Nihilism Q&A: life is not meaningless, but you create that meaning for yourself.

how would you respond to someone saying
that nihilism is just a cop-out to actually believing a greater meaning to life right someone who said that would have to believe in you know a greater meaning right and i don't what i talk about is the meaning that you can create so i don't believe there's a meaning that someone else has created for you i think you've got to create it yourself so that's very different from saying that life is meaningless but the point is don't deceive yourself don't deceive yourself into thinking either that there's no meaning in life and you can never have a meaningful life or into thinking you can only have the meaningful life that the judeo-christian god created for you or the god of mormonism created for you or that the ancient authors of buddhist philosophy create a few no the people who wrote buddhist philosophy were authors the people who wrote the book of psalms in the bible were authors all right all authority is just authorship and you too can be an author you can be a creative person you can write your own poetry you can write your own philosophy and even if you don't even if you just take someone else's poetry or someone else's philosophy off the shelf and you decide to conform to it adhere to it obey it believe in it it's still on you because it was your choice you chose to believe in it so any greater meaning in this sense it's still a meaning of your election your selection your creation you just perceive it as if it were greater than yourself because you didn't write it you didn't reason it through right you accepted someone else's authority instead of being an author yourself [Music] you know not not everyone has what it takes some people are stupid you know um some people are just too stupid and lack the creativity or energy or work ethic to you know come up with their own philosophy so they're going to remain the prisoner of someone else's philosophy but if you at least have this self-awareness you'll be aware of the choice you're making and you'll come to regard those people who wrote that book whether it's the bible or the buddhist canon as just human beings not so different from yourself who sat down one day and decided to write a story hey i got a great idea for a story there's a flood and this man built a boat and put some goats in it noah's ark is a story all right buddhist philosophy is a philosophy the poetry in the book of psalms is just poetry it was written by poets it was written by authors and you know you may not have what it takes to write your own philosophy write your own poetry but you can recognize that so no in this sense i'm saying to you positively there's no greater meaning but there's the meaning you choose there's the meaning you create and it's in that way that you have to find your way to a meaningful okay life so so yeah it's not that you don't it's not that you don't have meaning it's your basis so the the traditional method is for you to pick from one of the many different religions i feel like you kind of acknowledge this someone named nemo senpai is asking about uh people who subscribe to something else like a religion and they're still kind of determining their own meaning by sort of picking which aspects of the religion they you know a lot of people sort of pick and choose i feel like where they're like yeah this is my religion but i don't believe in this part i think i don't think we need to address that i think we all kind of yeah yeah and i sympathize too i'm going to say i have a human heart i know what it's like you know you still want to have funeral rituals i get it so a lot of people still want to celebrate christmas i don't you know but you know i understand people have emotional attachment these things they have kind of ceremonial needs if you like you know i do have a humor people want to have a wedding ceremony and they want their grandparents to come to their wedding so they want to have a wedding that's the same i get it but you know this kind of cherry picking it's it's inevitable and ongoing in in any case and so you have to recognize that you're at a minimum recreating the tradition of your grandparents recreating the tradition you find in the bible reinventing it reinterpreting it reapplying it and then as soon as you start to recognize that you know you start to pull apart the tapestry and realize you know realize what the options are you have for the rest of the rest of your life do you want to keep saying prayers to a god that doesn't exist do you want to literally cut off 60 of the uh of the nerve endings in your son's penis performing what's called the circumcision ritual just because there's a book that describes abraham doing it you know allegedly you know many thousands of years ago is that a good enough reason you talk about before i get the example of like trying to justify zionism in reference to what happened in germany and world war ii and there's no connection okay there's this ancient book that describes a guy cutting off his son's foreskin you know performance visual and and this justifies what you're doing in your life how you know this is these are the kinds of unquestions of belief uh the kinds of unquestioned beliefs people live with and sure i'm saying question everything and you know you might surprise yourself you might be a more creative more positive person than you think you are it might you might lead a more positive life than you than you think you can that seems like a good note to end on um so i i had there's a lot of stuff i didn't get a chance to get wonderful i know you're keeping a list i never know what i'm gonna get with you man all right great some of the not all these are going to be well i'm just going to go with whatever's in the chat start with an easy one i mean i already know the answer but we got a question what do you think about pineapple on pizza uh yeah we we we've had pizza in the last couple months we've had pizza go with i asked vegans yeah yeah i mean you know what i'm gonna give the most authentically nihilistic answer i can which is this i have never had a pineapple pizza that tasted good that doesn't mean it's not out there doesn't mean it doesn't exist right maybe i've yet to maybe have you have to try a pizza that really makes pineapple work um i can challenge you with this you know corn niblets on pizza like you know corn nibbles out of a can in china it's completely standard china thailand they put corn niblets on pizza do do you think that can work i can only tell you that i have never had a corn niblet pizza that that really worked but maybe it is possible one day that was a much more in-depth answer than i was expecting i take this stuff seriously