Is anyone here sympathetic to Nihilism?

[Scam of God]

BUMP

Certain forms, yes. I am very sympathetic to Nietzschean/Stirnerian nihilism, which posits that Western civilization is corrupt owing to the influence of binary Platonic-Christian notions - the concept of the "soul" extrapolated into individualism and atomism; the emphasis on the "afterlife" or Platonic Forms as higher, truer, better than the material world; the prioritization of deductive over experiential reasoning as a psychological defense against the transience of the material world. The notion that nihilists "just say no" for absolutely no reason is a strawman of the philosophy.

There are, however, other forms of nihilism, certain types of which I am adamantly opposed to. I believe that Christianity is a nihilistic religion, in that it condemns natural and needful behaviors as sinful and prescribes that salvation is necessary. It does this through devaluing this life in favor of another, 'Heaven', and is therefore harmful. My nihilism seeks to create through destruction (of the existing social paradigms); Christian nihilism destroys through creation (of an untenable system of morality).

These two forms of nihilism might well be subdivided into 'Dionysian' and 'Apollonian' strata - the 'Dionysian' emphasizing worldly experience and sensuality; the 'Apollonian' imposing forms upon the effervescent world of the senses. Hilariously enough, the two religions most frequently opposed in popular reckoning - Christianity and (LaVeyan) Satanism - both rank among the Apollonian strata as individualistic nihilisms.

What is the difference, then? Primarily this: the Dionysian man embraces the world of mere appearance; he trusts his senses alone; he understands Heraclitus' aphorism of the river; he not only accepts, he embraces the concept of death and ego-annihilation. The Apollonic nihilist, the Christian, fears all these and denies the very reality of this world to escape them.