The Cowardice Of Nihilism

G. K. Chesterton wrote, “It is foolish, generally speaking, for a philosopher to set fire to another philosopher in Smithfield market because they do not agree in their theory of the universe. That was done very frequently in the Middle Ages, and it failed altogether in its object. But there is one thing that is infinitely more absurd and unpractical than burning a man for his philosophy. This is the habit of saying that his philosophy does not matter. And this is done universally in the twentieth century.”

               This is a strange age indeed. The world has been turned on its head. The logical man is seen as unprogressive. The man of firm beliefs is seen as narrow minded. The orthodox man is seen as a bigot. Now is the age of feelings. Beliefs have been sacrificed at the altar of inclinations and proclivities. The weeds of Nihilism are overrunning the garden of thought, and the decay of past fruit weighs thick on the air.

               All too often I will hear someone say, “Oh, he is really religious”; as if there was another way to truly be one thing or another. A phrase such as this carries an obvious negative connotation. It is as if they are saying, “I don’t mind if somebody believes something, so long as they don’t actually believe it.” What nonsense. They might as well say “Pink is a running hammer.” We are a generation so removed from truth our language begins to resemble an extended MadLib.

               Nihilism is nothing more than a closet in which cowards hide. We are too scared to stand firm in orthodoxy. It takes guts. It takes grit. It takes real man, of which we are currently running a shortage. The orthodox man, the man who is “really this” or “really that” will always seem absurd in the eyes of the world. That is because he stands firm while the world whips by him, foolishly following trends, only to abandon them for the next trend and the next fad. The orthodox man has “based all his brilliancy and solidity upon the hackneyed, but yet forgotten, fact that truth is stranger than fiction.”

               Truth, by necessity, must be stranger than fiction. For fiction, lies, deceit are made by the hands of men, but truth is divine. Man always knows his own ways better than he knows the way of the Divine. As Aquinas wrote, “God is an infinitely knowable.”

               In this age, men say that another man’s philosophy does not matter. It does not matter if he is an Aristotelian or a Hegelian or a Nietzschean. But is this how we live? A man’s philosophy may state that “Life is not worth living.” But we take this statement in the same way we would react to him saying he prefers coffee to tea. “And yet if that utterance were believed, the world would stand on its head. Murderers would be given medals for saving men from life; firemen would be denounced for keeping men from death; poison would be used as medicine; doctors would be called in when people were well…” One might profess to be a Nihilist, but their every action bellies their espoused belief.

               George Bernard Shaw described this condition by saying, “That the golden rule is that there is no golden rule.” Besides the fact that such a statement is pragmatically unrealistic (as shown above) it is devastating to the artistic and cultural progress of humanity. When nothing can be believed for certain, anything goes. And when ANYTHING goes NOTHING is shocking.

               For something to be shocking it must violate a rule or a standard that one holds to be true. When nothing is true, art can no longer be shocking. We have tried to make it shocking. We have placed toilets in museums and called it art, but does that carry nearly the same thunder as the shockwaves felt when we contemplate the hand of God reaching out to touch that of mans? Can we find in Andy Warhol or Picasso anything more shocking or defiant than Satan’s rejection of God? Or Peter’s denial of Christ? Or the grandure of the incarnation and resurrection? Modern art has the seemingly unlimited freedom because of its nihilism, but this freedom has also defanged the artist. The artist is left with no bite. Defiance is pathetic and lonely when there is no one to defy.

               This nihilistic generation is like Alice, forever trapped in wonderland. We speak a language that was designed to convey truth but now blathers out pure nonsense. The modern, progressive man says, “Let us leave all these arbitrary standards and embrace liberty.” This is logically rendered, “Let us not decide what is good, but let it be considered good not to decide it.” (Chesterton) He says, “Neither in religion or morality my friend, lie the hopes of the race, but in education.” This clearly expressed, means, “We cannot decide what is good, but let us give it to our children.”

                                         I give in. They are correct. Pink is a running hammer.