Category Archives: Nihilism

Any retelling of a tale from times long past must be an interpretation, a translation into language and concepts that the present audience understands. The original myth may have been told as uninterpreted fact, but later re-tellers are and must be conscious of who their audience is and the purpose of the telling. To what extent does this consciousness shape the choice of whats told and the language that its told in? Interpretation may clarify, betray, reveal, deform.

For the Norse myths, we really have no original, only interpretations. Most of the material was first written down by a single monk a century or more after Christianity had outlawed and supplanted the heathen religion of northern Europe. Later came scholarly attempts to translate and present the stories so as to glimpse what the lost original versions may have been.

Then came use of elements of the mythos in drama and opera, free adaptations for modern readers, and the appearance of increasingly familiar tropes in books for young children, cartoons, graphic presentations, animated films, and so on. A luxuriant growth indeed from the few, fragile stems of medieval manuscripts, one ofwhich lay hidden for several centuries in a barn in Iceland.

Their survival is remarkable, for the Norse tales are about as un-Christian asyou can get: no all-powerful creator deity, no human virtue rewarded but courage in battle, and on the Last Day, no salvation for anybody. Their fascination for us may be this near-nihilism: a world created essentially by nobody out of nothing, an existence of endless warfare and the rivalry of brutal, dishonest powers, ending in defeat for all. In contrast, the classical myths retold to us through centuries of splendid verbal and visual art can seem pallid. The stark cruelty and essential hopelessness of the Norse stories suits the artistic taste of the last century, our hunger for darkness.

Neil Gaiman tells us that he first met the Norse tales in the graphic narratives that we go on calling comics or comic books, a stupid name considering the breadth of their subject matter. It is a medium well suited to the material: vivid, sparing of words, long on action, short on reflection though given to pithy wisdom. Heroes, shape-changers, battles, superpowers and superweapons a half-blind wizard, an eight-legged horse, the battlements of Asgard, the Rainbow Bridge all are perfectly at home in the world of comics.

Gaimans characteristically limpid, quick-running prose keeps the dramatic impetus of the medieval texts, if not their rough-hewn quality. His telling ofthe tales is for children and adults alike, and this is both right and wise, itbeing the property of genuine myth to be accessible on many levels.

The language of books loved in childhood retains an authority it is useless to question even when impossible to justify. I grew up with Padraic Colums Children of Odin, published in1920, and the stories exist for me in the fine cadences of his prose. Gaimans version is certainly a worthy shelf-partner to Colums, and perhaps a better choice for a contemporary child reader, used to a familiar tone and afriendly approach.

Gaiman plays down the extreme strangeness of some of the material and defuses its bleakness by a degree of self-satire. There is a good deal of humour in the stories, the kind most children like seeing a braggart take apratfall, watching the cunning little fellow outwit the big dumb bully. Gaiman handles this splendidly. Yet Iwonder if he tries too hard to tame something intractably feral, to domesticate a troll.

It all comes back to the matter of interpretation. In her 2011 book Ragnarok, AS Byatt used the Norse mythos to express her own childhood experience of world war and as a parable of the irrational human behaviours that result in mass ruin and destruction. Such interpretations are perfectly valid in themselves but dont serve well as a retelling of the myths. They are more of the order of meditations ona religious text, sermons on the meaning of biblical stories. Gaiman does not use the Norse material this way; he simply tells us the story, and tells it well.

What finally left me feeling dissatisfied is, paradoxically, the pleasant, ingratiating way in which he tells it. These gods are not only mortal, theyre a bit banal. They talk a great deal, in aconversational tone that descends sometimes to smart-ass repartee. Thischattiness will be familiar to an audience accustomed to animated filmand graphic narrative, which havegrown heavy with dialogue, and inwhich disrespect is generally treated as a virtue. But it trivialises, and I felt sometimes that this vigorous, robust, good-natured version of the mythos gives us everything but the very essence of it, the heart.

The Norse myths were narrative expressions of a religion deeply strange to us. Judaism, Christianity and Islam are divine comedies: there may be punishment for the wicked, but the promise of salvation holds. What we have from the Norse is a fragment of adivine tragedy. Vague promises of abetter world after the Fimbulwinter and the final apocalypse are unconvincing; thats not where this story goes. It goes inexorably from nothingness into night. You just cant make pals of these brutal giants and self-destructive gods. They are tragic to the bone.

