Philosophy of Nihilism

This duality suggests that sexuality needs to be complemented by another factor. If sexuality is really the core basis of a human life, then so is something else which is its complement, and this is authority, which will be detailed below.

To understand the importance of sexuality in human duality, we need to analyse consciousness from the perspective of change and stability. Why is this? Because this analysis will show us the true function of sexuality. To understand the deep effects of change and stability on consciousness we need to consider again the effects of reincarnation on the process of ego building that the young infant has to do.

When the new infant is born on Earth it has no conscious ego, only a subconscious one. It has to create a new ego, and the primary agents responsible for this are the previous ego, now subconscious, plus the new parents. This process enables the ego to change with each new incarnation, yet still maintain continuities with the previous achievements and previous characters of past lives.

But this flexibility has its dark side which past thinkers, whether Western or Eastern, appear never to have noticed. It creates a source of pain at the centre of a person’s being, and this pain becomes a potent source of conflict within the person. As each new infant is born on Earth it carries within it the pain of the previous egos (the egos of past lives), now locked into the state of subconsciousness. Though a previous ego, now subconscious, can make its influence felt to the child, nevertheless it can never again achieve full consciousness. This is its pain. This pain cannot be shared with anyone. I call this kind of pain, which affects the person’s core being, by the term psychic pain.

Psychic pain is different from psychological pain, such as depression, or physical body pain. I use a computer analogy. Psychological pain is like a fault with the software on a computer. Whereas psychic pain is like a defect in the hardware of the computer itself, in its physical structure rather than in its coding, so the computer cannot function effectively. So the analogy is between the structure of consciousness and the structure of a computer.

This psychic pain creates nihilism, or the sense of meaninglessness of life, at the subconscious core of each new ego. Nihilism is a well of ever-lasting pain, a well from which the person can only draw sorrow. Nihilism is a well of sorrow. A well from which you can only draw sorrow. This is the bleakest region of consciousness, where hope does not exist.

This pain is not self-evident, since most people do not regularly experience deep distress for any prolonged period of time. So nihilism sleeps in the subconscious mind. However, when a person experiences some tragedy in life, the feeling of meaninglessness often rises into full consciousness – this indicates that nihilism is no longer sleeping but is now openly affecting the person.

As a person evolves over countless lifetimes and refines his character, so the pain of subconsciousness becomes ever more influential. And it is this pain that drives the evolved person into the desire for solitude.

This psychic pain is not produced by any individual person, and so there is no one to blame for it. For the ordinary person there are two familiar consequences: he either deadens any awareness of this pain by becoming excessively dependent on social support networks, or he acts out his pain by becoming violent and socially disruptive. Whereas for the sensitive person who is interested in spiritual matters, the pain can produce two other consequences. It either drives the seeker onto his spiritual quest, the quest for meaning, or it destroys the sense of the sacred. In this latter case, no thing has any more meaning or value than any other thing: meaning effectively evaporates. I experienced the former consequence first and then the latter one. As a result I changed many of my ideas and beliefs about spirituality, and I lost the sense of wonder.

I felt this pain in my 50s, when I was going through a long period (many years) of deep distress; the distress increased my sensitivity sufficiently so that I was able to detect this pain. As usual in times of distress I rely solely on myself and do not use any social support networks, and so the distress of this period was of maximum intensity. I felt this pain as though it were the anguish of a child that can never be born. I carry a child within me, a child that is locked into eternal pain.

Primary Effects of Nihilism

The psychic pain can cause several effects and beliefs to arise, some of which can be:

Primary Beliefs

The ego can embrace nihilism in two ways. It can be one with the pain, experiencing the sadness of it, and thus identify with the traditional spiritual journey. The pain and the loneliness become the only companions to the seeker in the solitude of his solitary journey. Or it can accept the joy arising from the dissolution of all meaning, and thus the dissolution of all moral boundaries. The previous egos are locked into the rigid boundaries of subconsciousness; as a compensation, the new ego escapes into the joy of fewer boundaries.

The newly-created ego of the infant emerges from the nihilism within its core by creating two primary beliefs. Its future character rests upon these beliefs that it creates for itself as its response to that nihilism. All major beliefs in the adult must rest upon a foundation of primary beliefs. These primary beliefs will be unknown to the conscious mind of the adult, and are so powerful that they can only be identified (and possibly changed) during a time of deep crisis, when the person becomes engulfed by nihilism once more. In other words, to identify them we have to be plunged back into the condition that created them.

What are these primary beliefs? There are two of them, and they give rise to the responses of the sadness and the joy. The two beliefs have opposite effects and so the emotions that drive them must form a binary (that is, complementary) relation. One belief emphasises psychological weakness, and hence the ego requires support. The other belief emphasises psychological strength, and hence the ego acquires importance. The emotions that underlie the beliefs are self-pity and vanity.

