09 Sep Nihilism Wreaks Havoc on Mental Health, the Antidote Is Joy
I don’t know about you but there are definitely times when I wonder … what’s the point?!?!
If I spend too much time reading or watching news, I can come to focus too much on all that’s wrong.
And there’s no doubt there are problems in the world; but there are also solutions and good people doing good things and pleasures and … reasons to be happy!
Happiness, in fact, is the answer to this pessimism and nihilism and if you’d like to understand more, check out this Psychology Today article by Charles Harper Webb …
KEY POINTS
- It can be hard to find purpose and meaning in a world where traditional sources have been rendered, for many people, null and void.
- The physical sensation of being alive is what, in English, we call joy.
- When we experience joy, the meaning of life becomes self-evident.
- All schools of psychotherapy seek to remove blockages to the life-force, and increase the client’s joy in being alive.
The great novelist Dostoyevsky saw clearly that, “If there is no God, everything is permitted.” He saw, too, that this proposition led directly to the hell of nihilism: anarchy, rage, destruction, despair, and not just suicide, but mass murder and genocide.
If Moses invented the Ten Commandments, they are, as the joke goes, simply ten suggestions. If there is no Supreme Being checking up on us, rules of behavior have no authority beyond what can be suggested by wisdom, or imposed by force. There is no heaven to strive toward, no eternal flames to avoid, no Absolute Goodness to be our guide.
Life under these conditions can seem the tiniest achoo in an incomprehensible emptiness. In such a world, devoid of meaning, and from which we’re doomed to exit painfully, motivation may well be in short supply.
Neurologist, psychiatrist, and philosopher Viktor Frankl wrote Man’s Search for Meaning after surviving four Nazi death camps, noting that prisoners who found purpose and meaning in their lives were more likely to survive than those who didn’t. Yet where is meaning to be found, if our lives are simply pain-filled blips in infinite space-time?
To anyone who finds an answer that works for them, bravo. There is, however, one answer so simple it’s easy to overlook. The physical sensation of being alive—the feeling evoked by the free-flowing of what has been called the “life-force”—is, I’m convinced, what we humans know as joy. Friedrich Schiller, author of “Ode to Joy,” was one of many poets who have sensed this to be true. The more powerfully the life-force flows, the greater the joy. When that life-force is impeded—by psychopathology, or disease, or villainy, or just bad luck—we feel sorrow, suffering, pain...
… keep reading the full & original article HERE