Valuation: What It Feels Like

   Now I have been struggling to find a beautiful illustration for why it is nihilism is not to be feared, on the contrary, it should be seen as a beautiful thing. After much pondering I think that I have found it, it is odd but reassuring in a way. For most of my life I have always been of the opinion that "it is not what I feel or think about myself or my work that is what matters, rather it is what others perceive that denotes its worth." And that was just it, this statement applies to all things, including myself, that was what I was missing in my description of beauty for the concept of nihilism. This is not to diminish the concept of self-worth which any individual can and does bestow upon one's self. No, this is rather a realization that even self-worth is something appointed by a thinking mind onto itself and thereby making a thing that would have had no initial value garner the mantle of 'value' by its very own valuation. As such the mind is valuing itself, though it is valueless in and of itself, and thus the value bestowed upon it is firstly of its own narrow individual perspective.

   But here is the beauty, the part that is unique to nihilism in and of itself, for it is one thing for one to value oneself, it is another thing entirely for another to value you, to be seen as valuable by another mind is and should be aw inspiring, to be an object of value to another person, a thing that they view as worthwhile and important to their own existence and happiness. The most powerful words a nihilist can say or can be told are "I love you" or "Happy birthday" or other such life affirming and existence celebrating statements. They push forth the desire for one to exist, the pleasure and joy derived from the presence of another, and the self-imposed/generated valuation that either the observer or the observed can and does place upon the one being valued.

   Nihilism is life celebratory, it should be a thing that creates within us a feeling of gratefulness that we exist at all; that we even can experience consciousness, however brief it is. Yes, all things are for naught cosmically, but this in no way means that the momentary is not beautiful because it does not last forever; on the contrary, the flower is even more beautiful because we know that we cannot appreciate it forever, for if it always stayed in bloom we would find it mundane and average. We mourn the deaths of those we value because we know that no one else is them, they are the only one of themselves that we will ever know and so we bask in their presence in the momentary while we can. Us applying value to others gives them the feeling of being valued, for without our valuation of them they would only have the lonely approximation of themselves to fall back on. And so, all I as a nihilist can say is "Everyday, tell the ones you love that you love them. Say it in passing, say it with a kiss on the cheek, say it before they leave, before they sleep, before you hang up the phone. No one hates to be loved, for love is the greatest act of valuation to be bestowed upon another."

   In a meaningless world divest of intrinsic value, we must settle for the feeble human valuations of our fellows, of our families, of our friends and our lovers. Are they cosmically significant to the universe? No. Do they mean the world to us? Yes. This is the wonder of nihilism, that it makes us equals on the scale, we value and we are valued in turn, there is no cosmic force that values or scorns us, rather it is only us that does that. Saying "I love you" can be a powerful thing under certain circumstances, but so is another thing, a reverse more horrid that hate on a nihilistic framework, the statement of "I wish you had never been born" the ultimate desire for the destruction of all of an individual's personal and collective value; to desire this is to desire both the removal of the value attributed by the self of the individual and the value of all who value said person. This is the most cruel thing to desire under a nihilistic framework, because it desires that even the brief experience of life experienced would have been better without the experience of another; in all possible ways, by all possible people.