The Sunny Nihilist (Wendy Syfret)
OVERVIEW
Meaning makes us feel safe and valuable. But do you look in the mirror and see someone who is self-assured and fulfilled? Do you see someone “who confidently grasps the meaning of their own life?” It’s doubtful. Modern day meaning is hardly ever realized. So, if meaning is a goal we rarely achieve, a state we almost never inhabit, what is it? Wendy Syfret thinks meaning in the twenty-first century is “crushing expectations and bottomless self-obsession.” In “The Sunny Nihilist,” Syfret offers a scathing critique of our preoccupation with meaning. We’re told our jobs should be meaningful, our hobbies should be meaningful, our lives should be meaningful – significant, moving toward some great end. We ask: am I leaving a legacy? Am I making my mark? Is there a point to my existence?
These questions, entertained honestly, may inspire a panic-inducing wave of existential dread. The fear that we really are inconsequential, that none of this matters, can be suffocating. In response, most of us try desperately to distract ourselves by clinging to systems of meaning – cultural, corporate, and capitalist reassurances that we really are special and important. They aren’t inherently bad, but our over-investment in these structures creates the anxiety we’re trying to escape. The struggle for modern day meaning is choking off our ability to actually enjoy life because we’re so desperate for it to be meaningful. Which leads us to the hypothesis that accepting that life is meaningless is actually less painful than failing to live up to our impossible expectations for meaning.
Syfret offers this: sunny nihilism – the joyful acceptance that your life is utterly pointless and that you’re not cosmically important (probably not even terrestrially important). You don’t matter and the universe literally doesn’t give a shit about you. You’re not here for any reason or purpose. Your life is not moving toward any great end (but, good news, neither is anyone else’s). One day soon you’re going to die and be forgotten forever, and nothing you do can change that.
I join ranks with Syfret in suspecting that this approach to life is more delighting than it is depressing – that there is pleasure in pointlessness. That the thing we dread the most – that we are irrelevant – is the antidote, not the poison. We strive for a big, meaningful life to make up for how small and insignificant we really are. We could, instead, choose to bask in our smallness and in our small joys – that warm cup of tea, that good conversation with friends, our favourite fluffy socks.
We search for meaning in work, love, and religion, but meaning is just a fantasy. There is no point to anything, but life is still pretty dazzling. Maybe you think nihilism is depressing and corrosive, but Syfret thinks it’s freeing, and that accepting your life is meaningless paves the way for peace, humility, and gratitude.
“To wish for meaning is to be devastated by its absence. To accept life is meaningless, but still full of pleasures that are better to exist for than not exist for, to me is personally a better bet. You can only fret over the lack of meaning if you allow yourself to buy into the myth of it at all.”
WHAT NOW? (actions for mortal atheists)
Enjoy your meaningless life
Syfret’s prescription for a meaningless existence is not earth shattering, you’ve heard it before: this moment is the only one that exists and the only one you have – don’t assign it too much value, spend it fretting about the future or ruminating on the past; you have very little control over anything, so just enjoy what you can when you can. The world is full of small and immediately accessible pleasures that you overlook by over-reaching for meaning.
Make life better for future generations
Rather than leading to apathy, Syfret thinks a sunny nihilist approach to life inspires action and a tendency toward selflessness. If you are insignificant and small, if your life doesn’t amount to much, maybe that reframes your attention towards the things that will outlast you. Maybe you donate more to charity, or volunteer, or become an activist. Maybe you create art or lend your support to conservation efforts. Whatever it is, you do it knowing that you aren’t the centre of the universe.
(of course, this plunges us back into meaning and its most recognizable manifestation: the immortality project. It also sidesteps the obvious: if your life doesn’t matter, why does anyone else’s life matter? Why does life matter? Because there’s tea and friends and karaoke and those things are generally pleasurable? I don’t think the leap from meaninglessness to activism or from nihilism to legacy projects is self-evident. The connection between nihilism and Hedemonia? Yes. Eudaimonia? It’s a stretch I don’t think is adequately interrogated. Another little note is that while we’re aligned that there is no ultimate meaning to life, most philosophers agree that the question “what is the meaning of my life” can be distilled down to “how should I live?” Syfret’s answer to that question is: by enjoying the small things, being selfless, and not taking yourself too seriously. A modest prescription, but a prescription for meaning none-the-less, especially if we take meaningfulness to be something that’s realized when we act on our subjective preferences for living our lives one way rather than another).
IN SUM:
Is this book entirely secular? Yes.
If I had to describe the book in one sentence? You don’t matter, but that’s okay (great, even).
Who should read this book? Those who wonder what’s on the other side of accepting that life is pointless.