Ursula K Le Guins selected stories, The Unreal and the Real, are published by Gollancz. Norse Mythology is published by Bloomsbury. To order a copy for 15 (RRP 20) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over 10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of 1.99.

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Norse Mythology by Neil Gaiman review nice dramatic narratives, but where's the nihilism? - The Guardian

Galen (129 A.D. - c. 210 A.D.)

Very likely, health care in the year 2090 will be almost unimaginable to an individual in 1990 and vice versa. Digital technologies and other innovations will alter the doctor-patient relationship in unprecedented ways. 1990 is a good starting point because thats around the time the internet evolved from a closed, government-run tool of elites to the mass-market, civilization-changing environment it has become.

To understand how far we might travel in a short time, it helps to understand how far we have come in not too many years. I like to say the Internet Age is building a new medical epoch that carries us three steps past Galen. Galen of Pergamon (c. A.D. 129 A.D. 216.) was a brilliant Greek physician and philosopher under the Roman Empire. Half a dozen or more fields of modern medicine have their roots in Galens work.

But Galens innovations quickly ossified into Galenism a medical orthodoxy that assumed all illness was an imbalance of four bodily humors blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile. This now-discredited theory formed the basis of Western medicine for 1,600 years. Over that long period, to question Galen was to commit heresy. In 1799, when George Washingtons physicians bled him to death to cure his flu, they would be among the last Galenist practitioners.

By around 1830, Western medicine took one step past Galen into a mindset we now call therapeutic nihilism. With the propagation of modern scientific methods, the medical profession suffered a profound loss of confidence in its own safety and efficacy and entered into a mindset and mode we now call therapeutic nihilism. In this period, doctors tended to observe and comfort patients, issue diagnoses and prognoses, and inform families on what the future held. To a great degree, however, their shattered confidence led them to adopt a hands-off approach, letting nature run its course.

Then, 20th-century discoveries led medicine a second step past Galen into what we think of as modern medicine. In this period, physicians were philosopher-kings. A long series of remarkable discoveries and inventions elevated doctors to historically unparalleled respect and prestige. The ancient paternalism of doctor over patient reached its likely apogee and deservedly so.

But with the dawn of the internet, we take a third step past Galen, into a period when many of the 20th-century physicians tasks can be safely and effectively conducted by nurses, other non-physician professionals, machines and even patients themselves. Modern computing and telecommunication allow us to reduce a great deal of medical logic to algorithms and to convey the outputs instantly and inexpensively around the globe.

In 2015, my mothers life was likely saved by her iPad. While engaged with her in a FaceTime video conversation, her grandson, a young medical doctor, ascertained from her comments and appearance that she might be in the early stages of septic shock; from hundreds of miles away, he made sure she received immediate treatment. Her long life, which finally ended in 2016, covered 50 percent of the years since Galenism faded from Western medicine.

So today, we are two long lifetimes away from Roman-era medicine, and we can no more envision what the next step will bring than the doctor who delivered my mother in 1922 could have envisioned her diagnosis by iPad and salvation by antibiotics.

In 2017, American policymakers of all ideologies share three fundamental goals of reform: higher-quality care; more comprehensive care for more people; and less expensive modes of care. Public policy debates have focused mostly on how to divvy up relatively fixed health care resources not on innovation and enhanced and improved supply. Such a debate effectively limits us to an uneasy choice: Better care, more care, and lower costs pick any two. The results of such a zero-sum game can never be universally satisfying. There will inevitably be winners and losers.

In contrast, my previous articles on an Innovators and Obstacles theme explored telemedicine, patient-operated diagnostic devices, artificial intelligence, remote telemetry and imaging, 3D printing, mental health via social media, biohacking, frontiers of voluntarism, and new structures of business in health care and more.

Changing technology is the only way to achieve all three fundamental goals simultaneously. And that is the promise of our young century.

