I thought I found mouse poop on the kitchen table today. It was just dirt I had probably brought in from outside. Grandma is going on a trip again, so I have the little doggy at work with me today. I’ve been informed that I will be sued if he doesn’t get all the cuddles he’s used to.

I’m thinking about what I need to keep up with all the coursework I’m trying to do. I like online courses and I sign up for them, but I’m not a great online learner. Never have been. You need people for learning. We learn in groups. This is why most MDivs or any quality philosophical study is in person.

Default operating system

One of the worst outcomes, I think we’ve seen culturally in the last 50 years, is the acceptance of nihilism in our being. It is a deep well of accepting meaninglessness as the state of life. I can remember as a young girl raised on the internet, I found this concept of nihilism and thought it was like some guiding light. I was just fascinated by it because it gave a word to something I was already experiencing.

My dad had us on a computer as early as we could. I was 6. My sister might have been younger. Her on a MAC and me on a PC. Who’s using what operating system hasn’t changed. The computer room was in Dad’s office. I don’t even remember much of what I did on the computer that early on. I can remember using Limewire, though. I was always torrenting music. Hilary Duff and Aaron Carter.

I had a few computer games I loved. Barbie Genie and School House Rock! I can still sing the ‘Interjections’ song.

Consumer technology was moving so fast at that point. I had a new phone every year. Games were improving. Game systems were coming out. We moved from VHS to DVD. We saw iPods go from big to small. From flip phones and only number keys to that sleek big screen. By 15, Bitcoin was out, and the dark web was a thing you could search if you could find any interesting link on Reddit. It was incredibly exciting and addictive. My parents both worked in technology. My dad is an engineer, so they thought they were giving us the best of the best, and getting on tech early was an advantage. It probably was, but looking back, I think this cult of technology replaced the budding need for spiritual development and value systems.

And when you don’t make a deliberate, active choice about what value system you are accepting in the world, or living by, you will adopt the one that is given to you. You will get the default operating system.

At the time I was raised, I think the default operating system was obviously in things like the public school system, but more than that was hidden in computers, phones, and screens. These things that we were both enthralled by but had no foresight or insight into what it was doing to our being.

And the default value system embedded in our technology was of the VOID. Was fucking both nothing and everything. Was information and consumption without integration. Was about speed and passivity. Stay awhile and just be with me. Don’t leave, I could have something exciting to show you, like a squirrel on a bike. What could the void show you today? And all you had to do was feed it with your attention and time. There has been nothing in the history of humans that has done that to us besides the extent to which our technology today has and still does.

Nihilism and technology

There are many scholars talking about the connection between technology and nihilism. Following Nietzsche, Gertz argues that today’s “ascetic priesthood” isn’t a group of monks in robes but the technology industry itself.

The “ascetic priesthood” isn’t about literal priests only, it’s anyone who takes on the role of managing people’s suffering by giving it a story, a meaning, or a distraction. In Nietzsche’s eyes, this was the Church’s role for centuries.

Gertz updates it for today and says it’s the ones who shape our devices, apps, and feeds. Their power is subtle, and it works through five tactics Nietzsche once named: self-hypnosis, mechanical activity, petty pleasures, herd instinct, and orgies of feeling. Together, these tactics numb us, distract us, and keep us from facing the harder work of building a value system of our own.

Nietzsche never talked about nihilism as needing another moniker like passivity, though. But Gertz introduced that that’s what we get in the modern age. This kind of nihilism that’s exceptionally defined by passivity.

And passive nihilism is about not taking responsibility for what you believe, but accepting whatever values society hands you. And if you just take what society gives you, well, look around. Society is sick. It is troubled. If you think the culture and governement and society generally is good, then sure, you’ll take it as it is and nothing is wrong. But if you know it’s not, then the burden falls on you to choose something better.

Nietzsche called nihilism the great crisis of Western culture: the collapse of God, of absolute truth, of any foundation that once held meaning in place. He didn’t invent nihilism either. He diagnosed it. Similarly to the way the Indigenous people diagnosed it when they saw Westerners, too. When they saw us, they called us “spiritually sick”.

Nietzsche saw a Europe where Christianity was fading, where rationality wasn’t enough to ground life, and where people drifted. His warning was that if we didn’t face this void honestly and create new values, we’d rot into apathy and despair. He wasn’t celebrating when he said, “God is dead.” He was sounding the alarm. His challenge was to move through nihilism without being destroyed by it. To become creators of value rather than victims of collapse.

The Übermensch, his figure of strength, was his answer: someone who affirms life even without guarantees. Eternal recurrence was the test he left us with, which is the question of: would you live your life again, exactly as it is, for eternity? If the answer is no, then the work begins.

The wisdom is in the body

Nietzsche said nihilism wasn’t the end: it’s the crossroads. That it actually gives us the opportunity to be cracked open. And with that, you’re forced to create, to build new values out of the rubble.

And that’s what I find too. The void asks us to move through it. The void is the space of transformation when we decide to swim forward. But, you have to say, I don’t like where I am, and I want something else.

Our culture is in the void. And what it means is that we have to return to meaning when most of our lives are locked in front of a screen that keeps us still in a chair or in a trance state on the couch.

And we can take this weird period in human life and culture as a gift. Being in the void shows us a lot. We can be grateful for what we’re learning about ourselves here. For actually, how critical meaning and value are to healthy lives in bodies here on earth.

For one, it shows us how important trance states are for human life. If you weren’t in front of a screen in a trance for, I bet, most of your day, you would still need some of it. And guess how people previously got it? Prayer. Meditation. Church service. Singing. Art making. Speaking with God in a sacred space.

It’s the loss of embodiment. Healing nihilism starts first through embodiment.

Embodiment being the practice of actually living inside your body. Feeling, even thinking, instead of hovering above life in your head. It’s being present enough to notice the rhythm of your breath, the way your shoulders tense when you’re holding back words, or how your chest opens when you feel joy. It’s being with the subtleties of life. It’s spirit showing up in flesh and feeling that wave of sensation move through you. It’s ideas grounding themselves in muscle and bone.

When you believe something you know to be true you really feel it. You don’t have to do mental backflips and language sudoku to find truth. To be embodied is to stop outsourcing your life to a passive state of being and to let your body be the place where reality is felt, known, and expressed. The wisdom is in the body.

A lot of therapy talks about embodiment. Get in the body. Get in the body. For a long time I didn’t understand what that meant. I’m in my fucking body what do you want me to do? But it’s not about doing anything. It’s about being with the world. It’s not about forcing presence, but feeling, when you actively notice, that life feels fucking good. Actually, really fucking good.

When you lose your connection to that, movement not only helps but is ESSENTIAL. Walking, stretching, dancing. Slowing down helps too. Chewing your food 30 times before swallowing, letting silence rise instead of filling it with noise. And honesty helps most of all: telling the truth, even to yourself, about what you feel and what you see. Embodiment is really the art of aliveness. Of finding joy in every moment that you’re alive, because the body you live in is the sacred vessel to experience it from.

And technology, in my thesis, has disconnected us from this fundamental experience. And in that, we’ve replaced being with the world for being with the void. And in the void, there is no meaning, no purpose, no joy. It’s mostly erotic, but that’s for another day.

In the world, there is everything, and you get to be with that incredible, brilliant, beautiful magic, and it’s been my journey to come back to that, and it’s one that I see a lot of the rest of the world deeply needs.

Love,
Val