. . a nihilist is a man who judges of the world
as it is that it ought not to be, and that of
the world as it ought to be that it does not
exist.”

“I do philosophy
with a hammer.”
(Nietzsche,
The Will to Power)

If I were to describe much
of the Mac Web and even Apple’s philosophy and
“Think Different” and “1984”
ads in one word, it would have to be-nihilism.”
Actually, our whole culture is nihilistic to a
great degree; I even work with some nihilists.
They are nice guys who believe in nothing, literally.
Let me explain.

 

What is nihilism? Well, as I tell
my students, never look in a dictionary! Okay,
you can start there, but I am dealing with idea
and not how a word is used. Let me list some of
the people who are/were nihilists and, if you
were awake in college, you might see where I am
going: Schopenhauer, Pisarev, Nietzsche, Sartre,
Heidegger, and even Saint Paul has been called
nihilists. It has been given literary voice in
“Fathers and Sons” by Turgenev, “The
Brothers Karamazov” and “The Possessed”
(sometimes translated as “The Devils”)
by Dostoevsky, “The Rebel” and “The
Plague” by Camus, and “Nausea”
by Sartre, and the plays of Beckett, the songs
of the early Bob Dylan and the Doors, and we see
it clearly in the movies “Apocalypse Now”
and “American Beauty.” Ring a bell yet?

What I see that distresses me is
that most writers do not even realize they are
stating nihilism; most do not have the training
to realize it. But from Apple ad campaigns to
Mac Web editorials, it’s there. It’s everywhere.
And no one notices, not even the mindless writers
who pen it.

 

Nihilism comes from the Latin “nihil”
which means “nothing.” Nihilism is “nothingism.”
It is a belief in nothing. Take this literally-they
believe in nothing itself, nothingness, emptiness
and the void. Nothing is reality. So when I say
a nihilist believes in nothing I do not mean that
he has no beliefs, I mean he has a belief and
it’s object is nothingness.

Here is its classic statement: There
is no God, there is no value, there is no right
and wrong, there is no meaning to life, there
is no human nature, there is no inherent structure
in the cosmos, there is no purpose to anything,
there is no rational grounds for any belief. We
might act like there are such things, but they
are just human creations. And they too are without
value. Wittgenstein
(who was not a nihilist) said, “In the world
there is no value, and if there was it would be
of no value.” In other words, if objectively
there is no value (nothing), then any value we
create is just as empty as the void we are trying
to fill. The same for art and science. “From
nothing, nothing comes” after all. Happy
stuff, eh?

 

There is nothing there other than
what we place (or project) on the world. What
do we place on the world? Religion, human nature,
corrupt social structures, art, power, truth,
and science-everything. There is no such thing
as, for example, gender-it’s a human creation.
So is God, the soul and all the rest. These are
merely human creations and attempts at self-definition.
But they are not “true” or “real”
in any serious sense, for nihilism doesn’t believe
in such a thing, even in the truth of its own
conclusions. This would be inconsistent after
all. No, the nihilist believes in nothingness
quite literally. Yet, it does not follow that
there is not something, for they believe in something,
namely nothing, which is something, they think.
And as I just said we create and project a lot
onto the universe, but this is empty too. The
mistake people make, the nihilist says, is believing
these things are real and holding on tightly to
them. This must be stopped. So how do we do stop
it

Smashing Things

So what does a nihilist do if he
believes in nothing and if people mistakenly make
something out of nothing by believing it to be
something real? Well, it’s a radical movement
and so they set themselves to smashing everything
that is nothing but believed to be something,
like God, values, independent reality, science,
art and human nature. It is doing “philosophy
with a hammer” as Nietzsche
said. And Pisarev said, “Here
is the ultimatum of our camp [the nihilists]:
what can be smashed should be smashed . . .”
They smash old ways, old customs, old manners,
old beliefs, old religions, old everything. They
smash pumpkins even. The symbol, if there is one
for nihilism, is the hammer. Negative nihilism-it
seeks the destruction of the old ways. Smash,
hammer and destroy are its methods. But then what?

Then Replace Them

 

But nihilism need not be negative,
for there are “positive” or “active”
nihilists out there. They ask, “After we
smash out the old, then what?” In fact, one
need not be an atheist to be a nihilist, or so
Nietzsche said. To some, and Nietzsche was one
of them which many fail to see, nihilism is a
stage along humanity’s journey to self-realization;
Kierkegaard
said is was a”stage on life’s way” when
we confront our own emptiness. In fact it is a
pathology and an illness. It is an extreme kind
of pessimism and skepticism about our place in
the universe; it is despair in the very absurdity
of our existence. To get beyond this, says the
positive/active nihilist, we must make something
of ourselves-we must create, or recreate, the
world anew, becoming God in the process. If there
is no meaning then we will make it and face the
absurdity of our existence vis-à-vis as
it were. Everything we do is an act of self-definition,
from choosing a car to choosing a job; we are
creating ourselves in every choice we make. We
give meaning where there was none, and so Sartre
said we have become God, the one who traditionally
gives meaning. So, said Sartre, we spend our lives
filling holes, starting with sucking our thumbs
as infants. The alternative of not facing the
hole is too terrible. The only solution then is
suicide. No: We must define ourselves.

What do we replace the old with?
This is the philosophical problem of nihilism,
or at least one of the philosophical problems
of it. If in fact from nothing, nothing comes,
then you see the problem. Sartre, Nietzsche and
others said we must engage in an act of definition,
not only of ourselves but also of the universe
as a whole. Nietzsche’s Ubermensch or “Superman”
(which Hitler profaned) is one who does just this-he
faces meaningless and grabs it by the throat in
an ironic and comical way, making something of
himself. We must replace the old with something
new, be it a strong race, a”good” race,
or some kind of human race-anything, almost,
is better than being nothings.

 

What does this have to do with Apple
and more importantly parts of the Mac Web? It
is my contention that some of the Mac Web is nihilistic
and that Apple Computer’s stance is too. The Mac
Web has gotten to the hammering and smashing part,
but has yet to ask the question, “What replaces
what we smash?” We (I include this site)
smash bad journalism, bad sites, bad writing,
bad computers, bad standards, bad business moves,
bad mice, bad CEO’s, bad court rulings, and just
bad everything. It’s chic to do so in fact. Just
look at some of the sites which pass off blind
and endless smashing for writing. It does gain
a following and fellow smashers along the way.
But in the end they will feel empty if the nothingness
is not filled with a created something. We are
left with a question: “What’s next?”
If the Mac Web is so bad, as some say (and even
the mail we get says it is, and that’s why people
visit this site), then what would a good Mac Web
look like? What Mac Web will we create if we take
the hammer and smash the present one? In a word,
“Who are we anyway?”

 

Think about Nietzsche’s words quoted
above: “. . . a nihilist is a man who judges
of the world as it is that it ought not to be,
and that of the world as it ought to be that it
does not exist.” Does this not capture the
“Think Different” ads perfectly? “They’re
not fond of rules and they have no respect for
the status quo.” Yet, they replace the old
with the new, something the Mac Web is slow to
do. They take a hammer to the status quo and build
a new world. This is the concept of “Think
Different” ad itself. This is a call to negative
nihilism, a call to take our technological hammers
and start pounding. It was done in 1984 and has
been reborn over the last few years at Apple.

But there is a difference between
the nihilism on the Mac Web and nihilism of Apple.
If you want to know what it is, though I already
alluded to it, then you’ll have to wait until
next week. Until then, you’ll just have to think
about it . . .

And in the meantime keep a close
eye for nihilism-it’s everywhere.

David
Schultz