Nihilism that I don't think is nihilistic

    My most recent fictional rant was about the thriller novel Neuropath. In the rant, I mentioned that the book came across as nihilistic, and it does, but in my opinion not exactly the way many other people claim it’s nihilistic in their reviews. There is no god, no free will, and we are only meat machines controlled by chemical reactions. These things aren’t, in my opinion, necessarily nihilistic on their own. It’s the depression and helplessness of the main character that is nihilistic.

    There is no god, I know I’ve stated before I’m an Atheist, so clearly, there being no god is not nihilistic to me, but a simple statement of fact. No god means no malicious force choosing to punish people for no discernable reason. Things just happen, no ineffable plan behind everything, no reasons for bad things that happen to good people. Without a god there would also be no heaven or hell. The strict rules to achieve entrance to some special afterlife don’t exist, the risk of eternal punishment for some minor infractions being nonsense.

    The nonexistence of God is not a nihilistic view to me, it’s a head-clearing comforting viewpoint. It gives me peace of mind to have been convinced in no god. I feel the world makes more sense if without an all-powerful creator. Though that is my view it might not apply to any other person, even other atheists, but it is my view and I would not define myself as a nihilistic person.

    The illusion of free will is an idea that many people believe in, even many atheists. It helps people deal with reality, as it gives us the illusion of control. Now current neuroscience shows that decisions are made in the brain up to about 10 seconds before the decision is even made in the conscious mind. This fact suggests that free will could be no more than a figment of our imagination. A constructed idea of our brain to present our conscious mind with a rationalization of what happened, rather than being aware of every part.

    Think about baseball, or more specifically the act of hitting a baseball thrown by a pitcher. Now let’s say the ball sails straight down the middle at 90mph and is hit by the batter. there is a tremendous amount of math that you’d have to do to figure out exactly where that ball would be when it passed the spot the batter hit it, and even more to find the exact moment the batter would have to start his swing to connect with said ball. If you tried to do all that by hand it would probably be several days after the game what you understood exactly the perfect time that those things converged perfectly for the batter to hit the ball.

    The ball leaves the pitcher’s hand and is hit by the batter in less than half of a second. That means entering the calculation into a computer, even if all the numbers are already known and entered for you and all you had to do was hit the enter key, would take you about as long as the batter has to hit the ball the second the pitcher releases the ball.

    The batter’s brain, however, has already done the calculations, it already knows where the ball will be. It’s already done all the complex calculations based on the pitcher’s movements to know where the ball will be and the exactly moment he needs to begin his swing to hit the ball. His brain has calculated the amount of force it needs, and which muscles to contract and relax to achieve that swing. It does all the math and fine movements on its own. To the batter, all he’s aware of is that he swings the bat, and that’s all he needs to be aware of because his brain takes care of the rest.

    If there is no such thing as free will, then I believe that’s totally fine because the beauty of what the human brain does in the background is majestic and wonderful. The fact that we interpret it so simply is rather humbling. Our world is so much that our brain condenses it into digestible portions.

    The idea of the meat machine, that we are only chemical reactions seems to me, to be an odd one for people to fight against. When I look out at the world many of the people I’ve spoken to seem to feel that animals are simply meat machines. That they don’t have souls or are lesser, yet, we are animals, no matter what anyone would like to tell you. The complete lack of evidence of a soul or consciousness is enough, for me, to doubt the existence of either. To me in actuality, that doesn’t even matter to me. With or without a soul, and whether or not that the self is only a figment of my imagination doesn’t matter to me.

    In all honesty I don’t care at all in either way. If you prove to me there was a soul, I’d probably say, “that’s cool,” but I’d probably say the same if you proved to me there wasn’t. without the idea of an overarching god, or that free will might only be an illusion, the idea that we are more than meat machines means nothing to me. Without an idea of an afterlife, I have no reason that being a meat machine literally doesn’t matter to me. There no reason to believe my life is more important than another, other than my personal bias toward my own well-being.

    It feels to me the idea that we aren’t meat machines or rejections of the idea is rather self-centered and conceited in my opinion. We’re impressive as a species for being able to gain understanding of our natural world. Balking when we encounter evidence of an uncomfortable truth doesn’t, in my opinion, demonstrate due justice to the human mind to understand it’s universe. When people claim we’re more than animals, but when science produces evidence of an uncomfortable truth and we attack the idea before even giving it a proper chance, I feel that proves we’re not better than animals in those cases. When what we say is we are different from animals because we can rationalize and then deny what is rational, seems mad to me.

    That seems paradoxical, how can accepting we are meat machines be part of showing we are not just meat machines.

    It just doesn’t seem to matter to me, I mean if ultimately love is only a chemical reaction occurring in the brain incentivising procreation, then it’s a beautiful and wonderful fiction we tell ourselves. I find it amazing our brain not only does the calculations to find a decent biological mate, but also the ability to disguise that attraction into an imaginary idea of great affection. That’s an incredibly creative feat.

    So that’s my reasons for not believing these things are nihilistic, in and of themselves. The nihilism of the book comes from how the ideas are used in the books. It’s nihilistic to believe that once we became more sure of how the meat machine functions, the government and big corporations would immediately take advantage and build tech to monitor or change the functions of someone’s brain. That’s where the nihilism of the book is found, not so much in its ideas but the implementation of them. Which is why I found the early parts of the book so compelling.

    You can read my article about the book in my fictional rant page if you’re interested.