On optimistic nihilism

The year is ending. So I felt like writing some stuff.

There's a channel on YouTube called Kurzgesagt - In a Nutshell. I love their content. They have beautiful animated videos that talk about very interesting questions and discusses about them brilliantly. I have been following them for over 5 years now.

They made a video called Optimistic Nihilism.

When I first saw this, it intrigued me a lot. It explained so much so elegantly.

In a gist, this talks about how our universe was created from the Big Bang and based on our current understanding of the universe, it will eventually end in a Heat death, a Big Rip or a Big crunch. Philosophically, from this understanding of physics and our universe, it can be said that we are living a nihilistic life. As in, that life is meaningless as it will eventually end into nothingness. Popularly, this specifically refers to existential nihilism, which says the life is without any purpose.

This is an extremely depressing thought. Surely a life without purpose means that everything that we are doing everyday is meaningless, and hence not worth living. A true sense of existential crisis.

Our current world scenario constantly points towards existential crises and struggles and meaninglessness.

How can we fight this? This extremely negative and dark philosophy? This immense existential crisis? Surely we cannot simply give up living because of this.

Enter optimistic nihilism.

Simply saying, if life has no meaning and if anything we do doesn't matter, then we are in a way free to do anything we want. We can make our own purpose, live life like the way we want it to.

I have had troublesome times in my life where I have suffered from various mental health issues.

In recent times, through my journey, this idea has helped. I have tried to be a little bit more content and happier everyday about small things. Tried to be gratuitous about small stuff.

If life has no purpose and things won't matter, then the bad stuff also doesn't matter. So maybe I can try to be happy and live it a little bit like how we want to.

This year is ending. Has been an extremely weird year for me in personal and professional life. A small philosophical idea like this one has helped me go through it.

I have lost a lot this year. But I've also gained so much.

I had let myself go. But slowly I have gained back my posture for my mind. Optimistic nihilism helped.

This doesn't mean that it might work for someone else. Everybody is entitled to have their own philosophies about their lives. After all, we only know what's best for us.

To anyone who has been suffering, amidst all the pain of the pandemic and all, hope you find some peace somehow as another year passes by.

On that note, happy new year.