The nihilist society

Things have to get worse before they get better... It’s hard to see how much worse things can get on all levels. We’ve got to the stage where we no longer have any idea what it is we put in our mouth, but we carry on mindlessly courtesy of adaptation and, well, conditioning.

Take my case, for instance. I was born when supermarket giants were already the norm, just as banks, credit cards and the media were. I never stopped to wonder about the voices that came out from the radio or television sat in mum’s living room because I was born and grew up surrounded by these machines from the start. I took them for granted, as a normal occurrence of life. It’s hard to question what seems to always have been there. It’s even harder when the general consensus dictates that it is a good thing.

Isn’t it a shock to the system when you suddenly learn that what you always took for granted and safe turns out to be reckless and life-threatening, maybe to the point of being in fact evil? At this point, I no longer long for an escape into a fantasy world - it almost feels as though I’ve begun to drown in some dystopia. As Cara would have thought: “Of all the fantasies I’d longed to escape into, this one was not one of them.”

Everything is distorted, twisted according to some agenda, and though it appears almost impossible to spell out exactly what is going on, one thing emerges clear as a diluted, mid-summer blue sky: all that is done is done for profit.

Science is no longer a potential wonder for mankind, it is a weapon. You read of genetic manipulations under the guise of ‘human interest’. Where does one draw the line? The scary thing is that a majority in power, and even within scientific circles, don’t believe that any line should be drawn - ever. Why draw a line, they would smirk, when all a line does is limit you. So you hear of mice being grown a human ear on their backs and the justification for such gross barbary is simple: to further scientific and medical advances in the hope of 'saving' more human lives.


In one corner, you have pro-life folks storming against individuals who choose to abort their foetus or embryo. In another corner, you have a bunch of scientists planning to use embryos for experiments. Science has become another blanket word and anything goes under its guise. To live. To survive. To remain in this world for as long as possible. That excuse is enough to carry out the most perverse of actions.

Sure, on an individual level, one could not be blamed for wanting to live or survive... It is part of an instinct as old as the Earth itself - that of survival. But... No, we are not supposed to live forever, and no, we are not supposed to get our own way every time, and no we are not supposed to justify the means for an end. In every trauma, every terrible event or set of circumstances that befall us, there is something for the person to learn from - to grow. It doesn’t mean it won’t be hard, almost destructive at times, but it is the only way to grow as human beings.

Childhood is about learning boundaries, hence the constant breaching of such boundaries. Adults are meant to guide and teach, and make sure whatever boundary is breached, it isn’t one that is too horrendous or destructive. The aim would be that through the experiment of breaching boundaries and learning from early, basic experiences, one would reach the adult stage of life with at least a rough idea of which boundaries need to be respected. The rest of existence is spent refining such notions. In other words, we then spend the rest of our lives getting to understand better the ethical and moral side of existence as human beings with the unique ability to think and reason. Well, that’s what ought to be the case. Instead, we see adult life being squandered in futility where materiality and greed become the only purpose for mankind.

In the end, capitalism and consumerism are direct tenets of a nihilist society.
Greed leads to corruption; consumerism leads to want, which leads to greed, which eventually leads to corruption. Here is the pattern that defines what we call a capitalistic society. Profit becomes the beating heart of the system and under its umbrella greed, corruption, consumerism and wants are like arteries departing from it.

There is no such thing as a selfish trait or gene, it is a nurtured, grossly distorted consequence from all the above through conditioning and the need to adapt to survive.
Profit and its pulsing arteries such as greed, consumerism and corruption lead nowhere but to a nihilist conclusion. The process by which it destroys itself is akin to a cancer eating at a body from within. Everything else slowly withers and perishes until only the umbrella and its departing arteries remain, and when that happens, all else is destroyed, and even the umbrella begins to dissolve to nothingness to give way for chaos.