Hello everyone, today we continue to introduce nihilism, earlier we introduced what nihilism is and what it is not, nihilism is not as desperate as pessimism, not as averse as cynicism, not as detached as the indifferent.
Nihilism is optimistic, idealistic, and compassionate. Because their goal in life is happiness, preferably carefree freedom like childhood.
Nietzsche believed that nihilism is a social culture, while existentialism believed that nihilism is the attitude of the individual, so where does nihilism exist?
Today we talk about nihilism at home, at school, and at work.
First of all, at home, as we introduced earlier, nihilism comes from the desire to get rid of the anxiety of freedom, or it can also be understood as nihilism as an escape from reality and responsibility. Many people may have this experience, but when we end a tiring day of work or socializing, lie on the sofa and watch TV, or scroll through our mobile phones, we can briefly escape the anxiety of reality and enter a moment of nihilism in this way. Similarly, when children are reluctant to do homework at home, or when they are reluctant to do housework, when they are jumping up and down at home, let them watch TV or mobile phones, and their irritable mood is like pressing the pause button in an instant.
In the past, television was the entertainment center of a family, and the 20th-century philosopher Anders, who wrote a paper on the impact of television on the family environment, found that TV dramas rearranged the layout of the whole home, and people could not sit facing each other, but all facing the screen. Television sets cut off real communication between people, making it easier for us to enter the pseudo-reality that television sets are constructed. Television has reshaped our understanding of experience, communication, and even intimacy.
The philosopher Adorno expressed a similar point in "How to Watch TV", in which TV shows block the communication between people in the real world and make it easier for us to enter the virtual scenes that the show constructs, in which we can easily identify with the characters and plots of the TV show, no matter how chaotic the process is, but in the end, the chaos will always disappear and the worrying scene will end perfectly. The show always makes us feel complacent.
But being immersed in such a scenario for a long time can make us mistakenly believe that actions and processes are not important, and that beauty will eventually come. Just like before, many people indulged in the love of Japanese and Korean soap operas, and lost interest in people in reality; over the years, with the rise of self-media, we have seen on various platforms that it seems that there are tens of millions of villas per capita on the Internet, and there will be a huge sense of loss when they return to reality. Compared with the perfection in TV shows and mobile phone videos, reality is always full of regrets and shortcomings, and even this regret will not be eliminated.
In short, whether it is the television of the past, or the mobile phone and the Internet today, the screen provides us with a way to escape from reality, which is consciously or unconsciously described as a place from which we must escape, not that there is a saying that there is always a need for the body and mind on the way. Behind this view, there is a subtle implication that reality is anachronistic and needs to be escaped. But escapism is easy to fall into the trap of nihilism.
Secondly, we look at the nihilism in school, where the TV and mobile phone at home allow us to escape from reality, but once we leave the screen and look up, we are always dazed and angry. This scene is like the moment in a school class when the teacher asks the students to look up at the blackboard. Will the situation improve without TV shows and mobile phone screens in schools?
Freire, a Brazilian philosopher and educator, pointed out that current education is suffering from a narrative disease. Teachers are trained in education through lectures, and students are trained in education through listening to lectures. Education becomes a process of information transmission and discipline, and learning is reduced to repetitive acts such as memorization and memorization. When students have to learn the same information in the same way, creativity and diversity are hindered, and obedience and conformism are encouraged and even demanded. It is as if education has become the production of parts needed in society, and the workshop of a factory. Education takes students away from their true selves.
The purpose of education is to shape people into useful people in society, or to stimulate and develop one's inner potential to make people better themselves, which is a profound conflict facing the current education system. Nietzsche said that a society that values only its own existence, a society that only values the maintenance of the status quo, is a sick society.
If the purpose of education is to select people who are useful to society, it is easy to ignore the diversity and uniqueness of human beings, and education will turn people into tools and means to achieve a better society and maintain its survival. But if the purpose of education is to shape unique people and tap into the potential of each individual, then it will be difficult to carry out large-scale procedural education, and the cost of education and the social structure of society may need to be redesigned, as is the challenge of today's education. As Geertz said, if growing up requires challenges and uncertainty, then an easy and stable life is just a slow and steady death. In other words, such a life is nihilistic.
Third, let's look at nihilism at work. There is a best-selling book "Meaningless Work", which is also translated as: "Bullshit Work", which seems to speak the attitude of many people's hearts, not only are many jobs meaningless, even if it is meaningful work for the company, it is meaningless for many people, except for making money. In recent years, there has been a lot of discussion about workplace ethics, and lying flat, involution, PUA, and Buddhist culture in the workplace are often discussed. Some people say that going to work is like going to the grave, and outside the workplace, is the real life. In the past, work or labor was a way to live an active life, to achieve self-fulfillment, to identify oneself, but today, for many people, the meaning of work is only to make money.
Why has the relationship between us and work become so tense, Marx put forward the concept of "labor alienation", Marx pointed out in "Labor Alienation" that in the past, labor and a person's identity were bound, and with the refinement of the division of labor, people gradually became a link on the assembly line, a program, a tool, and the function of labor on people's identity collapsed.
With the demand of society for the improvement of productivity, the division of labor has become more and more refined, but the division of labor is not beneficial to the laborer, and the labor is cut into a task, which makes the laborer detached from their labor and the goods they produce, and thus from their identity.
Marx said that when we have no control over what we make, there is a crisis of identity for the workers. Laborers can only define themselves in terms of commodities, whereas with the development of capitalism and commerce, laborers can only define themselves in terms of money and income. In a consumer society, workers have turned to define themselves in terms of consumption. Our work is to make money, and the purpose of making money is to consume, and we ourselves have become a means of making money, with the aim of renting our minds and bodies to the most valuable people.
Today, work has become the power of alienating oneself, from laborers to workers, from workers to workers, from workers to workers, from workers to tools and screws, as if people in reality are gradually alienated to dehumanize. If nihilism is seen as a rejection and escape from reality, then whether work is reality or reality outside of work is the question that people must face at the moment. We understand the reality that everyone is equal, that there is no authority, that there is no hierarchy, that there is a world of friendliness between people, but there is often a sense of disillusionment among young people who come out of school, and the workplace is full of power games, human struggles, bureaucracy and hierarchy, not only in our workplace, but in all workplaces.
Just imagine if the education they received in school is that they are humanly good, that everyone is equal, that they question authority, and that they are critical of obedience, then when they graduate and enter society, they will find that the reality is not at all, and they will have to face a strong sense of disillusionment. So should we face the harsh reality, or should we escape from reality and fall into nothingness? Perhaps, there is a third way, what is a third way?