Tag: love

From Absurdist to Nihilist (Tentatively): Watching the World Undermine Meaning

I never expected to inch toward nihilism. For years, absurdism kept me afloat. Camus’ defiance in the face of meaninglessness, the idea that you can laugh at the chaos even when it’s crushing you. That you can push the boulder up the hill again and again and still find joy — or at least rebellion — in the act.

But lately, I’ve been staring at that hill and wondering if it’s even worth approaching anymore.

The world feels like it’s daring us to stop believing. The U.S. is caught in a feedback loop of delusion and decay. Billionaires play empire while the rest of us drown in rent, debt, heatwaves, and endless headlines. Climate collapse isn’t creeping anymore; it’s sprinting. The political system’s not broken, it’s working exactly as designed to protect capital and crush dissent. The cruelty isn’t a glitch; it’s a feature.

I used to think absurdism gave me a way through it; that laughing at the system, mocking it, refusing to surrender meaning to it, was a form of resistance. And maybe it still is. But there’s a point where the laugh feels hollow. Where the defiance feels like theater, and the audience left the building years ago.

I’m not fully gone. Not yet. There’s still a part of me that wants to spit in the face of despair and dare it to flinch. That wants to imagine Sisyphus happy, even if only out of spite.

But I’d be lying if I said nihilism isn’t whispering louder lately. Not the cartoon nihilism that gets misrepresented — not the “nothing matters so do whatever” kind — but the cold, empty realization that maybe there really is no justice coming. No redemption arc. No meaning to extract or invent. Just survival, until we can’t anymore.

I don’t know if this shift is a phase, a spiral, or a new state of being. But I know I’m not alone in feeling it. The world is making nihilists faster than it makes meaning.

And maybe admitting that — even tentatively — is the first honest thing I’ve done in a while.

What Radicalized Me

I didn’t pop out of the womb swinging a red flag. I wasn’t raised by union organizers or taught to quote Marx before I could walk. Like a lot of Americans, I coasted on autopilot for a while. I figured the president—whoever they were—probably knew what they were doing. The system seemed fine, or at least functional. Corrupt, maybe, but stable.

Then came Trump.

That was the first crack in the illusion. Suddenly the office of the presidency wasn’t just some boring institution, it was a circus, a cult, a threat. It wasn’t just bad policy. It was kids in cages. Racist dog whistles cranked up to bullhorns. And half the country cheered. That’s when I realized the system wasn’t broken. It was functioning exactly as designed.

That’s when I started reading. Rand again, first. I loved her in high school—thought she was deep. Then I picked up Atlas Shrugged as an adult and felt like I’d been duped. It wasn’t philosophy. It was selfishness with a thesaurus. The heroes were sociopaths. The poor deserved it. The rich were gods. It clicked: capitalism doesn’t just tolerate cruelty. It requires it.

From there, I fell down the rabbit hole. Camus hit me like a freight train. The Myth of Sisyphus gave shape to something I’d felt but couldn’t name. This low, constant hum of absurdity. The rock rolls back down the hill, and we push it again. Not because it’ll change anything, but because we refuse to give up.

That absurdism became fuel. So did my misanthropy. Not in the “I hate everyone” kind of way, but in the “I don’t trust people to do the right thing unless they’re forced to” kind of way. I watched people defend billionaires like they were sports teams, as if Apartheid Clyde was going to show up and hand them a Tesla for their loyalty.

I started arguing online. Then organizing. Then donating. I joined the Democratic Socialists. I started lurking at meetings, listening more than talking. I wanted to shake things up, but not just with signs and chants. I wanted disruption. Chaos. Direct action. Guerilla organizing.

I kept reading. Kept pushing. Anti-natalism hit me hard—David Benatar, Cioran, all of it. The idea that no one consents to be born, and that bringing someone into this world is an inherently selfish act. In a dying planet, under a dying system, having kids felt like feeding bodies into the machine.

All of that coalesced into anarcho-communism. Because socialism wasn’t enough. The state isn’t neutral, it’s a tool of capital. Voting helps, but it’s a bandage on a severed limb. I believe in mutual aid, in decentralized power, in horizontal structures. I believe in burning down what doesn’t serve us and building something new from the ashes. Something where people matter more than profit. Where community matters more than hierarchy.

And yeah, I still own guns. Gifts, mostly. I don’t shoot much. But they’re there—”just in case” feels more relevant by the day.

What radicalized me? The cruelty. The absurdity. The lies we’re told about success, about work, about life itself. And the quiet hope that maybe, just maybe, we can break the cycle. So I meme. I write. I organize. I fight. Because if this is a pyramid scheme called life, I at least want to go down pissing off the billionaires at the top.