Materialism and Nihilism

Materialism as a social foundation leads to nihilistic self-loathing as a moral principle. The reason is clear to anyone who has thought through the implications of human life as matter seriously, which is to say without the self-deceiving funhouse optics of materialism as “scientific rationality” or “absolute freedom.” Those who mask themselves-qua-matter from themselves-qua-thinking-being are able to carry on with life at a level of superficial comfort (though with nothing more than comfort itself as a motivation), but only at the price of self-knowledge and the acknowledgment of the darkness and depth upon which their thin surface life glides. Life as matter — which phrase is already a convenient and consoling euphemism for non-life — is life as the body. The body is dirt, agitation, friction, exhaustion, discomfort, unpleasant smells, tedious maintenance, endless reminders of unfreedom and dependency, and a continual decline into weakness and disability. If that is all “life” is — a sure and inescapable truth if materialism is correct — then illusion, i.e., falsehood, is the essence of everything worthwhile, or even agreeable, that we imagine our lives to entail. That is to say, if materialism is correct, then self-delusion is our only hope, and thus the precarious grind of endlessly upholding a lie our only reason to live — a lie we must tell ourselves, and yet somehow continue to half-believe.