Self-pity and vanity do form a binary pair, and so the two primary beliefs are support is needed (underlying emotion is self-pity), and importance is good (underlying emotion is vanity). [¹]

Weakness has to be supported; this leads the self-pity to transform into the self-pity mode of jealousy (since neither self-pity alone nor the self-pity mode of guilt can act as a support). The jealousy enables the ego to focus on sensuality, which is now felt to be exciting. And the most exciting form of sensuality is sexuality. Sexuality becomes the support that the ego is searching for.

Importance has to be displayed and proved. The underlying vanity transforms into the vanity mode of pride. Now the ego focuses on control and domination; this accentuates its importance into greatness.

These beliefs enable the ego to base its character on the twin pursuits of sensuality and greatness. In this way, nihilism is buried and the adult ego can plead ignorance of its existence within him.

Sexuality and Authority

The two ways of embracing nihilism give rise to two profound effects, which are two permanent and primary mental structures within consciousness. Mental structures are ways of organising the mind into sets of significant beliefs, with each structure producing a fixed state of mind on one or more issues. One of the primary structures is static and stable, and the other one is dynamic and changeable. The reason for these structures is that the pain needs to be both contained and expressed. The static structure contains the pain, and the dynamic structure allows for the expression of it.

Sadness leads to the containment of the pain. The fundamental manifestation of this containment is the creation of sexual structure.

The joy of amorality leads to the expression of the pain. The fundamental manifestation of this expression is the creation of attitudes to authority and the political manner of understanding life. This is how control and domination are explored. In my usage of the term “political”, I mean the way of using power in all of one’s relationships, whether family, social, sexual, religious, political, etc. Call this authority structure.

Sexuality and politics are necessary forms of human life, since from them all else flows. They are complementary ways of handling the unknown.

Sexuality is created as stable structure in order to contain nihilism.
Politics is created as dynamic structure in order to express nihilism.

Freud’s duality of sexuality and aggression is basically correct. When aggression is channelled into group activities, such as politics, it becomes structured into hierarchies of authority.

The egos of the past have learned to handle nihilism by splitting it into two departments, those of sexuality and politics. This method is a way of providing a dialogue between stability and change, a dialogue between a stable structure and a dynamic structure. In this dialogue, sexuality and politics mix together, yet are still separate. This method enables the ego to meet the reality of Earth life, a reality that mixes stability and change.

Both structures are necessary. If the ego focused solely on dynamism and domination, then if it lost its power struggles it would lose everything. If the ego focused solely on stability then it would gain nothing when new opportunities arise. Hence the patterns of evolution are always dialogues between stability and change.

Nihilism brings with it the questions of meaning and purpose. Sexuality contains nihilism since it usually directs the person to seek meaning within marriage and social groupings instead of within oneself. Politics and power become the ways to manage nihilism: the person sets up ideals that he wants to achieve.

Sexuality creates meaning. Politics creates purpose. But as the pain of nihilism intensifies its grip over the mature person, so sexuality and politics lose their power over him. Meaning and purpose are sought elsewhere – up to the twentieth century, “elsewhere” usually meant the traditions of religions and meditation. However, this will change in the present century as new ideas about human evolution emerge. The person will turn within himself to allow new forms of self-exploration and self-expression to become mainstream.

Parallel to and complementary to the search for meaning and purpose, the two basic structures begin to change as well, especially in times of fast social change.

The primary static mental structure in people is sexual structure. This structure can be split into two parts, those of sexual identity and sexual orientation. Sexual identity is how the person feels about himself/herself. Sexual orientation is who the person likes to have sex with.

Traditionally sexual identity has been seen as the division into male and female. So, for example, before the twentieth century, a basic aim for most people was to have a traditional sexual relationship in life. This gave their life a deep sense of meaning. However, sexual structure has its variations, oscillating between traditional forms and ambiguous forms. In low-stress societies, a person is usually satisfied with exploring non-ambiguous sexuality. In high-stress societies, sexual structure becomes ambiguous.

In the traditional form of sexuality, man is masculine and woman is feminine: this can be called traditional sexual identity. The traditional sexual orientation was heterosexuality (homosexuality and bisexuality often being socially unacceptable). Traditional sexual structure does not often produce social conflict. In such societies, conflict is usually over forms of authority rather than forms of sexuality.

However, in high-stress societies, these choices are no longer sufficient. As the stress level rises, so correspondingly the subconscious mind becomes more active. In particular, the subconscious nihilism is activated and begins to make itself felt as it stimulates all other subconscious discontents.

