The Evolution of Nihilism and Its Opposition to Religious Faith (Part 17)

Author: M. Farahi Tojegi

The Evolution of Nihilism and Its Opposition to Religious Faith (Part 17)

The Personality of Absurdist Nihilists (Continued)

1. A kind of obscurity dominates all aspects of the personality and life of the absurdist individual, and the structure of such a personality is marked by fragmentation.

In reality, the absence of a unifying, meaning-oriented spiritual center in this personality type provides the grounds for division and disintegration. This personality tends, in its existential orientation, toward inner multiplicity, fragmentation, disintegration, and transformation into a scattered, confused, and fluid identity. This internal rupture gradually produces a separation between emotion and reason, giving rise to distorted and passive emotional processes. As a result, individuals of this type may sometimes display indifference and numbness even in the face of the most horrific tragedies and crimes.

Parallel to this tendency, modern media subject audiences to a constant bombardment of information about various crimes and disasters.

1. The absurd nihilist has become so trapped and diminished by the afflictions of routine life, mediocrity, material preoccupation, and the absence of a heroic spirit that they have lost all qualities of spiritual grandeur, sacrifice, and aspiration toward perfection.

With the eclipse of idealism, spiritual elevation, and higher purpose, vulgarity, routine, materialism, and purely instinct-driven life—combined with shallow, lust-centered pleasure-seeking devoid of love—take their place. These become the defining traits of the absurd personality.

1. The absurd personality lacks deep joy, genuine happiness, and lasting inner expansion. The deeply rooted suffering within drives such individuals toward hedonistic pleasures and addiction, which only deepen their sense of meaninglessness and frustration.

2. The absurd nihilist personality is deprived of any form of deep, committed inner peace.

3. The absurd nihilist experiences a decline in the capacity for love. Although this personality type strongly desires to be loved and frequently speaks of “love,” it has, due to the distortion of its higher capacities, deep alienation, anxiety, lack of commitment, moral looseness, and inability to sacrifice, lost the true ability to love.

True love requires responsibility, attention, commitment, discipline, and self-sacrifice—ultimately a path of spiritually oriented, perfection-seeking devotion. The absurd personality lacks this capacity. Moreover, even the ability for empathy toward others gradually diminishes. Combined with moral disbelief, lack of responsibility, and absence of ideals, this creates conditions in which the previously mentioned restless and aggressive energy manifests as cruel, senseless, and sadistic violence. Such violence increasingly appears in the behavior of the absurd individual and becomes widespread.

1. This personality type is alienated, becoming progressively estranged from the essential nature of humanity, from the order of creation, and from human nature itself. This deepens inner emptiness and strengthens tendencies toward superficiality and outward appearances.

Among all personality types in the modern world, the absurd nihilist is the most deeply distorted and the furthest removed from the essential nature of humanity. This condition intensifies the “wolf-like” tendency of such individuals toward others.

1. The absurdist lacks reflection and contemplation and suffers from mental disorder and a severe decline in rational capacity—even in practical, everyday reasoning. This condition arises from their relationship with existence and reality.

The absence of a meaningful spiritual self and the unstable, collapsing structure of personality are among the factors that significantly weaken their cognitive abilities. The absurd personality is marked by confusion and the destabilization of subjectivity.

1. More than any other personality type within modern humanity, the absurdist is entangled in a form of the unconscious that has lost its spiritual dimension and orientation toward the transcendent, taking on instead a purely instinctual, illusory, and material character. One aspect of this unconscious became the focus of Sigmund Freud and psychoanalysis.

2. The absurd nihilist personality often appears in the form of a mediocre absurdist, while lower and more degraded forms are increasingly emerging. The base absurd nihilist exists at a level even lower than the mediocre type and is more extensively immersed in vice and corruption.

3. The absurd personality is trapped in a cycle of routine, despair, meaninglessness, triviality, and intensifying anxiety and depression. It suffers from a profound identity crisis—one for which no solution exists within the framework of the modern world, and which only continues to deepen.

Absurd Nihilism and Historical Transition

The emergence and dominance of postmodern nihilism and absurdism is one of the signs of the approaching inevitable collapse of the modern Western world and its historical trajectory.

Absurd nihilism is undoubtedly the most catastrophic and terrifying manifestation of nihilism. Yet, within the very depths of its overwhelming darkness, the seeds of its own collapse are also concealed. Without doubt, the modern world, following this self-destructive path of postmodern absurd nihilism, will sooner or later—at a time that cannot yet be determined but will certainly come collapse and come to an end.

The increasing dominance of absurd nihilism, while bitter, catastrophic, and terrifying, also signifies the beginning of a transitional era—one that may lead humanity out of the dark depths of Western history and toward deliverance.

Continues…

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