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Nihilism versus Pessimism
If optimism is hopefulness, then pessimism is hopelessness. Pessimism is dark and depressing. But it is not nihilism.
To be with a pessimist is to know that you are with a pessimist. But you can be with a nihilist and have no idea. Indeed you could yourself be a nihilist and have no idea. Such a lack of awareness is the point of nihilism, as nihilism is all about hiding from despair rather than dwelling on it.
In fact, optimism is more similar to nihilism. If optimism leads us to wait for something good to happen then optimism leads us to do nothing.
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Nihilism Vs Cynicism
Today, a cynic is someone who looks down on society and sees it as fake, because the cynic sees the people who make up society as fake. He believes that morality is a mere pretense and people act on their own self-interest even when they seem to be helping other people.
Cynicism, like pess...
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193 reads
What Is Nihilism?
Nihil means “nothing.” -ism means “ideology.” But this seems to be self-refuting. To say that this means that someone “believes in nothing” is not really helpful, as believing in something suggests there is something to be believed in, but if that something is nothi...
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931 reads
Nihilism Is Closer To Idealism Than Cynicism
The idealists constructs an alternate reality, a reality of ideas. As the idealist focuses more and more on how reality ought to be, the idealist becomes less and less concerned with how reality is.
The utopian views of the idealist may be more compelling than the dystopi...
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Nihilism Vs Apathy
To be apathetic is to be without feeling, to be without desire. To be apathetic is to be seen as not caring about anything. The apathetic individual feels nothing. But it is not nihilism.
Apathy can be an attitude (“I don’t care about that”) or a character trait (“I don’t care abo...
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117 reads
The Morality of Pity
Pity is nihilistic insofar as it allows us to evade reality, by allowing us to feel that we are better than we are and better than those in need.
The morality of pity drives us to feel pity and to feel good for feeling pity. Having such feelings is worse than feeling nothing. If we feel go...
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113 reads
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The Seduction of Pessimism
Optimism sounds like a sales pitch. Pessimism sounds like someone trying to help you.
In finance, pessimism is paid more attention than optimism and is, therefore, more persuasive. “It’s easier to create a narrative around pessimism because the story pieces tend to be f...
Progress requires optimism and pessimism to coexist
Optimism and pessimism go hand in hand. In finance, we are told to save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. The short term is full of setbacks, problems, breakages, depressions, pandemics, errors, but if you can stick around long enough, you can experience long-term growth.
...Wired for pessimism
Pessimism comes naturally to people because thinking about the bad stuff that could happen helps us to prepare for survival.
The problem is that pessimists think bad events are permanent and unchangeable. "I think my interview is going to be a disaster." We need to learn to recogn...
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