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Three Steps Past Galen the Promise of a Young Century - InsideSources

What happens when kids have the world at their feet, and its weight on their shoulders? Odyssey Theatre Ensemble presents the Los Angeles premiere of Punk Rock, a ferociously funny, complex and unnerving play by Tony Award-winning playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) that peels back the layers of teen angst for a deeper look at what might make one of them snap. Lisa Jamesdirects for a March 25 opening at the Odyssey Theatre.

As seven teens at an English prep school tangle with the pressures of love, sex, bullying and college entrance exams, the confusion, disconnect and latent savagery simmering beneath the surface is revealed. They are intelligent, articulate and accomplished - the cream of the crop turning sour.

"The play's pulsing, driving rhythm, like the music of the title, is what makes it so exciting" says James. "The characters are incredibly complex. Each one is hateful and cruel, but also loving and kind. Their hormones are raging, so they're out of control. It's a cacophony of emotion."

Punk Rock's electrifying cast of young newcomers features Jacob B. Gibson, Zachary Grant, Nick Marini, Raven Scott,Kenney Selvey, Story Slaughter and Miranda Wynne.

The creative team includes set designer John Iacovelli; lighting designer Brian Gale; sound designer Christopher Moscatiello; costume designer Halei Parker; fight choreographer MATTHEW GLAVE; and dialect coach Anne Burk. Sally Essex-Lopresti and Ron Sossi produce for Odyssey Theatre Ensemble.

Based on Stephens' experiences as a teacher and inspired by the 1999 Columbine shooting, Punk Rock premiered at London's Royal Exchange in 2009, then transferred to the Lyric Hammersmith. The play opened off-Broadway in 2014 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre in an MCC Theater production that Ben Brantley of The New York Times called "tender, ferocious and frightening."

Simon Stephens is an associate artist of the Lyric Hammersmith and The Royal Court Theatre. His many other plays include Carmen Disruption; Heisenberg; Birdland; Blindsided; Three Kingdoms; Wastwater; Seawall; Pornography;Country Music; Christmas; Herons; A Thousand Stars Explode in the Sky (co-written with Robert Holman and David Eldridge); an adaptation of Jon Fosse's I Am the Wind; and Motortown. His version of A Doll's House for the Young Vic transferred to the West End and then New York. His new translation of The Threepenny Opera ran last fall at the National Theatre. His other plays for the NT include Port, Harper Regan and On the Shore of the Wide World, which received the Olivier Award for Best New Play. His stage adaptation of Mark Haddon's novel The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time received both the Olivier Award and the Tony Award for Best Play.

Director Lisa James is a multi-award winner for her work on Heartstopper (LA Weekly Award), Palladium is Moving (Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle Award), Lynn Siefert's Little Egypt, Wendy MacLeod's The Water Children (LADCC and Garland Awards), Justin Tanner's Bitter Women (LADCC Award) and The Visible Horse (LADCC and Garland Awards). World premieres include Beth Henley's Tight Pants, Billy Aaronson's The News, Justin Tanner's Oklahomo! and Little Egypt-The Musical (music/lyrics by Gregg Lee Henry) at both the Matrix Theater in L.A. and Acorn Theatre in NYC. She most recently directed the West Coast premiere of Smoke by Kim Davies at Rogue Machine and End Days at the Odyssey Theatre, and is currently developing the new musical That Was Then.

Performances of Punk Rock take place March 25 through May 14 on Fridays and Saturdays at 8 p.m. and Sundays at2 p.m. Additional weeknight performances are scheduled on Wednesday, April 12; Thursday, April 27 and Wednesday,May 3, all at 8 p.m. Tickets are $34 on Saturdays and Sundays; $30 on Fridays; and $25 on Wednesdays and Thursdays, with discounted tickets available for students and members of SAG/AFTRA/AEA. There will be three "Tix for $10" performances on Friday, March 31; Friday, April 28; and Wednesday, May 3. Post-performance discussions are scheduled on Wednesday, April 12 and Friday, April 28. The third Friday of every month is wine night at the Odyssey: enjoy complimentary wine and snacks and mingle with the cast after the show.

The Odyssey Theatre is located at 2055 S. Sepulveda Blvd., West Los Angeles, 90025. For reservations and information, call (310) 477-2055 or go to OdysseyTheatre.com.

Recommended for mature audiences: graphic language and violence.

