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Let’s begin by stating the obvious, Nihilism is a philosophical position in which there is no such thing as a metaphysic. What I mean by this, is that most nihilists only accept the material world to be real, thus all truth must begin and end in the material world of atoms and void that we encounter around us on a daily basis. There’s no material evidence for instance, in the existence of an afterlife, a creator God, or gods in general, or even metaphysical realms such as hell. None of these things can be found in the material world of atoms and void, so we can’t take any lessons on meaning from the well-meaning religious folk out there who would like us to be like them. What we can do however, is to study our own lives and think back to our earliest times, to examine our own enduring sense of self, our likes, and dislikes. If you do this for long enough, you’ll soon notice that your egoic sense of self has always remained constant, as constant as the northern star.
Your experiences may have changed, and your perceptions may have altered, but nevertheless you have a part of you that remains unchanged. That’s the real you, the deep down inside you that watches your thoughts and feels your emotions but is separate to them. You are not your thoughts; they are just things that you witness. You are not your feelings they are just mental events that arise out of the body to impinge upon the mind. The deep down inside watcher of your thoughts and emotions, the thing that sees the outside world beyond the skin through your senses doesn’t change at all. Instead, the thing that changes before your sense of I, your egoic centre is your character.
Character is nothing more than a collection of mental and moral qualities that are distinctive to an individual, that’s why everyone’s character is different. We come into the world with our characters fully formed, that’s nature, but it can be changed over time, that’s nurture. Our character is readily responsive to our experiences and learnings. Our character has no choice but to change over time in response to these things. It’s compulsory that our characters develop and change over the course of a lifetime in response to events, challenges, successes, and difficulties that affect us from the external world beyond our skins. As Happy Nihilists we often say, that for there to be a meaning to life, then it would have to be compulsory, in other words there’s no getting from it, universal in the sense that that it is applicable to everyone and obvious once pointed out, making the supposition unquestionably true.
So, let’s have a look…
It’s compulsory that we are born, it’s also compulsory that we too will die, it is also compulsory that our character should change in response to experience across the span of our lives. This seems to suggest that if any meaning to life exists at all then it must be in the development of our characters. Left to ourselves, in a life without philosophy or the willingness to not examine our own lives, to probe the depths of our own minds, then we might conceivably end up with a worse character than what we began with. Does this mean that our life has been a failure or only that we’ve learned something? This is a common fate for many millions of people across the world, and against the span of time.
So, the question that I am asking is, is the development of our characters the hidden metaphysic of materialism, is it the meaning of our lives? Should we leave life as better characters than when we entered it or is it just guff. Do we pursue virtue like the Stoics of old or maximise pleasure whilst minimising pain like their Epicurean counterparts. Is the meaning of life, the pursuit of philosophy? That’s what I am asking…
What is philosophy but the development of one’s own character? As we know from previous learnings everybody goes through a life with some sort of philosophy, it’s often random, cobbled together out of conflicting rules, precepts, concepts and values or the philosophy of the herd, tweaked a bit to justify their preferred behaviours, but nevertheless whether they realise it or not everyone goes through life acting out their own personal philosophy, depending on how this affects us we might deem them to be either good or bad people in a morally relative way, I suppose.
Nietzsche saw the development of one’s own character to be especially important in living a meaningful life. In Nietzsche’s philosophy, the meaning of life is not something that is given or found but something that each individual must create for themselves. He encourages embracing life’s challenges and experiences as opportunities for growth and self-discovery. This perspective places a strong emphasis on personal responsibility, individualism, and the pursuit of excellence in one’s own terms. In other words, that we end life as superior characters that have transcended our prior limitations, what we determine to be good or superior must of course be down to us, in other words that we live authentically.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s emphasizes the idea of actively developing one’s own character as a crucial aspect of life’s meaning. Nietzsche’s concept of the “Übermensch” or “Overman” is central to this idea. The Übermensch is an individual who has overcome the established values and norms of society (which Nietzsche often criticized as the morals of the “herd”) and has created his own values and meaning in life.
Nietzsche’s view on life’s meaning is not about adhering to a predetermined set of rules or morals but rather about the constant process of self-overcoming and self-creation. He believed that individuals should strive to realize their fullest potential and create their own path in life. This process involves challenging and transcending traditional values and beliefs, which Nietzsche saw as limitations to human growth and creativity. In other words, we shape our own characters in a direction of our own choosing, living in a sense, for our own personal gain.
Overall, Nietzsche’s view of the meaning of life is deeply tied to the concept of personal development and the active shaping of one’s own character and destiny.
