[A reply to an email from a Patreon supporter.]
Catholicism is one thing: "the opposite of Catholicism" cannot possibly be one thing —the negation of Catholicism must lead off into many different directions (I would say "creative directions", but I would have to admit that there are also "destructive directions" and various mixtures of the two).
Communism is one thing: the negation of Communism, again, cannot be thought of as a single direction.
What does it really mean to be a nihilist, in the 21st century?
What does it really mean to be a nihilist, dissident intellectual, living in "a paper democracy" such as Canada or Mexico?
There cannot possibly be one answer, and there cannot possibly be one model: each of us must start thinking about many different directions "radiating out from" every point of negation.
These many different directions will be taken by different people simultaneously, but they can (also) exist within one man's life in succession.
Canadian democracy, Canadian Christianity, and Canadian culture generally: is it really so hard for people to understand how (and why) a dissident intellectual could end up researching Cree and Ojibwe (as languages, and as political histories) as one route "leading away from" the thing being negated?
At the same time, the very same man concerned with the same negation might become interested in Theravada Buddhism and the politics of Cambodia for all the same reasons.
Frankly, even the most "conformist" (and seemingly "conservative") of my research interests follow this pattern: a man can go looking for something better in Thucydides and Sallust in the same way that he might end up looking under a rock in Cambodia. What am I looking for? No, not something to believe in. I am looking for raw materials: I believe in them as little as a carver believes in wood.
Believers cannot understand any of this: they assume that I became a Buddhist because there was some book (containing some great truth) that I subordinated myself to —as if the new direction I took with each chapter of my life could only be explained as a kind of enslavement to some dead author or another (as Marxists relate to Marx, and so on).
It is utterly eyeroll-and-scoff-inducing to see these believers "interpret" my engagement with Cree and Ojibwe in the same way: as if I believed in Buddhism before, and then had some kind of "spiritual transformation" and thenceforth started believing in the magical powers of tobacco ceremonies.
My current engagement with comedy: is this, also, some new god for me to worship? Does comedy have its own code, its own precepts, and its own afterlife? Was that what the study of the Chinese language (or Chinese politics) meant to me before? It is all —equally— tobacco smoke. It is all —equally— as absurd as chanting in Pali to relieve the pain of childbirth. And nevertheless, it is all (also) as useful as a solid piece of wood in the hands of the right carver.
It is your own blank sheet of paper that you should believe in: even if you leave it blank, without ever setting down a single word, it's better than the constitution of the country you're living in, and it's better than the bible as well.
It's the book that nobody else can write but you: it is your heaven and hell —there can be no other. It is the emptiness that existed before you were born along with the emptiness to which you'll eventually return.
I went with my blank sheet of paper to Cambodia, and I went with it to Saskatchewan (to study Cree) as well (these are just two examples, of course, I will not attempt a full list of such places).
From the perspective of the believer, nothing could be more pathetic: I arrive neither as a missionary (trying to compel the Cambodians and the Cree to accept my beliefs, whether they be religious beliefs or Marxist ones, etc.) nor do I arrive —penitent— hoping to receive my new bible (my new beliefs) from them.
I neither give nor receive: I create and destroy.
I did not go to Cambodia for my salvation, nor for theirs: I did not go to learn from them what I ought to believe, nor did I go there to teach them what they ought to believe (as something I presumed to already know myself). I went there to press into the unknown, and I came back knowing something nobody else had known before —and this mystifying statement could be equally true of Pittsburgh or Preston, there's nothing especially magical about Cambodia.
A fixed belief has one direction (as with submission to Islam) but the negation of belief has innumerable directions —simultaneously or in sequence.
People train themselves to believe in the future of Canada, to believe in the future of Mexico, and so on, in the same sense that they "believe in" the future of their own marriage, and the future of their own sons and daughters. The vast majority will die without ever realizing the profound contradiction implicit in believing in something unknown: this is not some shallow riddle, it's a devastating error that results in millions of people using up their little scrap of blank paper to merely sketch out a second rate imitation of something established in one bible or another —instead of singing their own song, they live as a pathetic echo.
And the result is this: the future they believe in is (irony of ironies) an imitation of the past. All their futurologies reek of nostalgia. Elon Musk's dreams contain nothing new, but recycle fantasies from science fiction he'd been exposed to in his youth: how much more backward are the utopias that religious Jews and Muslims believe in? Oh, let's be honest: even the people who believe in democracy are "living in the past" when they dream about the future. In parallel, people try to have a marriage that imitates their idealized notion of how their own grandparents lived, or some fictional family they saw depicted on a television show (the sitcom has become yet another "bible" in our times). All of these are beliefs: all of these are tobacco smoke.
One religion, one marriage, one education resulting in one career, and then one identity that can be summarized by stating the person's profession, marital status and creed: that is the model of a life built on belief, and it is demonstrated everywhere around us. Those who believe the most are supposed to benefit the most. What about a life with many different directions, believing in less and less with each direction you take, pressing into the unknown, learning something never known before, and being transformed by it with each twist and turn? Who will demonstrate that model? Who will demonstrate a life without belief, the freedom and the duty it entails?
What does it really mean to be a nihilist, in the 21st century?
What does it really mean to be a nihilist, dissident intellectual, living in "a paper democracy" such as Canada or Mexico?
