5.1 Despair so deep it erupts into rage
What’s the deepest kind of despair?
There’s…
Despair about the world.
Like when you feel overwhelmed by scary global crises which no one seems to be able to stop, and you lose hope about the future.
Then there is…
Despair about humans.
Because when it comes to saving ourselves, we humans are not even in the game. We talk a lot about what we need to do, we come up with all kinds of things we could do to save ourselves, but the truth is not enough of us are actually going to do enough of those things. So checkmate.
And this brings us to…
Despair about humanness itself.
The belief that there’s nothing we can do to get ourselves on the right track. And this is…
Ontological despair.
And if you end up there, you’ve got three options…
1. Shut down.
Deny reality, and live in a fantasy bubble.
2. Rage.
You can externalize your distress. You can export it, hoping to make others suffer in your place.
3. Fight.
You can take a moral stand against despair. You can fight for yourself and what you believe in. You can do serious self-development. You can take on the healing mission of upgrading nurturance. You can build your inner strength and then oppose tribal fundamentalism with everything you’ve got.
What option do nihilists choose? Definitely number two…
Instead of admitting the depth of their despair, they rage.
Instead of admitting how much they’re hurting they go out and hurt other people
Instead of admitting how scared they are, they scare the rest of us.
Nihilists don’t look inside themselves. They don’t allow themselves to be self-aware. They don’t solve their inner problems with inner work. They don’t dare do that kind of self-development, because…
Their tribe would consider that to be treason.
So they live in a state of…
Moral bankruptcy.
Not taking responsibility for the feelings and fears inside themselves and overwhelming them.
What’s the transition from despair to rage like?
First comes the implosion as you collapse into a silent helplessness. But to live out your days immersed in impotence is a hateful thing.
And you hate it so much that your hate turns to rage and that rage grows until you can’t hold it in anymore and you explode and rain your poison down on people who have less power than you and are less able to defend themselves…
You punish them for your despair.
And these are people who are hurting too much already.
And you might think that by raging you’re taking action and that’s somehow going to do you some kind of good, but all you’re doing is acting out your despair not solving it.
Which means…
It owns you.
So you sink deeper into the very despair you’re trying to escape, which scares you even more, which makes you feel even more helpless, which makes you madder and meaner, and traps you in a desperately repeating cycle until…
You’re drowning in your drowning.
And when large numbers of people are drowning together they become a special kind of dangerous…
If, instead, we were talking about a little child having an angry tantrum, no problem. You’d gather him into your arms and hold him tight and speak to him calmly, comforting him…
“You’re upset but you’re going to be okay because I’ve got you, I’ve got you now.”
Afterward you’d help him find a better way to handle his distress. You’d help him learn step by step how to take responsibility for his feelings and actions and how that’s a lot more satisfying than raging out of control.
But what can we do when tens of millions of people are having a mass tantrum of despair-rage? And there’s no one big enough to pick them up and hold them and talk them through their fears and get them on the path to taking care of themselves.
If you’re picturing nihilistic rage as out-of-control wildness, that’s accurate, but that’s not the only form it takes. It isn’t always explosive and showy.
Just like there’s such a thing as a dry drunk, there’s such a thing as dry rage, which is quiet, measured, and carefully controlled. Let’s not be fooled by it. It can actually be more destructive than the wild kind because it can slip by under the radar.
We humans are designed by evolution to fight fiercely to survive. Surrendering to death is in conflict with the drive to survive.
It seems that in our current era, we should have the greatest hope for ourselves ever. We’ve got modern medicine, high levels of food production, remarkable technology, indoor plumbing, and so much more. But instead…
We’re in terrible danger.
How can that be? We’ve got these big brains that sometimes seem to work miracles. Look at the worldwide web. But then look at nuclear weapons, which are death-dealing miracles. And look at the simple fact that our big brains are not saving us.
Why wouldn’t this contradiction be enraging?
Meanwhile nihilists see people around them out in the world who are living lives based on nurturance, and they get jealous. But they do not believe it would ever be possible for them personally to trade in death for nurturance.
The only hope for nihilists is to climb back out of surrender and…
Decide to fight for themselves in the deeply nurturing sense of that word.
Which is…
A moral decision.
And the hardest decision a nihilist could ever make.
But if they were to make it, if they were to reverse their surrender to death, they would experience one of the most profound experiences a human being could ever hope to have…
A resurrection.
