Monday, November 28, 2011

Nihilism in a nutshell

Strange is the world
Why should men / Receive life in this world?
Men's lives are as meaningless / As the lives of insects
The terrible folly / Of such suffering
A man lives but / As briefly as a flower / Destined all too soon / To decay into the stink of flesh
Humanity strives / All its days / To sear its own flesh / In the flames of base desire / Exposing itself/ To Fate's Five Calamities / Heaping karma upon karma
All that awaits Man / At the end / Of his travails / Is the stench of rotting flesh / That will yet blossom into flower / Its foul odor rendered / Into sweet perfume /
Oh, fascinating / The life of Man / Oh, fascinating

Ok... so that's depressing. According to the ugly old witch thing in Throne of Blood, that's what the meaning of life is: nothingness. Sound nihilistic?
ni·hil·ism [nahy-uh-liz-uhm], noun
  1. total rejection of established laws and institutions.
  2. anarchy, terrorism, or other revolutionary activity.
  3. total and absolute destructiveness, especially toward the world at large and including oneself: the power-mad nihilism that marked Hitler's last years.
  4. Philosophy
    1. an extreme form of skepticism: the denial of all real existence or the possibility of an objective basis for truth.
    2. nothingness or nonexistence.

Hearing Reading that quote from the movie made me think a little about nihilism and about my favorite image I've ever seen regarding it. Take a second to study it to get a good, visual representation about what it's all about.
I'd be willing to toss some points to anyone who does a writeup about their feelings about nihilism, this picture, etc. Just saying.

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