Existential Nihilism, Or: You Don't Honestly Believe in Comic Book Dualistic Bullsh*t, Do You?

"The State sanctifies its violence as law. Yours it calls crime."--Max Stirner.

DeepAI has officially designated me an "existential nihilist." I suppose that's correct.

Everything in all of tangible, physical reality is governed by hunger. One thing consumes another, even at the cellular level. Everything is driven by that one all-consuming imperative: TO EAT. Predatory species, such as the very powerful, strong, vicious, or very rich, will use a ploy or camouflage, a lure to trap their prey; all the better to batten on that which they must consume to sustain themselves. To wit: they proffer the comic book morality which attributes to abstract concepts such as "good" and "evil" a real, tangible, quantifiable, and measurable meaning. These concepts are ever-shifting and largely dictated by whoever has the power to define terms.

There are no "good guys," and there are no "bad guys." There are strong guys, and there are dead guys. One will, in the fullness of time, supersede the other, depending upon circumstances, but everything in material physical existence is driven by hunger and need. EVERYTHING eats, and to satisfy that hunger, everything will look to something lower on the food chain; it works the same way in bourgeois social interactions and the hierarchy of Western capitalism; which is manifestly unjust of course, but the Powers That Be control the official organs, and keep the people malleable, servile, and "in check." To believe in a dichotomy of "good versus evil" is to believe in abstractions. The concepts are simply words with no manifest tangible objective reality attached to them; or, at any rate, they can be manipulated to mean whatever the System, those who define the parameters of discourse, attribute to them. Good and Evil are defined by Church and State, the two-headed Mephisto. "The State sanctifies its violence as law. Yours it calls crime."--Max Stirner.

More from the AI:

Existential nihilism is a philosophical belief that life lacks any fundamental purpose, meaning, or intrinsic value. It is a nihilistic approach to life whereby people consider the meaninglessness and emptiness of existence, and question the existence of any inherent good or evil. Followers of this philosophy generally do not believe in the existence of a higher power or afterlife, and they see the universe as indifferent to human existence.

Existential nihilists see life as a constant struggle marked by suffering, and the individual must create their purpose and meaning. They reject traditional values, morality, and social systems, including religion, politics, and social norms, viewing them as arbitrary and restrictive. Instead, they champion individualism, free will, and the pursuit of the self.

Existential nihilism has been explored in literature, art, and philosophy, often as a response to the absurdities and tragedies of life. It is commonly associated with philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, writer Franz Kafka, and artists such as Samuel Beckett and Marcel Duchamp.

Whenever someone begins to prattle on about "good guys" and "bad guys," I immediately know they have ingested far too much modern media programming. American Wild West sagebrush sagas always portrayed the "Man in the White Hat" (who was often really as mercenary and ruthless as the concomitant Man in Black) as a noble protector of the poor, downtrodden, and oppressed. Generally, nothing could be further from the truth. Likewise, our "National Narrative" concerning WW2, wherein valiant American Dog Faces stormed the Beach at Normandy to put an end to fascism and genocide is a lopsided and self-exculpatory piece of historical whitewash; i.e. they may have put an end to fascism and genocide as proffered by German Nazis, but, along the way, they committed equally atrocious war crimes. (Russian soldiers went on a rampage of sadistic rape and murder as they pushed into Germany. The sentiments behind this revenge may have been understandable, but the point remains: the crimes of our enemies are "evil." Our sadistic rapine is sanctified and thereby sacralized by Gawd Hisself. Can anyone truly be naive enough to believe this?)

The firebombing of Dresden, which was a city of fleeing refugees, brimming to capacity with innocents fleeing the Russian onslaught, was no military target. The Allies simply bombed the shit out of it to KILL. KILL. KILL. Many, many, many, many thousands of civilians (i.e. women and children), died in a blazing, hellish inferno and their names are forgotten and Gawd isn't keeping score anydamnway. There were, reportedly, rivers of human fat coursing through the bombed-out streets of Dresden, that Valentine's Day (har har) of 1945. (Incidentally, noted science fiction author and satirist Kurt Vonnegut was actually IN Dresden during the bombing and survived by hiding in a meat locker. The events partly inspired his famous novel Slaughterhouse-Five.)