Childhood trauma occurs when the parents or other adults transfer some of their stresses to the child. If the stresses are intense enough, they stimulate the child’s latent nihilism sufficiently to produce trauma. In low-stress societies, childhood trauma will probably be less prevalent and less intense. However, high-stress societies mean that the parents are under much greater stress and so trauma is much more likely to occur and will be more intense. Trauma always indicates the subconscious influence of nihilism.

If the child has a good upbringing in its early years then the stable creation of sexual structure contains and restrains nihilistic pain. But if the child experiences traumatic relationships with its parents or other significant adults (either in the present life or in a recent past life) then there always exists a channel between the ordinary consciousness and the nihilistic pain of subconsciousness. It is this pain that can undermine sexual structure (that is, sexual “normality”). Hence the person may be driven to change some psychological aspects of his/her sexuality in order to try to keep nihilism out of the ordinary consciousness.

Primary structures give rise to secondary structures. Secondary sexual structure focuses on the balance between masculinity and femininity in each person. Each person needs to find the balance that is right for him or her. This balance is what defines the sexual identity of the person. In the past, when adherence to social mores and conventions mattered most, an acceptable sexual identity meant that the man could only be masculine and the woman could only be feminine. The high stresses of modern times are changing this polarity.

When primary sexual structure becomes undermined, then sexual identity begins to change. The change occurs because traditional sexual choices have to be augmented, since they no longer enable a person to fulfil his or her unfolding needs. Now different permutations of sexual identity become available, even though they often cause social conflict. Gender comes on the scene. The man may want to be feminine, or the woman masculine. When sexual identity changes, it turns into gender identity. I list four of the main forms of gender identity. This is slowly changing as people seek new ways to define themselves.

For someone with a male body, “he” can feel that “he” is, or can identify as –

[ I have left out other forms of gender since this article was written around 2015, when other forms had less visibility than they have now. Personally, I am transgender].

The person changes his/her sexual identity till eventually the new one can contain the pain of nihilism. In other words, the need to change sexual identity results from the activity of nihilistic influences in the subconscious mind. After some sexual exploration, the person will eventually settle with an identity that minimises his psychological distress and ensures that the nihilism will once again stay buried in the subconscious mind. The person has attained a new sexual balance.

The sexual identity that is subconsciously selected by any person is one that will best contain the nihilism for him or her. Sexual identity has become the product of personal choice.

Over the course of time, societies oscillate between being low-stress and high-stress. High-stress societies produce many forms of sexual identity. Once society passes the crises that face it, and gradually returns to being a low-stress society once again, so eventually tradition (even though it is now a new tradition) returns to its central position of influence. Gender loses some of its importance; only the most important will remain. Sexual identities may return to being just a few important forms until the next period of prolonged high-stress occurs.

The primary dynamic structure in people is the creation of attitudes to authority and the political manner of understanding and organising life. Politics is the way that power is expressed, whether in a nation, a society, a group, or in the family. The first expression of politics leads to the doctrine of “might is right”. The powerlessness of oneself is hidden from view by seeking to establish power over others. The first refinement of this doctrine produces chivalry, or the belief that “nobility is right”. Then religion refines it into the belief that “character is right”.

Under the influence of nihilism a person may become amoral. Hostile and rebellious attitudes to political and social forms of authority allow nihilistic influences to be expressed. When such influences are widespread and intense, then we witness social movements like rebellion and revolution, or mass emigration to a new land in order to have a new beginning with fewer restrictions.

The two effects of static sexual structure and dynamic political structure are the two primary derivatives of nihilism. They enable a person to handle both a static society and a society that is undergoing change. In order to change, the prevailing political traditions (ways of using and expressing power) need to be challenged. In contrast, in order to stay the same, each person can seek either social support (especially through sexual relationships) or focus on control and management of his relationships.

After their creation, then these derivatives are developed and expanded to give rise to secondary derivatives, those of religion, architecture, ethics, science, etc. Hence the secondary derivatives produce the culture of a society and a nation.

Verifying Primary Structures

Can it be verified that the two primary structures are indeed primary? Yes, but the conditions have to be right for the analysis. To be able to do the analysis, the person has to develop an acute degree of sensitivity to his subconscious mind. This is only likely to occur after the consistant practice of psycho-analysis over many years. I indicate the empirical results of my own psycho-analysis.

When an adult person is under deep distress (being emotionally upset at the subconscious level of mind), then if he keeps himself emotionally neutral (at the conscious level of mind) and refrains from making judgements on what he is experiencing, he can observe all his repertoire of standard responses.

