Nihilism/Meaning Critique #1: Gangasrotagating Out of Nihilism
Following the river where it leads
This is the first instalment in a series of critical ponderings on Nihilism and “meaning”. I originally released this as "Aphorism #11" but feel it fits more neatly within this series.
This is the first of the four posts that were written in December (that I tentatively titled “Searching for Solid Ground”) but never got published (life am I right?). I envision these pieces (much like the Metamodern Critique) as being aphoristic with each standing alone yet all connected.
There's an index of all the posts in the Introduction.
Enjoy,
James
“Seekers after gold dig up much earth.”
— Heraclitus
I’m struggling with Nihilism. I’ve been going on and on about it this year (or so it feels like) but I think it’s high time I sat down and faced it with a little more rigour.
Because in one way I feel like I’ve been going on and on about it and in another way I can’t remember the last time I mentioned it in any post or video. But it’s always there — a ball of yarn in my mind that’s not getting less untangled. Well, I reckon, that might be because I’m doing nothing to unravel it. Hence — searching for solid ground.
I often think about Nietzsche’s distinctions between styles of writing: Kūrmagati vs. Gangasrotagati — the speed of the tortoise vs. the speed of the Ganges. The former he associates with scholarly writing; the latter with aphoristic writing. The former a slow deliberate movement; the latter a fast-flowing living powerhouse sweeping along.
The standard work of The Living Philosophy is kūrmagati. Sure it started out all Gangasrotagati back in those 100 videos in 100 days in 2020. But then as I tried to add polish it changed gear. I’ve always missed the Gangesrotagati.
Kurmagati would be good if I had solid ground. If I had a definite direction — a system I was building; a paradigm within which I was working. But I do not (hence, once again: searching for solid ground). Integral/Metamodernism had its teeth in me for the early years of the project but now, as we’ve seen, they’ve lost their grip. Before that there was the Jungian paradigm and oh boy how that oriented me. And before that, there was the Nietzschean/New Age Spirituality (funnily enough I ran into both of these paradigms simultaneously). Finally before that: Nihilism.
I was lost. I had no paradigm. Not merely intellectually. I had no idea what to do with my life. I was a teenager treading water. I had a whole lot of anxiety and no friends. I wasn’t great in school and I had lost all confidence in my future (and that I would be around for it to happen).
Then, I found philosophy (Camus, Nietzsche and de Mello) and some friends and life was hunky-dory. I still have those friends and I have a solid sense of the tangible aspects of my future but the philosophies have died on the vine. My Nihilism now is intellectual but since that’s most of my work, it’s rather problematic.
So, while the main work of The Living Philosophy continues to be Kurmagatic, I think we need a Gangasrotagatic canary in the goldmine or raven on the longship to scout ahead — to boldly go and find the directions the Kūrmagatic needs to orient itself by.
And so, just like the old days when I’d get up before work to write/edit my book (whichever iteration it happened to be on at the time) I’m going to put in a bit of time every day to this raven quest. Back to the aphorisms I guess!
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