Photo Credit: Enci Box

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Photo Flash: Teen Nihilism Erupts in L.A. Premiere of PUNK ROCK ... - Broadway World

From Encyclopedia Dramatica

Nihilism is the purported ideology of Anonymous and the moral framework for Encyclopedia Dramatica. A nihilistic attitude involves existentially denying the metaphysical, epistemological and, especially, ethical truth-values of everything pertaining to the world. In other words, the weakest intellectual excuse to do it for the lulz. When applied in practise, nihilism becomes the sweet philosophical nectar from which all win flows forth. Wielding this weapon of thought against one's enemy will bring much joy and will harden the hearts of any man. It is well known that women can't be nihilists because they are emotional, get easily saddened, and are thus made of disgusting fail. This is why they belong where they are most comfortable.

So don't just sit around waiting for bad things to happen, join the process so people can hate you enough to hurt, kill & stigmatize you, thus eliminating/stigmatizing your genotype, as well as anyone similar enough to you, from both current & future generations of humanity.

Nihilists are known for blaming everyone for not worshipping Nietzsche. They believe that Nietzsche was the postmodern reborn Jesus. Interestingly, there are people who claim that he was the antichrist.

Nihilism is the demiurge of all philosophy, and is the engine that moves men to do great deeds. There hasn't been a raid around that didn't harness this concept to fight the scourge of unwarranted self-importance on the internets. It asserts that noone and nothing is important, and thus subject to intense ridicule whenever they get too big for their britches. So laugh at that feminazi, mock the bigots, and spit in the face of religion. You are doing the right thing, buddy.

Although the positive factors that can be derived from nihilism are great and vast, the practice of nihilism ultimately leads to a paradox: Acknowledging one's self that nothing at all has any value whatsoever, yet continuing to live life. As a result of such mindfuckery, a nihilist will be completely open to becoming an hero, OD'ing on drugs, being butt pirates & giving each other reach arounds or any other form of unwillingness to care for oneself.

Even though it is impossible to offend a nihilist, it's very easy to point out that Nihilism is the predominant philosophy of most people who an hero. Also, just because there isn't an obvious answer to the meaning of life doesn't mean one doesn't exist. Also it's fun to point out that Nietzsche, their favorite philosopher, was a complete loner who had sex once but still managed to get AIDS syphilis right before going batshit insane and eating his own shit. He also thought Nihilism is retarded.

Much lulz can be generated this way, and it can prove an especially effective tool for starting a flame war deep within the bowels of the LGBT community. One effective way to troll a nihilist is to tell them that Nihilism is self refuting.

Finally, make sure to point out that the only humans who have the right to exist are the Ubermensch, characterized by not being fat, ugly, virgin basement-dwellers. Further, he believed that the bermensch should destroy the parasitic humans.

The only philosophy that comes close to pwning Nihilism is Absurdism, which is like the former, only it doesn't completely rule out value or purpose; it simply suggests that searching for it is futile even though people will always be compelled to do just that, therefore rendering life & existence a Catch-22. Some argue that the whole endeavor is simply a consequence of the human brain structure.

All this being said, one shouldn't let the prospect of a pointless, counterproductive existence hamper their ability to do anything in life, because there's a few words of advice to remember: no matter what your lot in life may be, rest assured we're all just cogs in a causal chain of events leading up to our eventual extinction, so any and all suffering one actively pursues is futile & self-righteous. Therefore, either find a way to enjoy the trip or become an hero, because you won't be alive to see the possible effects of your 'incomplete life' anyways.

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Nihilism - Encyclopedia Dramatica

Forbes

On Health Care, The House Freedom Caucus Declares War Against Conservatism Forbes Their position is to repeal constitutional conservatism and replace it with nihilism. They are asking their colleagues to abandon the principles of the American Revolution which called for ordered liberty and principled compromise in a pluralistic ... and more »

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On Health Care, The House Freedom Caucus Declares War Against Conservatism - Forbes

Understanding how our suffering works is one way to deal with it. We can understand ourselves a lot better when we slow down to see whats going on.

