Existential Nihilism

The universe is unimaginably large. It takes light more than 28 billion years to travel from the edge of the observable universe to the opposite edge. In the process of travelling from one edge to another, light encounters more than 10 million superclusters which contains more than 50,000 galaxies each, which eventually contains more than 100 billion solar systems, with around 10 planets each. We, the humans, lie somewhere inside this massive mess of rocks with no real purpose of existence in the grand scale of things. Humans are simply too small to make a difference in the universe. We are merely like ants in front of the Earth. This is the concept of existential nihilism.

Existential nihilism refers to the act of accepting the fact that life is meaningless, and we are simply self-aware beings living in an insignificant rock hurtling across a colossal and complex system of larger rock systems. When humans originally evolved from less intelligent beings, we slowly started to understand our world. From initially thinking that the world existed just for us and that there exists a superior being, we went to understanding that we are made up for small units that don’t possess life. We learnt about how the world works, and the rules that make up the world without understanding why the rules are what they are. When we finally understood that we are just a speck in a massive ocean of what we call the universe, our entire belief system started to fail us. We look up to the stars in the hope of finding another species to talk to, hoping that we are not alone, not understanding why we are alone in this massive machine.

In this grand scheme of things, it is easy for a human to enter into an existential crisis and easily misunderstand the meaning of one’s own existence. Although one might be an existential nihilist and believe that there is no purpose in the entity of life, one can also consider that such meaninglessness means that we can define our own rules for life. Since there is no central aspect to anything that exists, the center exists only in the place where we define it to exist. An optimistic perspective at everything gives us a shimmer of hope in a bleak view of the universe.

Scribbled By: Praveen Venkatesh, student at IIT Gandhinagar

Image Reference: https://i.redd.it/u4sfozkam9451.jpg