the same specific thing. Iā€™m not immune. Many internet subcultures devote a lot of energy into collectively creating a hypothetical amalgamation of everything they personally dislike, then posting about how everyone else is just like the bad thing chimera. Itā€™s the most reliable way to drive engagement. Look how popular /r/ShitDumpPeopleSay style communities are in every online medium. I find that most normal people tend to have diverse, inconsistent, and largely unexamined beliefs about most things.

                No one is more important or more valuable or more human, we are all the same, we all matter equally. We are our home.

                I agree in spirit with all of this. ā€œWe all matter equallyā€ doesnā€™t mean ā€œno one mattersā€. I donā€™t believe not individually ā€œmatteringā€ on a planetary scale means that humans donā€™t ā€œmatterā€ at all: I see it as a rejection of anthropocentrim. Iā€™m not the most important thing in the world. It came before me. It will be here after Iā€™m gone. It wasnā€™t created to service my personal desires. Itā€™s the only home of uncountable living creatures, older and more numerous than me, and they all have value too. I am not so much more important than every other living thing on this planet that destroying our shared home is acceptable just because I got what I needed out of it. Other things live here too, and because I donā€™t have any more inherent value than any of them, I have a responsibility to be a good neighbor and steward of the only home any of us have.

                Iā€™m pretty far removed from taking Philosophy 101 so forgive my ignorance, but I wanted to speak on nihilism. I also havenā€™t read a ton of any specific nihilist philosopherā€™s work, so Iā€™m going off the broad strokes as I understand them. Most people use ā€œnihilismā€ in the way that most people use ā€œanarchyā€: as an epithet that broadly means chaotic, disordered, or without purpose. Nihilism, like Anarchy, means a lot of specific and conflicting things depending on which particular author youā€™re reading. My reductive understanding of the broad umbrella of nihilist philosophy boils down to two points. Point 1: Life has no intrinsic meaning. Thatā€™s about as far as most people get. They hear that and go, ā€œSee, that sounds bad! [insert supernatural thing here] gives life meaning and tells us the one correct way all must live!ā€ The ignored second part as I understand it is Point 2: Because life has no intrinsic meaning, we must create our own meaning. Some people hear that second part too and decide that, on the whole, itā€™s not for them. They prefer to believe that something outside themselves gives their life meaning and defines how they should live. Fine by me! Iā€™m not the philosophy police! Iā€™ve just genuinely never heard of a self-described nihilist (outside of literal children) who claimed their own understanding of nihilism to be the first point, but not the second. The only adults I have ever seen use ā€œnihilismā€ that way are using it as an epithet to explain what people they donā€™t like must believe in order to be so evil.

                Itā€™s the same way most people use Anarchist. ā€œThat person doesnā€™t care about anything, and they just want the world to burn because theyā€™re an anarchist!ā€ Iā€™m a Marxist-Leninist, so have some significant disagreements with Anarchist political philosophy as I understand it. That said, I donā€™t believe any self-described anarchists would characterize their belief system as ā€œbasically just, like, the Joker, manā€, even if thatā€™s what most people probably think. When someone says ā€œthe problem with society is thereā€™s all these anarchists that donā€™t care about anything and just wanna fuck shit upā€, I donā€™t think thatā€™s a very accurate way to explain the world, both because there arenā€™t that many Anarchists shaping world politics, and the ones that exist wouldnā€™t describe their own beliefs as ā€œfuck everything! nothing matters!ā€

                Coming back to nihilism, I think plenty of people can find the idea that life has no intrinsic meaning beyond what we make for ourselves to be freeing. They can know being their authentic self and doing what makes them happy is just as valid as anything else, and that theyā€™re not ā€œfailingā€ at life by not conforming to the mold that their family, or god, or society sets for them. A woman isnā€™t ā€œfailingā€ at her ā€œintrinsic purposeā€ as a wife and mother if she doesnā€™t want to do any of that shit, for example. Any way she chooses to live is an equally valid way of being a woman. I can see why that might not resonate with some people, or that some might be frightened rather than hopeful at the idea of defining your own purpose, and I think thatā€™s fine. A philosophy is only useful if it helps you navigate your own life. People have different perspectives, and I generally think we should try to understand one anotherā€™s differences rather than imposing our own on others.

                joke: please do not yell at me

                ā€¦except when it comes to the immortal science of Marxism-Leninism, the one true path to proletarian liberation! All revisionists get the wall!

                tl;dr Nihilism: itā€™s about perspective

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  7 months ago

                  It sure has been a long time since Philosophy 101 huh? Iā€™m pretty sure you are confusing existentialism with existential nihilism.