There are five patterns that are traditionally said to lead to suffering. 1.Seeing the self as separate: Part of Buddhist teaching explains that we arent separate from the world around us, that we are really just a collection of things (called skandhas) and not this independent entity that we perceive ourselves to be. 2.Trying to stop impermanence: Believing that we can make some things last forever, including things like random good feelings, relationships, or our lives, is bound to lead to disappointment. Impermanence is the nature of things. 3.Attachment to views: We tend to attach to our views, especially the strongly held ones, or the ones that were put into us during our childhood. We should have views but hold on loosely to them. 4.Extremes of nihilism and eternalism: The extreme of nihilism is that nothing matters. The extreme of eternalism is that everything is going to last forever and be secure. Reality dwells in between extremes. 5.Attachment, Aversion, and Ignorance: These are the three poisons. I want this, I dont want that, I dont understand. Although theyre separate, they are intimately tied together.

These patterns can tell us a lot about where our suffering comes from.

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Patterns that Lead to Suffering - Patheos (blog)

March 16, 2017 Carroll Muffett is President of CIEL

The Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) condemns the federal budget plan released today by the Trump Administration. The budget launches an outright assault on climate progress, eviscerates research and regulatory programs critical to protecting human health and the environment, abandons our countrys commitments to human rights and human development, signals a profound retreat from the global community, commits the nation and the world to decades of scientific ignorance, squanders critical natural and fiscal resources on dead end technologies, and endangers people across the United States and around the world under the false mantle of military security.

This budget is a testament to the recklessness, nihilism, and gross incompetence that are the defining features of this Administration.

Trumps budget would eliminate funding for researching, mitigating, and responding to climate change both in the United States and internationally. Even as his own Defense Secretary recognizes climate change as a threat to national security, Trumps plan would exacerbate that threat by blocking funding for the Clean Power Plan, eliminating the Global Climate Change Initiative, and ending US contributions to the Green Climate Fund and related programs. It slashes funding for renewable energy and clean technology research and ends efficiency programs like Energy Star that help Americans save both carbon and money. And it squanders both natural and fiscal resources to expand oil, gas, and coal extraction on public lands and waters. In so doing, Trump abandons the chance to create millions of new jobs building a sustainable economy in a futile attempt to resurrect dirty, dying, and dead end industries.

This budget escalates Trumps assault on science in dangerous new ways. It would cripple critical research at the EPA, impose draconian cuts at NOAA, and terminate NASA satellite programs that provide critical information on the health of our oceans, atmosphere, and climate, intentionally creating a blindspot in data that is fundamental to global environmental understanding.

The budget decimate the EPAs ability to enforce the regulations that protect ensure clean air, clean water, and fewer toxic chemicals for all Americans, and abandons vitally needed programs to address emerging environmental and health threats, including the Endocrine Disruptor Screening Program.

It also abandons the United States role in the international community, slashing funding for human rights, development, humanitarian relief and peacekeeping efforts worldwide including the United Nations and related agencies.

Trumps budget is a betrayal of our obligations to the world, to future generations, and to ourselves. It proves Trump is fundamentally incapable of governance and adds fuel to the rising resistance to his Administration in the United States and globally.

Since 1989, the Center for International Environmental Law (CIEL) has used the power of law to protect the environment, promote human rights, and ensure a just and sustainable society. http://www.ciel.org

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Carol Muffett: Federal Budget Plan is a testament to the recklessness, nihilism, and gross incompetence of this ... - YubaNet

The Dark Side of Globalization-When I was a gloomy 16-year-old grasping to find some meaning in the world, my father gave me a tattered copy of social philosopher Michael Novaks The Experience of Nothingness. Seriously.

There have been times over the past few decades when Ive considered this gift a few yards short of insensitive and maybe even borderline teenager abuse. But Im quite certain Dads intentions were no more malicious then than when he took me to see Annie Hall when I was 11.

The essence of Novaks argument -- and to some extent Woody Allens classic 1977 rom com -- is that individuals can achieve some semblance of wisdom if they stop believing in culturally sanctioned sentimental pablum about life (and love) and embrace the essentially tragic nature of human existence.

In my dads defense, Novaks 1970 book was in no way a prescription for fatalism. Rather, it was an exhortation to find enlightenment on the other side of disillusionment. Accepting lifes despair and emptiness, Novak argued, was a prerequisite for becoming a liberated and fully conscious human being.

