On Nihilism or Meaninglessness

There has been a spate of terrorist attacks by the ISIS group as well as other religious related militant groups around the world. I thought it would be good contribute to the debate about how seductive these militant group ideologies is compared to our commonly held world view.

First things first, the main difference between these violent ideologies and our commonly-held and agreed upon ideologies is that they devalue what is good and bad, high and low, rich and poor and, strong and weak. They reject these simple dichotomies. They believe these categories are merely made up by people to oppressed them, to categorize them as evil, bad, terrorist and violent hence to subject them to their own "oppressive peaceful"value systems.

Most of our main understandings of things around us comes in form good/bad, rich/ poor, strong/weak  and have/have-nots so on and so forth. Therefore we strive to be good not bad, strong, not weak, rich and not poor.

The ISIS ideologies are much more sophisticated, they outright reject these categories and pronounced these as merely Western labels meant to subjugate them to Western-led standards hence to them, these are merely categories and humans should not subjected to themselves. Not themselves and not anybody else.

Since these are merely categories and labels and we should not be tied or circumscribed by them, the logical conclusion to this would be: an utter destruction of these categories. These are very sexy and seductive ideologies to the disenchanted and disillusioned youths that faced no meaning in their lives. They feel a freedom from this societal imposed pressures to conform to a certain ideal and yet does not wish to labelled negatively. These are smart youths and not necessarily ghetto youths who have no future in life. The recent attacks in Bangladesh was a good example. They were committed by a group of middle-class to upper class youths and was highly educated. They were not stupid individuals who were attracted by the idea of martyrdom. They had wanted a revolution.

That is precisely why it ties in so nicely with the hot-blooded and agitated stage defined by youth and young adulthood. They had wanted change, they had wanted a revolution. But I do not want to die for a "cause" like those martyrs of yesteryears, I want to die for "no cause" because I reject your value system. Those violent ideologies propagated by ISIS is precisely the vessel by which I can carry them out because they understand my angst, my feeling of desolation.

I might die for their flag but I am carrying out God's will because we must not be oppressed by other's- especially those that espoused decadent and debauchery value systems. Do not impose your values onto me but rather reflect on your unfulfilled lives. I kill your people not because I hate them. It's precisely because I loved them that they die. They and everyone need to know that they are being oppressed. Stop being foolish and wake up from your ideas.

These are the words of these intelligent but disillusioned youths trying to say. They want a change and not to further a cause. Change to what end, no one knows.

We, the so-called "oppressed people" on the other hand, prefer rebuilding, and incremental changes. We want things that we are familiar with and not wholesale change. When we talk about disruptive technology or changes, we want more convenience, cheaper and more features.

We do not necessarily want to abandon our smartphones for say pagers. We do not want to abandon Uber or Grab for calling the unresponsive cab companies. We do not want to abandon our Alibaba/ Amazon for our mom and pop stores. And even if we ever do, we only want to do that out of nostalgia and that's where hipsters come in.

Hence in my view, it would be a mistake to demonize or dehumanize these terrorists. It is precisely what they expect you to do. Since you must be good, and I must be bad, it is precisely why I must help you get rid of this errant thinking- that is precisely what they think of you.

It would be much better to rehabilitate them from their violent thinking. It is better to understand where they come from rather than be quick to dismiss them as disinfected and lost youths of today. It would be mistake to dismiss what they think as merely crazy talk, but what they say does have some intellectual salience. But the means that they achieved them are wholly wrong. Think about it, we embraced disruptive technology and yet we dismissed "change", we embraced the future but yet we dismissed advancements in intellect and understandings in human psyche. Are we not hypocrites.

Lest I appear to support the ISIS ideology but I absolutely reject them as they take advantage of youthful disenchantment and alienation. Nietzsche is one of proponents of pessimism as a source of strength of power and as he say:

"Nihilism ( or a feeling of nothingness and meaninglessness) represents a pathological transitional stage...whether the productive forces are not yet strong enough, or whether decadence still hesitates and has not yet invented it's remedies"

The old men at ISIS took advantage what is merely a temporary stage in human psyche and turned it into a permanent one- infecting it's people with a "meaningless" [categorically and in every sense of the word] cause