¶ Reflections on Work and Nihilism
But you know , when I , when I've worked in Target , coles and Cheesecake Factory , there's always a small amount of the big three . We called it the big three , and you know what ? Cheesecake Factory , visit our Patreon . You were the best out of all of them . So all these critiques are not for you . Cheesecake Factory , we love you .
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G . But you know , there's a moment we have to make a final fifth category on the Patreon . That's just like the Cheesecake .
Factory tier .
Cheesecake Factory .
Cheesecake Factory tier . But when I'm talking to someone who's been there for years and I don't want to say this in any sort of condescending way , but I'm like this really is bullshit . The way that they push us to the limit , the way that they're , you know , the managers are always flying by , being like don't you care about the customer ?
I'm like I don't know them from Adam . Why in the world I care about these people who are so rude to me all the time ? And when I'm talking to someone , I'm like , yeah , this is really ridiculous . And you know , they respond just like you know , yeah , no , but this is what we do here . This is what makes Cheesecake Factory .
So I mean , I'm sorry , this is what McColl's so amazing . And it's really disconcerting because it's like I thought we were playing a different game here that you know we solved the contingency .
You're not seeing yourself as a team member , see , will , you're not an employee , you're on a team . When you're on a team , you have a common objective , a common end , a common purpose that you should assimilate yourself to .
Okay , this is a perfect hinge . This is a perfect hinge right , because she says that , like it's the disappointment , you try to take things seriously and you realize that , in much the way you're describing Will , it's bullshit . And this is where the serious man turns over into the next form , the next figure , which is the nihilist .
Oh the black pill .
The black pill , right ? You take that doom pill and say no , no values are at all meaningful , all of it is nonsense . There's nothing here to be found at all . The game of seriousness was a trick all along and so nothing has any value and could ever have any value . I think this is the our third form here . And then what does this person end up doing ?
But as she describes like this is just like your petty anarchist sewing disorder , right ? You know , anytime someone says that something matters or means anything , they come along and go no , it doesn't . And overturn the apple cart .
Yeah , you start to hate earnestness like earnestness yeah .
I'd like to think of this . You know this character type since we're trying to come with examples this is definitely will circa 17 18 years old you know , I just finished reading iron rands at least shrugged .
Yeah , I did .
I .
Only one that that never happened to .
Fire .
I actually don't know how much of a radical you can be . Oh , and if you haven't gone through an iron ran period when you realize that everyone for me I might be dialectical truth to that .
Oh my god would it be crazy if we read like the fountain head for the podcast .
Again . I spent so much time reading those two thousand dog shit pages . She's a terrible pro stylist . It's the worst philosophy ever . Hey , you know iron rands epistemology is A is a yeah , you know things because you can know stuff with reason . So just try that that's . It's not objectivism Go it's objectivism , it's good , it's pretty strong .
We gotta have an episode , yeah , I was like you , you're , you're turning down my offer , but I feel like there's a lot of , and the soft core , like libertarian porn , is also of interest . Yeah , isn't it ? It's like literally like people people who are so independent that they're like gonna have really great sex . I'm out it .
It's , that's , it's that sounds impossible .
Ryan manifesto . I would just think of Paul Ryan every time I hear all right .
I'm sorry , we're really just gonna zoom by . Lily said it was Portography and that wasn't a metaphor .
She actually was .
No , it was very literal yeah oh my god , put that into your Google search bar . What comes up ? Probably Dan Crenshaw .
I don't need this . I'm already on so many lists I can't afford .
But I actually , when I taught this book and I got to the nihilist part I I was talking to my your first year Undergraduate students . I said to them the first time you go to a party in college , you will encounter the nihilist . Everyone's gonna think the most interesting person in the room they're sitting in the court is like oh wow , you believe in peace .
It's all meaningless at the end of the day , are we not all just random accumulation of molecules , you know ? Proceed from the big bang and wow .
Deep , like I read Nietzsche and like why not prefer war ? Why not cool , cool dude , okay , that I'm not gonna lie . Embarrassing , embarrassing confession . That person was me actually .
Okay there it is .
So I tried to do my part for the culture and I said please do not find that person interesting . They are just afraid . You know they . They had some failures and disappointments . In fact , if anything , have some pity for them . Like you , it's hard not growing up .
So two things I wanted to say here . One of them is like I , as I was just quoting her , is saying like the nihilist and as you're saying at the party , like all they do is so disorder and anarchy and kind of just try to undermine everything .
¶ Freedom, Nihilism, and Revolt Connection
There was a moment earlier in the text and we're gonna , by the way , circle back to and try to give a full-throat a definition of freedom , yeah , and , in Beauvoir's sense , says , after we've like kind of run through all of this , but one of the things she says , and trying to distinguish freedom from revolts , and I think this is really important because the the
nihilist is capable of revolting , right , but still isn't actually free in this genuine sense . It's an abstract thing , and so this is a quote from the first chapter about like I don't know . Toward the end of it she writes revolt in so far as it is pure negative . Movement remains abstract .
It is fulfilled as freedom only by returning to the positive , that is , by giving itself a content through action , escape , political struggle , revolution . And so this desire just to smash and destroy is not actually freedom in her analysis . It's just this pure negativity that revolts . All well and good , but freedom actually has to have a positive consistency .
It has to be for something , it has to be realized in the form of a project . It does actually have to have an end .
