Good morning Hank it’s Tuesday.
I was recently asked to speak to
a group of college students and here is part of what I said:
There’s a certain strain of nihilism that has grown in popularity of late–
everything’s trash so why bother
nothing matters in the long run anyway.
And I am sympathetic to these perspectives, because the world
is profoundly unjust and our shared challenges
are overwhelming. And also yes,
I am aware that nothing matters in the long run.
Something like 275 million stars are going to die tomorrow,
and in that context,
it’s a little difficult to get excited about earthly affairs like
building bridges, and sewer systems, and voting.
But I reject nihilism not only because I believe
that nihilism, like all straightforward answers
to life’s great questions is inadequate,
but also because I think human life itself is imbued with meaning.
I wrote my book The Anthropocene Reviewed
because I wanted to pay attention
to where my attention was going
And by attention, I don’t mean like, the ability to focus
without distraction. I mean consciousness itself.
Our soul stuff. Where that’s going.
After all, what and who you care about, what and who you devote
your soul-stuff to
when taken together– Will be known as your life.
And through three and a half years of writing the book,
I learned some stuff about staphylococcus aureus
and how grocery stores came to exist,
but the biggest thing I learned and it surprised me
is that I am broadly in favor of humans.
Now, I want to be clear that as species go, we are a catastrophe.
We have caused countless extinctions, We’ve poisoned rivers
And caused famines and murdered the innocent.
Like, we aren’t the first form
of life to become so powerful and ubiquitous that our very
success endangers the planet climate and its biodiversity–
cyanobacteria caused a mass extinction over a billion
years ago.
But we’re the first species to know what we are doing, while we do it.
But then there’s the other side of the coin which is that
we are also really interesting. We know the structure of DNA.
We make art and other things– like sports and cappuccino
and Youtube–
that we don’t technically need to survive but still kind of need.
We know what’s keeping the stars apart.
We try to protect our young. We make really good music.
Now of course none of this matters in the grand scheme of things.
The sun is still going to turn into a red giant and boil our oceans away,
but, we don’t live in the grand scheme of things.
I think there is meaning in human Life because there is meaning
in us and how we are bound together.
There is meaning in loving and being loved.
And in hearing and being heard.
Like, when I’m thinking about why any of it matters
I always think about this line from Richard Wright:
“I would hurl words into this darkness, wait for an echo,
and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly,
I would send other words to march, to fight,
to create a sense of the hunger for life that gnaws in us all.”
I reject nihilism because I believe
in the value of hurling words into this darkness,
not least because it is possible that you,
when you are in the darkness, may echo them back.
I know that optimism at the moment feels foolish or cringey.
And nihilism feels like a way of trying to cut yourself
off from the reality of feeling so you don’t have to
grapple with all of the complexities and pain.
I get it, I do it to. But I would encourage you to
hurl your words into the darkness, to never give up on trying
to bring light and noise to where otherwise there
would only be cave darkness and silence.
Equally, I would ask you to be an echo–to tell your friends
and loved ones that you hear them, not just the words that they’re saying.
But also the feelings and thoughts that
lie beneath those words.
I think opportunity
and responsibility of personhood is to make meaning,
and to acknowledge the meaning in others’ lives.
We do this through loving and helping others, and through
allowing others to love and help us.
And through deepening our shared understanding of
the universe and our place in it.
So yeah, maybe nothing matters.
But only until we make things matter.
And maybe life is meaningless. But only until we make it meaningful.
Hank, I’ll see you on Friday.