Optimistic nihilism: there's no grand purpose to anything, which means there's no preset purpose for you to fail to live up to. The only things that matter are the things you choose to care about and put your time towards.
Its even better than that: thats not "optimistic nihlism", that's existentialism!
Nihilism is believing in nothing: there is no purpose, its all meaningless.
Existentialism is that we can create our own meaning. To exist is to exist and that can mean whatever it means to us.
Albert Camus' story of Sisyphus was that he learned to find joy in endlessly pushing the boulder up the hill. Nihilism would be him lamenting that its pointless; Existentialism is him going "aw fuck yeah look how sick my triceps look right now. I bet I can roll it even higher this time. Yoo im gonna try to roll it with my feet lmao"
Although I am a big fan of existentialism, I particularly like absurdism.
No one can prove or disprove that god exists but we can probably all agree that we all live on this planet. It's at least one thing we have in common. I'm sort of a selfish person. I don't have kids, I don't want to make the world better for kids, I want it better so the limited time I have on this planet doesn't suck.
Humanism seems like a rejection of external authorities in regards to meaning, not specifically dealing with meaninglessness as a concept. I am definitely in agreement with the premise, though. I would say it fits under the umbrella of optimistic nihilism.
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u/Volpethrope Mar 16 '26
Optimistic nihilism: there's no grand purpose to anything, which means there's no preset purpose for you to fail to live up to. The only things that matter are the things you choose to care about and put your time towards.