Of course, the Germans had revolutionized the process of mass extermination, creating "Hell on Earth" at industrialized death camps such as Auschwitz, Bergen-Belsen, Mauthausen, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Sobibor, and Chelmno. They believed their victims were "evil" because they had been so-programmed by the predatory hierarchy of the Nazi state and its propaganda apparatus. One could posit the karmic "backswing" of these murderous, genocidal policies and actions. The Soviets, for their part, had their system of gulags and forced labor camps for the ideologically unorthodox comrades denounced to the Cheka (later NKVD, and later still KGB).

Since 1945, America hasn't fought a SINGLE WAR that has been out of necessity, because of an external existential threat. Our wars are fought purely for motives of PROFIT and geopolitical expediency. We deal in blood and death every minute of every hour of every day and have for a long, long time.

We invented the atomic bomb. Hastening, as it were, the Final Day of destruction, when ALL biological lifeforms on this planet, save maybe highly-evolved cockroaches, will be obliterated, as the beautiful blue orb floats through outer space, a burned-out husk in the eternal, velvet black.

Mankind, how can I love you, knowing you for what you are?

In ancient days, we tortured people in unspeakable ways for contravening our religious dogma. Today, we ship them to "black sites" overseas, to carry on the tradition in a manner calculated to shield us from global scrutiny or legal consequences. Man eats at the banquet table of his abundant prosperity while, outside, sleeping in the snow, gripping his hungry belly, his "brother starves for want of a crust of bread."

Now let's talk about "good guys and bad guys." Let's talk about "good and evil." How much, for instance, does a gram of "evil" weigh, huh? Can I measure that on a scale? Is twenty meters of "good" purchasable in the same way as a length of rope or some other material commodity? No, you say. Absurd. Yes. Exactly.

The filthy rich hold the levers of control, keep the masses of sheep-like, cowed, and submissive peons at their beck and call, marching blindly toward their servitude and toil, bathed in their sweat for less and less a "piece of the action" (to put it the way the arms dealer in an old documentary did, using the argot of the Chicago gangsters of old). And always whipping them into a frenzy to go and be cannon fodder in whatever new international conflict they should happen to spark in the name of bolstering the profits of their Military-Industrial Complex. And so it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut might have said.

America is a country in severe decline. This is to be expected and accepted as inevitable. All things come to an end. Your body one day will cease to function, your heartbeat and respiration will cease, you'll fall over, and the worms will devour whatever remains. Your possessions, social status, and everything you ever did will be forgotten, fading into obscurity in the fullness of time, and all of your pretensions and beliefs about yourself, the world, and your place in it will be rendered an utterly meaningless charade. Consciousness may exist as energy in another form, may continue or return to this material plane of miseries--or perhaps not. My beliefs in the psychical and mystical realm may, for all I know, be mere suppositions or self-delusions. At any rate, I'm not arrogant enough to say I can explain how all of this works. Man is FINITE after all. And man is (and many will damn me for saying this) ultimately expendable. Every last damn one of us.

No one knows better than a man who has spent his life living in a world where most others are larger than he, that "might is right." Giants aren't gentle; giants take whatever the hell they want. The little man may, in the fullness of time, find a means or a weapon by which to usurp the giant, to overthrow, as it were, his oppressor (the eternal cycle of revolutionary change, in which the oppressed overthrows the oppressor, and then, in the fullness of time will become the very oppressors of men they initially sought to overthrow and free themselves from), but only after the King or Potentate has degenerated through weakness, decadence or simply age to the point that he can easily be dethroned. Until then, the wise ruler rules with his iron fist planted firmly in a velvet glove, keeping the masses distracted with enough "bread and circuses" to ensure they don't rebel. (Alternately: keeping them in an uneasy state of fear in which they cower and quake at the prospect of "not surviving." A convenient scapegoat, such as the Nazis made of the Jews, can then be put forth to the people as their "enemy" to account for all the privations and shortcomings the government or ruler imposes through malice or sheer ignorance. It works everywhere the same.)

I'm very tired. This has gone on long enough. As Arthur Desmond, the blacklisted author of a certain forbidden book wrote, "Cursed are the believers in good and evil, for they are frightened by shadows."

He likewise wrote: "Force rules the world. Has ruled it, shall rule it. Force is eternal."

And everything eats. EVERYTHING. All life is hunger, predation, and consumption, in a neverending cycle, everywhere, by everything.

And all hats are in reality black.