Novak knew that what he was prescribing was no easy task. Because it lies so near to madness, he wrote, the experience of nothingness is a dangerous, possibly destructive experience. Having no recourse to the comfort of broadly embraced cultural symbols and benchmarks requires inordinate doses of honesty, courage, and ethical self-reflection.

Novaks brand of transcendent nihilism was itself a response to a cultural breakdown caused by the rapid social change of the late 1960s. Neither nostalgic for tradition nor putting full stock in the coming of the Age of Aquarius, Novaks push to accept the void was more a do-it-yourself guide to living in the void than it was a viable call to collective action.

Ive been thinking a lot about nihilism lately, both because Novak passed away in February and also because I just finished reading Indian writer Pankaj Mishras brilliant new book, The Age of Anger: The History of the Present. Mishra offers a sweeping, textured, unified theory of our dysfunctional age and explains what angry Trumpites, Brexiters, and radical Islamists all have in common: an utter fear of the void.

Eschewing facile political or religious explanations for the rise of nihilistic social movements around the world, Mishra points to a crisis of meaning wrought by globalization. He sees the destruction of local, intimate, long-rooted systems of meaning as the opening of a spiritual Pandoras box within which lies infinite doubt and disillusion. Mishra sees these negative solidarity movements as the psychically disenfranchised targeting what they see as venal, callous and mendacious elites.

Brexiters railed against liberal cosmopolitan technocrats, as did Trumps white nationalists. Radical Islamists loathe the hedonism and rootlessness of wealthy Muslims whove surrendered to Western consumer society. Rather than advocate for an agenda that would provide them tangible returns, they all cling to nostalgia for simpler times and rally around their hatred for those they see as the winners in a new world order.

In Mishras view, this new world order isnt simply neoliberal capitalism allowing money, goods, and services to flow unimpeded across the globe. Its also the attendant ideal of liberal cosmopolitanism first advocated in the 18th century by Enlightenment thinkers like Montesquieu, Adam Smith, Voltaire, and Kant. Its the belief in a universal commercial society made up of self-interested, rational individuals who seek fulfillment.

Theoretically, modern global capitalism liberates individuals from the constraints of tradition, and encourages them to move about freely, deploy their skills, and fulfill their dreams. But the burdens of individualism and mobility can be as difficult to carry for those whove succeeded in fulfilling that modern vision as for those who cannot. A decade ago, one study foundthat a disproportionate number of Muslim militants have engineering degrees, a prestigious vocation in the developing world. So, while accepting the conventions of traditional society may leave a person feeling as if he or she were less than an individual, rejecting those conventions, in Mishras words, is to assume an intolerable burden of freedom in often fundamentally discouraging conditions.

What concerns Mishra most is that when personal freedom and free enterprise are conflated, the ambitions released by the spread of individualism overwhelm the capacity of existing institutions to satisfy them. There are simply not enough opportunities to absorb the myriad desires of billions of single-minded young people. As Mishra sees it, todays nihilistic politics are themselves a product of the sense of nothingness felt by growing numbers of uprooted outsiders whove failed to find their place in the commercial metropolis. A moral and spiritual vacuum, he writes, is yet again filled up with anarchic expressions of individuality, and mad quests for substitute religions and modes of transcendence.

Despite his call to harness the experience of nothingness, Michael Novak duly warned of its dangers and potential for destructiveness. Unfortunately, his exhortation to lean in and embrace the void strikes me as about as helpful to frustrated millennials as it was to me when I was an angst-ridden teenager. The answer to todays nihilistic political movements clearly isnt more hyper individualism. Nor is a violent return to a traditional past realistic. No one knows how to escape from our current global age of anger. But I suspect that whatever answer there might be will first require us Western liberals to admit that we have finally reached the limits of the Enlightenments cult of secular individualism.

(Gregory Rodriguez is publisher of Zcalo Public Square where this column was first posted and editorial director at the Berggruen Institute. Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

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Help! We have Fallen and Can't Escape the Current Age of Anger! - City Watch

Mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism, or rarely simply nihilism) is the mereological position that objects with proper parts do not exist. Only mereological simples, those basic building blocks without proper parts, exist. Or, more succinctly, "nothing is a proper part of anything."[1] Mereological simples can be both spatial and temporal. Mereological nihilism also asserts that objects existing in time do not have any temporal parts.

