Digital Nihilism – Improving the Ride
Life’s just a ride.
For most of human history, humans were incapable of destroying the species or the planet as a whole. This has changed in the 21st century, and the human species has a wide variety of means that can possibly lead to its complete and utter annihilation. We can refer to these possible annihilation scenarios as fail states. From there, it is easy to see the system of human development that will lead to each fail state.
1. Mass extinction through nuclear war – the end result of our attachment to the practice of military conflict as a means of determining resources distribution in the face of scarcity.
2. Mass extinction through planetary death – the end result of our attachment to commercial and financial systems as a means of determining resources distribution in the face of scarcity.
3. Mass extinction through exhausting of resources – the end result of our failure to continue exploration and advancement into unknown territories to find new sources of necessary resources
4. Mass extinction through revolutionary upheaval – the end result of attachment to financial systems that stretch the equity coefficient beyond what humans will accept, leading to revolution and destruction of the elite and the machinery necessary to distribute resources at scale
Any of these fail states, and more, it’s plain to see, are caused by a combination of two things: scarcity, and our attachment to systems intended to deal with scarcity that no longer work at the scale to which the human race has evolved. Thus, it’s plain to see that we must cease our attachment to systems which result in an endpoint of mass death and recognize that these systems are fictional, invented by humans, enacted due to tradition, and what matters is and should always be human life (the cessation of suffering), and not the preservation of systems that no longer serve their intended purpose.
We must recognize the purpose of each of these embedded systems and their relation to human nature, practical application, and embeddedness in daily life (who is profiting from their existence and would face significant disruption from their alteration).
As nihilists, we recognize that any of these systems are perfectly reasonable ways for the human race to develop. To prioritize militarism and go out in a blaze of glory or to prioritize consumerism and hollow out the planet and die rich may both very well be hilarious and satisfying endings to the human story. This is what the grand competition of values entails.
We are no longer bound by the paternalism of authority. We can be anything we wish, which is in our nature, and actualize any future for ourselves that we want. That is the truth of nihilism. If we choose to blow ourselves to bits, so be it. The story of the human race will play out however we choose it to play out, however we harness to tools of individuality and collectivism, our mastery over technology, our capacity for communication – we choose our own ending. Shall it be 1984? Star Trek? Snowpiercer? What would you like? It is all possible, but if we don’t decide, we will get one by default, and the default we are looking at is not so appealing, except perhaps to the ardent absurdist, because it results in mass death, or what the simulation theorist might call ‘game over’.
Here is what a true nihilist should say: life’s just a ride and it should be the best ride ever. The most fun, fulfilling experience a being could ever possibly have, so full of wonder and possibility and every emotion and color and freedom imaginable and free from as much consequence possible. It should be beyond our wildest dreams, supportive and full of love, expansive and surprising, full of romance, thrills, chills, shocks and awes and should last forever and never get old. It should be free for everyone and equally available to all. If we’re going to be hurtling through the endless void, and should there be a deity, it should return and be in utter amazement of the mindblowing paradise that we’ve developed, built from imagination and ingenuity, like the finest theme park to ever exist. It should be a place where everyone can live out their wildest dreams, ridiculous as they are, with all the stakes that they want, where all the futures are possible at once and simultaneously impossible to ruin any other.
That. That is what Digital Nihilism is. A world of pure imagination.
So how do we achieve such a radical notion? Such a radical target? This, our key goal, improving the ride, can be subdivided into its component goals: Deep Space Colonization, World Peace, Radical Self-Expression, Autonomy Over Time & Freedom of Access, and Breaking Reality With Advanced VR. We have to keep in mind that life’s just a ride.
