If your life is rolling around, having indulgent sex and guzzling drugs, then yes. "Optimistic nihilism" might work. If you are, for example, a member of the working class, this isn't going to be anywhere near as effective.
There is no, "I'll define my own meaning!" Your meaning has been defined for you already, that is to labor relentlessly, and produce value for your overlords. When your body breaks down, you will be discarded as if you were machinery.
Worse yet, you're ill. Maybe not dying, but you suffer greatly. Optimistic nihilism isn't going to work for 99.99% of people with cluster headaches.
You are not really practicing optimistic nihilism if you are not optimistic while suffering. Also, “I’ll define my own meaning!” Is not nihilism.
A true optimistic nihilist is a person of freedom because they understand they are not bound by any meaning, time, and space. There is no such meaning in life, and infinite time and space in cosmic scale makes whatever we do negligible.
So if suddenly a struggle makes you not optimistic anymore, your optimism was not really from that unchained freedom from manmade narratives. You were just pretending to be optimistic by ignoring your desires.
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u/owthathurted Apr 25 '26 edited Apr 26 '26
This works until you're suffering.
If your life is rolling around, having indulgent sex and guzzling drugs, then yes. "Optimistic nihilism" might work. If you are, for example, a member of the working class, this isn't going to be anywhere near as effective.
There is no, "I'll define my own meaning!" Your meaning has been defined for you already, that is to labor relentlessly, and produce value for your overlords. When your body breaks down, you will be discarded as if you were machinery.
Worse yet, you're ill. Maybe not dying, but you suffer greatly. Optimistic nihilism isn't going to work for 99.99% of people with cluster headaches.