                  Existentialism is the belief that we construct the meaning of our lives through our own awareness, will, and reason. Nihilism, on the other hand, is the assertion that there is no meaning to life including whatever meaning we try to make for ourselves and that it is pointless to try to give life meaning. The man climbs the tree because he wants to, thereā€™s no deeper meaning behind it because meaning doesnā€™t exist. Heā€™s not making a new meaning for himself, heā€™s just doing what he wants because thereā€™s no reason not to and nothing is stopping him.

                  Iā€™m sympathetic to the nihilist view, but rather than reject giving life meaning as pointless I just recognize that it is absurd and then do it anyway.

                  One must imagine Sisyphus happy, yeah?

                  And now we return to that pale blue dot. Thatā€™s home. Thatā€™s us. I choose to give that meaning and acknowledge that I am choosing to do so, despite the meaningless universe in which we find ourselves. I am part of something bigger than myself, and so are you, and together we give the world meaning. Nihilism rejects meaning, and I donā€™t think youā€™re actually a nihilist.

                  • porcupine
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                    7 months ago

                    Iā€™ll confess, youā€™re probably right that Iā€™m conflating some stuff from nihilism, existentialism, and absurdism. Itā€™s been a while, and my understanding is that they were always very overlapping and informed by one another. Iā€™ve just never met or even heard of a real person explaining their own beliefs in literal ā€œWe believe in nothing, Lebowski!ā€ terms outside of memes or epithets, so itā€™s difficult for me to jump to the conclusion that it must be what someone intends from one instance with plausible ambiguity. Accepting the premise that someone does strictly believe ā€œnothing means anything; full stopā€, I donā€™t see how that would be an action motivating belief. If ā€œnothing means anythingā€ is the full scope of how you relate to the world, then whereā€™s the benefit in persuading anyone else? If nihilism definitionally prohibits a ā€œthereforeā€ after the proposition that ā€œnothing mattersā€, then I donā€™t see how itā€™s not self-excluding. Nobody can exist in the world in a perfect state of inaction, and if ā€œnothing matters so make your own meaningā€ leaves the definitionally pure confines of nihilism, then I donā€™t see how ā€œonly I matterā€ or ā€œonly I and [subgroup]ā€ matter isnā€™t just as much a departure from that definition.

                    Iā€™ve never called myself a nihilist because to me the ā€œnothing mattersā€ or ā€œnothing has intrinsic meaningā€ part of the equation always seemed like an immaterial meta-issue. If you canā€™t objectively test for whether or not something matters, or quantify the degree to which one thing matters over another, then ā€œnothing mattersā€ and ā€œeverything matters an infinite amountā€ are functionally indistinguishable to me. Itā€™s what you materially do with the motivation that Iā€™m interested in. I donā€™t think ā€œbully more people on the internetā€ is a particularly worthwhile thing to do or encourage generally, no matter the thought process behind it. To the extent that oneā€™s ā€œpolitical actionā€ is limited to online bullying, I feel like ā€œpeople that talk about scienceā€, ā€œpeople that talk about philosophyā€, and ā€œpeople that donā€™t believe a godā€ are pretty poor proxy groups for the people in real life that actually have the political power to make the world worse, unless youā€™re identifying ā€œintellectualsā€ rather than ā€œcapitalistsā€ as the final boss of class struggle. It just feels like, if you want to make a reasonably safe materially insignificant net positive contribution to the class struggle without working too hard or thinking too much, youā€™d be better off shoplifting a pack of gum from a business, or throwing a rock at the most expensive house in your neighborhood or something.