The concepts of parts and wholes are used to describe common objects. For example, a ball is made up of two halves, so the ball is a whole that is made up of two parts. Every single object we experience in the world outside of us and around us is a whole that has parts, and we never experience an object that does not have parts. For example, a tail is a part of a lion, a cloud is a part of a greater weather system or, in visual terms, the sky, and a nucleobase is a part of a DNA strand. The only things we know of that do not have parts are the smallest items known to exist, such as leptons and quarks. These fundamental particles cannot be 'seen' and are not directly experienced. They may, however, be experienced indirectly through emergent properties. Thus all objects we directly experience have parts.

A number of philosophers have argued that objects that have parts do not exist. The basis of their argument consists in claiming that our senses give us only foggy information about reality and thus they cannot be trusted. For example, we fail to see the smallest building blocks that make up anything. These smallest building blocks are individual and separate items that do not ever unify or come together into being non-individual. Thus, they never compose anything. According to the concept of mereological nihilism, if the building blocks of reality never compose any wholes, then no composite objects exist.

This seems to devolve into an error theory. If there are no composite objects, how can we make sense of our ordinary understanding of reality which accepts the existence of composite objects? Are we all deceived? Ted Sider (2013) has argued that we should think of composition as arrangement.[2] According to Sider, when we say "there is a table", we mean there are mereological simples arranged table-wise.

Mereological nihilism entails the denial of what is called classical mereology, which is succinctly defined by philosopher Achille Varzi:[3]

Mereology (from the Greek , part) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratic atomists and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Theaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium), and Boethius (especially In Ciceronis Topica).

As can be seen from Varzis passage, classical mereology depends on the idea that there are metaphysical relations that connect part(s) to whole. Mereological nihilists maintain that such relations between part and whole do not exist, since "wholes" themselves only exist at the subatomic level.

Nihilists typically claim that our senses give us the (false) impression that there are composite material objects, and then attempt to explain why nonetheless our thought and talk about such objects is 'close enough' to the truth to be innocuous and reasonable in most conversational contexts.[citation needed] Sider's linguistic revision that reformulates the existence of composite objects as merely the existence of arrangements of mereological simples is an example of this.[4] Tallant (2013) has argued against this maneuver. Tallant has argued that mereological nihilism is committed to answering the following question: when is it that a group of mereological simples is arranged in a particular way?[5] What relations must maintain among a group of mereological simples such that they are arranged table-wise? It seems the nihilist can determine when a group of objects compose another object: for them, never. But the nihilist, if he is committed to Sider's view, is committed to answering how mereological simples can be arranged in particular ways. No compelling answer has been provided in the literature. Mereological nihilism seems to pose the same amount of questions as it purports to answer. In fact, they are the very same questions re-formed in terms of arrangement.

The obvious objection that can be raised against nihilism is that it seems to posit far fewer objects than we typically think exist. The nihilist's ontology has been criticized for being too sparse as it only includes mereological simples and denies the existence of composite objects that we intuitively take to exist, like tables, planets, and animals. Another challenge that nihilists face arises when composition is examined in the context of contemporary physics. According to findings in quantum physics, there are multiple kinds of decomposition in different physical contexts. For example, there is no single decomposition of light; light can be said to be either composed of particles or waves depending on the context. [6] This empirical perspective poses a problem for nihilism because it does not look like material objects neatly decompose in the way nihilists imagine they do. In addition, some philosophers have speculated that there may not be a "bottom level" of reality. Atoms used to be understood as the most fundamental material objects, but were later discovered to be composed of subatomic particles and quarks. Perhaps what we take to be the most fundamental entities of current physics can actually be decomposed, and their parts can be further decomposed, on down the line. If matter is infinitely decomposable in this respect, then there are no mereological simples. This is a problem for nihilism because it then follows from their view that nothing exists, since they assert that only mereological simples exist. [7]

Philosophers in favor of something close to pure mereological nihilism are Peter Unger, Cian Dorr, and Ross Cameron. There are a few philosophers who argue for what could be considered a partial nihilism, or what has been called quasi-nihilism, which is the position that only objects of a certain kind have parts. One such position is organicism: the view that living beings exist, but there are no other objects with parts, and all other objects that we believe to be compositechairs, planets, etc.therefore do not exist. Rather, other than living beings, which are composites (objects that have parts), there are only true atoms, or basic building blocks (which they call simples). The organicists include Trenton Merricks and Peter van Inwagen.