As he observes his distress, the first to make themselves felt will be emotions of fear, or resentment, or anger. Acknowledging this response and putting it to one side, other responses come. Soon he will feel some form of mental violence and self-pity, often allied with hostile attitudes towards authority. The mental violence, as an unskilful form of self-assertion, is often a response to self-pity. Patterns of violence create volatile, unsteady structures in the mind, whereas attitudes to authority form steady, dynamic structures.

When these structures, whether unstable or dynamic, are probed deeply enough then sexual patterns are found to lie underneath. Hence when the person has rejected all his usual responses of violence, self-pity and attitudes to authority then his sexual responses appear. Sexual patterns are more stable than patterns of either violence or authority.

Then when sexual patterns are probed deeply enough, nothing is found to lie underneath except the pain and the nothingness of nihilism.

Such an analysis as this is only possible when all the conditions are right for it: deep distress over a long period of time, deep concentration, acute sensitivity, acute discernment, acute self-awareness. So I suspect that very few people will be able to duplicate this analysis.

Creating Meaning and Purpose

Does the pain of nihilism serve any useful purpose? My answer is Yes. Nihilism gives rise to the development of moral and ethical codes over the course of time. Most people prefer to pursue happiness rather than ethics. We have seen in the late twentieth century, when affluence has come to a large section of the Western world, that freely available happiness and freedom from pain do not necessarily lead to moral improvement, or even to morality at all. And ethical philosophy is unpopular. Whereas in hard times, moral codes tend to be promulgated and ethical theorising is often top of the philosophical agenda.

The deduction from these trends is that only psychological pain and sorrow lead to ethical development. Society goes through periods of hard times and easy times. When life is hard, a hard morality is promulgated and becomes rigid. When life is easy, nihilism sleeps and so morality becomes softer and flexible in order to meet the new values and standards produced in the new social conditions. I see the process as the induction of a narrow morality in hard times, followed by the broadening and maturing of that morality in easy times. Or, as I like to put it, in easy times morality is brought up-to-date.

In the 1960s era of sexual freedoms and new lifestyles, sexual values changed, but not always for the better. So we see that in easy times some of the new values are naïve or pretentious, though they seem to be good at the time. The 1970s period of reaction sorted out the new values, kept some and rejected others, leaving only what society really needed. So in my view of social evolution, society goes through easy times in order to broaden its values, and then the following period of hard times sifts the new values and removes what is not needed. The next period of easy times leads to values that are more mature than the previous period of easy times, and the following period of hard times leads to a narrower morality that is still more mature than the morality of the previous hard times. Hence social evolution is a zigzag process, now two steps forward towards an improved morality, then one step backwards to a more realistic morality, then another two steps forward afterwards, etc.

Human evolution is always a process. There can never be a true golden age on Earth. If a golden age did indeed come tomorrow then we would merely polish our virtues; our failings would not be affected. Quite likely we would not even recognise that we had failings, since these are only made visible by sorrow. A golden age removes any motivation to change our basic psychology. Overall, goodness supplies the basis of stability, whereas badness supplies the incentive to change. Without conflict, people will not evolve. Conflict is essential to evolution, just as essential as peace. And the conditions of conflict are provided by the nihilism at the core of the person’s being.

Nihilism creates the sense of meaninglessness. As the person tries to make sense of life, so eventually he has to realise that he has to create his own meanings, and his own sense of purpose. He has to create his own identity, his own purpose for living, his own understanding of what life means, his own way of achieving harmony. He faces the obstacles of determinism, confusion, self-deception and social conflict.

Some thinkers believe that each person can create his/her own reality. This is not my view, since it doesn’t take into account the activities of the subconscious mind. Instead, my view is that though the person cannot create his/her own reality, nevertheless he/she can create their own meanings and purposes.

Nihilism represents the dark side of consciousness, and yet it contains nuggets of truth within it. Truth about reality can never be complete if only the nice aspects of it are analysed. My understanding of nihilism is my own perspective, based on my own experiences. My views are the result of analysing deep sorrow over a period of a quarter of a century.

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Ian Heath
London, UK

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.	The Well of Sorrow Freud explored neurosis, and at first believed that sexual problems were the basis of the various forms of it. Later he switched to a dualistic exploration, examining the conflict between sexuality and aggression. Freud did turn to philosophy as a means of explaining the origins of some psychological issues, as I also did. Philosophy lies deeper in me than it did in Freud, so there are some major differences between the two of us, as well as some major agreements. From a philosophical perspective we live in a dualistic world of reality. The result of this duality is that everything significant in reality is dual in its “nature”. This applies to consciousness just as it does to everything else. Consciousness is dual or binary, and this duality can be expressed in a few different ways, depending on the focus of interest of a thinker.
Sub - Headings
Primary Effects of Nihilism
Primary Beliefs
Sexuality and Authority
Verifying Primary Structures
Creating Meaning and Purpose
References