But again , I think it's important to point to the temptation that she identifies with nihilism . So what is it that draws us there ? And I love the example she gives of Baudelaire . She says it was necessary for him I'm just going to quote this for a second .
She says it was necessary for him that the universe which he rejected continue in order for him to detest it and scoff at it .
And I think there's so many kind of black-pilled kind of internet posters who are who you can just tell how deeply attached they are to the kind of apocalyptic trajectory of the world and it seems like it comes from a place of concern . But actually I usually just get the sense that they would feel utterly lost if good things started happening .
They don't actually want good things to start happening . They need this apocalyptic trajectory and they're kind of fused to it , assimilated with it .
Accelerationist . Yeah for instance .
I think , that there's lots of people I mean , the people you're describing are kind of hardcore versions of it , but I think it exists in subtler forms . Good point yes , that's true , Like this is really how I think about people who are on the far left , who are just never able to be happy about anything happening , and OK .
So when something goes on , looking for the limitations is the first and only thing that you do , so inability to feel excitement and joy about something going on . And that's not to say that you shouldn't be always developing criticisms , like the more if there's a social movement happening .
You should totally start to develop criticisms as soon as they come to you . But I mean the inability to kind of experience joy and optimism and social movement and the desire to try to collaborate with others in actual like realizing one's own freedom , and instead just kind of putting the kibosh on that , like it'll never be good enough or something .
And I think I first read this it must have been like 2013 or something because I wrote in the margins that this reminded me of Occupy Wall Street and so you can see where my head was at when I was reading it because I wrote revolt and pure negativity remains abstract . And that's what that experience was like for me .
It was like we won't set forward any demands . This is purely negative and we're going to militantly keep it negative . And you can't make it positive because it would require to have a positive content . We'd have to have a consensus , but we can't have a consensus . And I remember reading this and I was like , oh my god , that's what that was .
Yeah , I think at a later date we might end up having to do an episode on . We've been talking about like tycoon a little bit and sort of the fetish for this negativity in the form of what they call like destituent power . It's like , I think , something that might fall prey to this same sort of diagnosis . We want to get into it .
Like that's the sort of thing that I'm worried about , at least when I see all these people talking about like , yeah , destituent power or just like destruction , as like the kind of end in itself we can't posit an end or have a kind of positive program , Seems to fall kind of exactly into this trap that Bovars is diagnosing .
I mean , I found the same thing with Occupy right , there was a real part of why when and why it fizzled out was just the kind of refusal to start taking any kind of positive start , engaging any kind of positive concrete vision . And for a while that was like its energy right .
It had that energy of pure revolt , but then , without moving from that , the state of what you called abstract , the kind of abstract negation towards something , yeah , I don't know , Just nobody wanted to . I don't know why you think that is Lilien , because I don't think I actually have a good account of why that particularly happened with that .
I don't want to make a whole episode about Occupy For Occupy .
Yeah Well , she does say . Bovars says herself toward the end of the book that it's actually kind of easy to get everybody on board with revolt right , name a common enemy , engage in this work of negation , fight against something that you want to destroy . It's actually kind of easy to get a lot of people together into that under that tent .
But the minute it's a matter of trying to articulate a common vision for a project with goals , and then we're going to have to have a discussion subsequent to that about the means by which we're going to achieve those ends , all of a sudden fragmentation gets back into the scene very quickly and easily , and so she gives examples of people who got the negative
moment in their youth and then get assimilated . It's easy to get assimilated as a reactionary , even for people who really nail that first moment .
Like the boomers , I feel like they got assimilated .
What did they negate ?
I feel like they think they were negating , but now they're like the Democratic Party vanguard .
Yeah , but they were the adventurers . Right , they were Bovar's adventurers .
Oh yeah , maybe they're just a type .
Subjective , abstract , one-sided freedom . That's all about your kind of personal self-realization . This is our fourth figure the adventurer , the adventurer right , that hasn't yet figured out how to commune with others and the freedom of others , and so that becomes solipsism .
Yeah , before we move on to the adventurer , because there's something complicated with the adventurer . The adventurer is sort of the first archetype where it seems like Bovar is saying there are two ways the adventurer could go .
She says , there are two attitudes , but before we do that , I want to say just a little bit more about the nihilist , to sort of connect it more to sort of contemporary issues .
I think the reason why I'm so antagonistic towards the nihilist is when the George Floyd protest first broke out , and it was this moment where we were all texting during that moment and it felt like what is happening ? We have not seen something like this .
And immediately on the internet and all of that , people who I don't know if they went to the protest or not people were saying oh , you are getting so excited about this , nothing's going to change , you're just getting duped . And there seems to be something and I'm willing to commit to this something deeply immature about it , because you are not risking anything .
And what I'm hearing is , rather than risking putting forward a positive project that may or may not fail , you're already just saying from the outset oh , look at these rubes getting all excited about this . Look at these fools .
As if you have tons of political experience to help enlighten us Are disorganized and totally politically immature generation . You're going to be the one to tell everybody that they are too excited .
Who already has well , not even has the answers , just already has the no on hand .
Or already has the cold water to pour on proposed answers .
And what Beaufort would have an issue with . This is like it's not just like their abstract revolt , but they don't risk anything .
There's no way to prove the Nile is wrong , because eventually there will be disappointment , eventually that you're going to encounter the antennae , and so it's a fundamentally safe position that gestures and postures us if it's completely radical , but there isn't a lot there .
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