Peter Van Inwagen maintains that all material objects are mereological simples with the exception of biological life such that the only composite objects are living things. Van Inwagens view can be formulated like this: Necessarily, for any non-overlapping xs, there is an object composed of the xs iff either (i) the activities of the xs contstitute a life or (ii) there is only one of the xs. In other words, Van Inwagen contends that mereological atoms form a composite object when they engage in a sort special, complex activity which amounts to a life. [8]

One reason why Van Inwagens solution to the Special Composition Question is so attractive is that it allows us to account a conscious subject as a composite object. Nihilists have to maintain that the subject of a single consciousness is somehow the product of many discrete mereological atoms. Van Inwagens argument against nihilism can be characterized as such:

1. I exist

2. I am not a mereological simple

3. At least one object exists that is not a mereological simple

4. So, nihilism is false [9]

In addition to allowing for the existence of trees, cats, and human beings, Van Inwagens view is attractive because it inherits nihilisms elegant solutions to traditional problems in mereology like the Ship of Theseus and the problem of the many.

One objection that can be offered against Van Inwagens view is the vagueness of the category of life and the ambiguity of when something gets caught up in a life. For example, if a cat takes a breath and inhales a carbon atom, it is unclear at what point that atom becomes officially incorporated into the cats body.[10]

Even though there are no tables or chairs, van Inwagen thinks that it is still permissible to assert sentences such as 'there are tables'. This is because such a sentence can be paraphrased as 'there are simples arranged tablewise'; it is appropriate to assert it when there are simples arranged a certain way. It is a common mistake to hold that van Inwagen's view is that tables are identical to simples arranged tablewise. This is not his view: van Inwagen would reject the claim that tables are identical to simples arranged tablewise because he rejects the claim that composition is identity. Nonetheless, he maintains that an ordinary speaker who asserts, for instance, "There are four chairs in that room" will speak truly if there are, indeed, simples in the room arranged in the appropriate way (so as to make up, in the ordinary view, four chairs). He claims that the statement and its paraphrase "describe the same fact". Van Inwagen suggests an analogy with the motion of the sun: an ordinary speaker who asserts that "the sun has moved behind the elms" will still speak truly, even though we accept the Copernican claim that this is not, strictly speaking, literally true. (For details, see his book "Material Beings".)

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Mereological nihilism - Wikipedia

Its all beginning to wear very thin indeed. Ten years ago this already addled Nottinghamshire duo captured the attention with bellowed, caustic and often astute observations delivered in an ur-rap monotone above cheapo punky laptop beats. The message then, humorously enough, was: everything is shit. Total shit. Youre shit, Im shit, the countrys shit.

This briefly entertaining and frequently obscene working-class nihilism was gratefully received by a music press that, desperately looking for something edgy, found itself confronted by the mimsy and anodyne public-school folk of Mumford & Sons and Stornoway and Laura Marling. Fair enough: it was, for a while, enlivening and a certain kind of antidote. But, you have to say, with a rapidly diminishing sense of return over the following eight albums.

On their latest, English Tapas, the message is the same as it was in 2009: everythings shit. And so indeed it is, not least this album, which sounds tired, uninspiring, boring and curiously child-like, even as its progenitors approach their fifties. The beats have not got any more inventive and musically one of the few highlights is the bassline ripped off Cameos Word Up on Just Like We Do.

There are, of course, no tunes, just that incessant monotone barking, but the nastiness of the lyrics now seems targeted more at their own fanbase, for daring to get drunk or to smoke, for being dead in the head. When the best track on the album is called Dull, you know youve got a dog on your hands. A fairly shit dog.

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I used to love the working-class nihilism of Sleaford Mods no longer - Spectator.co.uk