Stoicism Is Not Nihilism

The label "stoic" is no black mark

To call someone stoic, in modern times, is more a pejorative than a compliment. When we say it, we usually mean to imply that the person is without feeling or emotion. Stoicism doesn't teach us not to have emotion, quite the opposite in fact. Stoicism teaches us, among other things, that a mind ruled by emotion leads to a chaotic life. A chaotic life, in turn, results in an individual being less useful to their community, less contented in themselves, less resilient to the ups and downs of life, and less able to find peace.

So pernicious is the belief that feelings and emotions are antithetical to the precepts of Stoicism, that one of the problems people have with the philosophy is their entirely affected perception that Stoicism is a form of Nihilism. "We can't control anything, so nothing really matters." 

As a Stoic, this fundamental and widespread misunderstanding is frustrating beyond measure. To me it is like thinking banana pudding is bad because it tastes too much of spinach. If you don't like banana pudding, there's nothing wrong with that, but at least base your like or dislike on the actual merits of banana pudding, don't ascribe your aversion to it to qualities that it objectively does not possess.

Nihilism is problematic because of how true it is and how unequipped it leaves its victims

Nihilism, Existentialism, and Absurdism are, perhaps, the worst philosophies to ever be dreamed up. Not because they are wrong, but because they are far too accurate and then go on to provide no solutions for the problems they present.

It is objectively true, as far as any mortal knows, that we die and there is no after life. We live, we die, and then we are forgotten. That is the way of things. 

On mattering.

Humans have psychological tension with the concept of mattering. To many, in order for something or someone to "matter", ultimately, death (at least death without transcendence to another plane of existence) cannot exist.

In the minds of many it is believed that any great thing someone does for humanity will, ultimately, not matter because one day everyone will die. Humanity will go extinct eventually, the universe will collapse in on itself eventually, and all that is more than nothing will be gone forever.

When you tell a human being that life has no inherit, built-in, eternal or god-given purpose, it poses an immense problem for them--best incapsulated in the question "What's the point of existence then?" or the concept of an existential crisis.

These philosophies (Nihilism, Absurdism, et al) simply tell you, the individual human happily living under whatever purpose-delusion you've created for yourself, that all purpose is delusion and nothing truly matters because everything ends.

Friedrich Nietzsche, who was not a Nihilist, warned us of the fallout of this when he said the thing he's most known for saying,

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

This isn't Nietzsche advocating for Nihilism, he's warning us.

We went from placing faith in Gods to placing faith in Institutions, which we are now tearing down to place faith in ever-shrinking ideas of shared identities and ideologies. The next obvious step is to put faith only in our individual selves. 

But how will that work? A planet of people who place faith only in themselves? A planet of people so divorced from the ideas of shared belief, shared culture, shared values, and community... what does that world look like and how could it possibly function to the shared benefit of anyone?

Stoicism isn't a refutation of Nihilism, it's an answer to it.

So we know nothing lasts forever, there's no afterlife, and this is all we've got.

What do we do with that information? Do we check out? Live like hedonists with no care for the future? Do we continue to tear down every last artifice we've used as platforms upon which to scream into the void and defy the truths of Nihilism? Do we give up? Do we sit alone in the darkness, devoid of any delusion of purpose? 

Or could we, instead, do as Stoicism suggests? 

Accept the truth, and build a worthwhile character and world in spite of it.

Not for some egotistical reason like eternal legacy, but because we are here now, right now, feeling things, experiencing things, and existing!

The modern stoic might say, and I would say it too:

"Life matters because it ends. Our time is limited, people will survive us, the suffering of life doesn't end with me, my children will inherit it. My friends children, too. I have barely any time to enjoy the experience of living, or to help others to enjoy it too, or to ensure that experience of living is healthy for the next generation to enjoy it as well. I have chosen to have a duty, a responsibility. It is true that I am but a cog in a great machine of life and death, but if I keep myself oiled and in great working conditions, I can effect every other cog's experience, and the machine's overall output. This isn't why I am here, but it is the thing I choose to do because I have chosen to care." 

This is at the root of the philosophy of Stoicism: that in order to be good citizens, in order to take care of this world and our brothers and sisters in it, be those humans, animals, or ecosystems, we must discipline and shape ourselves into upright examples of living and caring things so that we can be living and caring things.

Everything depends on it.