"The air we breathe is...."

Is it reasonable--these days--to have faith in nothingness (from Nirvana to Nietzche)?

It seems that the whole concept of nothingness is the result of a sustained yet transient ignorance. The ancients-- those that weren't having a nervous reaction to a full universe and whole pantheons of "gods"--did not believe in "nothing" i.e. a total void somewhere. Science proves--no, it suggests--that there may be no such thing as a void--what is not full of photons is full of matter or neutrinos or strings perhaps; not to mention the difficult subject of dark matter. Even "space" is not "nothing" for it has at least four dimensions to its name and likely much more. We once thought--not too long ago-- that we could produce a perfect vacuum, when in actuality all we can do is suck out some gases, leaving tons of energy and particles behind.

What is "seen" by man or even imagined by us is quite puny compared to what is "unseen"--hence every person, who lives and moves and has his being in Utter Something, lives by faith in what is unseen. But does what is unseen become therefore "nothing"?

There has been a brief intermediate stage of man wherein the concept of nothingness has taken hold--but the secondary gain of this hypothesis is an overwhelming temptation that makes every such belief-impulse highly suspect, smelling a lot like "teen spirit." Teens are well known for their enthusiasm to evade the terrors of personal responsibility--how well I recall--(ow!)...but one could argue that "adults" are merely children with more narrow and well-practiced defense mechanisms-- and that what is most desired by them, i.e., utter independence, owes more to the idea of nothingness as opposed to the fact of--and "the habit of"-- being. Having once again observed this first hand over the past year, I am struck much more this time than last time about the fact that our home was/is actually fairly well grounded in reality as we brought up our own children, whereas those overexposed to or enamored of "McWorld" do have a hyperconvenient nihilism--beyond even relativism-- underlying their many excuses. And, saddest of all, is to apply the rubric "Christian" to what is the hypothesis most distant from the axioms even of deism.

Hence O'Connor's observation about nihilism is quite true--and the obvious question is then, well, isn't nihilism something? An idea? And do not our ideas have concrete consequences? Watch that neuronal sequencing stuff!!!

To me this habit of insistence is somewhat akin to a smoking addiction that masses of people just won't quit even in the face of heart disease, emphysema, and loss of limb and life besides the aggravation and sustaining of chronic pain syndromes. We force upon ourselves the desirability of nirvanas to escape a world of pain so often self-engineered by choice when the alternative is, "the bleeding obvious" (insert crux here). Thanks again to Dr. Freud for naming the forms and formats of childishness.

So we can't have our nothingness, or eat it either. We only "duck-duck-goose" (ahem) ourselves silly.

"Entirely too silly."