Nothing really matters

Things are bad. 

It’s an evergreen statement, and if we could be bothered to go back through The Cave archive, one we’ve almost certainly written before.

Exhibit A, of course, is the US-Israel-Iran-everyone else war, which continues to claim lives and upend an entire region. As ever, it is accompanied by the constant hum of climate change and inequality and social division.

You can’t even try to escape the mess through immersion in pop culture - MAFS’ annual platforming of misogyny is causing a stir but is merely representative of a world in which Zoomer men are twice as likely as Boomers to believe wives should obey husbands. Britney Spears was just arrested.

In the darkness, it’s a struggle to plot a path to meaning. Even this week’s AI-generated LinkedIn posts are duty-bound to nod to the broader geopolitical environment, before pivoting effortlessly to the far more important topic of differentiation in a saturated market.

It is perhaps no surprise, therefore, that nihilism is making a comeback.

According to The Atlantic, “nihilism is now the lingua franca of the internet”. Nothing matters, and so everything is up for grabs - there are no no-go topics anymore, nothing is in bad taste, it is never ‘too soon’. 

It’s not just the internet. A recent piece in Cherwell, Oxford University’s oldest student newspaper, described how many students are feeling: “When the planet already feels like it’s in ruins, emerging with a Masters in some niche corner of French literary history does seem like a somewhat absurd endeavour.” It still won’t stop them from telling everyone they went to Oxford, mind you. 

Nihilism, once an act of rebellion, now appears to be the inevitable pursuit of the rational. We could, in the finest Nietzschean tradition, give in and accept this. 

But perhaps this new normal also presents an opportunity - to pursue meaning in the face of overwhelming odds. How’s that for a LinkedIn post pivot?