Shadowing Practice: Why Nihilism is Taking Over Modern Society - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Nihilism is becoming dangerously popular, and it's no longer just in philosophy classrooms or those weird subreddits.
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It's in the way millions of real people are talking about life itself.
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Why is nihilism so taboo?
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Why?
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Like genuinely, none of this shit f*ing matters.
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Like, none of it f*ing matters.
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We are the generation that is waking up to the myth of the American dream.
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I think Gen Z is dubbed the nihilist generation because they feel
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that they have wasted their time and their money pursuing a degree
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that we were told to pursue and it's amounting to nothing.
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We're all gonna die.
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None of this shit matters.
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Everywhere you look, it seems like people have completely given up
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and are now questioning if there's any reason to get up in the morning and beyond that, they're questioning existence and life itself.
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This is terrifying, because if enough people start to believe that nothing matters, morality, purpose, and hope begin to disappear,
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and at the end of that road is complete societal collapse.
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As someone who has always been interested in philosophy and has studied nihilism extensively over the years, I was intrigued with this modern resurgence.
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So I spent the last few months studying everything I could about nihilism to try
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and figure out why nihilism is taking over our modern society.
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And the results that I found were very.. strange.
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Because although at the end of nihilism is complete societal collapse, that might not be as bad as it sounds.
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When trying to understand nihilism holistically, we run into some problems.
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The first is that the concept is ambiguous.
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It can refer to a lack of belief or ideology, and it can also refer to this lack of ideology as an ideology.
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That's the difference between someone being disillusioned and rejecting a belief system and someone choosing to embrace nothingness as a belief system.
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One is passive in their nihilism and the other is active.
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The word applies to both of these positions.
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Now, the concept of nihilism isn't actually that old.
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Its creation is credited to several authors, such as the Swiss physician and philosopher Jacob Hermann Oberreit.
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In his book, Jacob criticized Immanuel Kant's theory of knowledge, referring to it as nihilism.
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The German philosopher Friedrich Jacobi is most commonly credited with the origin of its philosophical use.
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In a letter, he derisively referred to Johann Gottlieb Fichte's German idealism as a form of nihilism.
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In either case, the word is used to negatively characterize a philosophical position.
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It's like a bad word, in the same way philosophers would use the word solipsism, which refers to the belief that only you exist.
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If your philosophy is being characterized by either word, you might be in trouble.
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Nihilism as a concept became more widely known in the 19th century when it took on a political dimension.
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The last time you voted, you probably didn't notice a candidate for the nihilism party on your ballot.
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Political nihilism isn't a movement so much as it's a way of characterizing a political attitude.
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It was often used to discredit extreme political ideology and anti-establishment movements.
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In Russia, so-called political nihilism exploded in the 19th century.
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These were socialist and anarchist movements that were quickly gaining in popularity.
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of these movements routinely referred to them as nihilism in order to dismiss them.
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In general, nihilism was used to slander any political group that was deemed threatening to the status quo.
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It was largely used by conservatives at the time.
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One such critic was the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.
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He once belonged to a socialist group, but was apprehended by the authorities and sentenced to death by the Russian Tsar.
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However, the The author was released right before his execution and sentenced instead to years in a labor camp.
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After his near-death experience, Dostoevsky rejected socialism and other revolutionary causes.
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He felt they ignored the dignity of humanity and our need for individual freedoms.
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From his experience working in a labor camp, he yearned to feel the fruits of his labor that he sorely lacked in confinement.
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He strongly felt that socialism would similarly rob humans of experiencing the rewards of their work.
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In the setting of crime and punishment, he puts on display the way radical change leaves people behind.
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The people are poor and destitute while the revolutionary minded are uncaring of their plight.
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Political nihilism more broadly can be summarized as the belief that the current political establishment is corrupt and needs to be destroyed.
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Modern populism is a form of political nihilism or at least can be characterized in this way.
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Both right and and left variations insist that the system needs to be overhauled
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and they latch onto the myth and often reality that our political representatives are too corrupt to salvage.
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Donald Trump seized on this belief to become president twice.
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I am your warrior, I am your justice, and for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution, I am your retribution.
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While leftist populism has largely struggled to seize power, proponents of political nihilism, aside from anarchists,
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would likely not self-identify as nihilists.
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The term in this context is intended to delegitimize political movements.
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It's not yet a stable concept at this point in time.
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However, as we'll see,
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the concept of nihilism is taken much more seriously later on in the works of the existentialist Friedrich Nietzsche.
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The philosopher is often associated with nihilism and is widely thought to have embraced it.
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But is it true that he advocated for a belief in nothingness?
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Was that really his gift to the world?
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Anyone who has seriously considered his work knows that he is not an advocate of nihilism,
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but that it does play an important role in his writing.
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Political nihilism suggests that nothing matters, that the systems that we live under are indifferent to our existence.
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But honestly, the system is much worse.
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It's not indifferent to your existence, neither does it ignore you.
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It actively seeks to know everything about you and uses that information to control and suppress you.
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Your name, your income, your family, even your struggles.
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Data brokers collect these fragments of your life and then package them into lists that are then sold to the highest bidder.
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These are some real data broker lists with insane labels like tough start young single parents
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and rural and barely making it that prey on the most vulnerable in our society.
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And we are all sorted into categories for predatory companies and bad actors that use this information to identify and harm us.
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This is the invisible economy we all unfortunately live in, and it is invasive and dangerous.
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Incogni was built to fight back.
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Incogni automatically erases all of your personal information from the places that you can't see.
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brokers, people search sites, predatory directories, all of the dark corners of the internet that are quietly trading your identity for profit.
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On your own it could take weeks or maybe even months to get all of this data erased.
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But, Incogni does it automatically and continuously to keep your information out of the hands of these bad actors.
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And now with their new custom removals feature you can take that even further.
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Just Google yourself, find a site exposing your information,
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copy the link, and Incogni's privacy experts will work to have it removed even from the sites outside of their automated network.
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Your data shouldn't be their currency.
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It should be yours.
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So take it back.
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Go to incogni.com slash aperture deal
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and use my code aperture deal to get 60% off an
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annual plan to keep your information out of the hands of the people who want to harm you
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because they can't harm you if they can't find you.
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Winter is coming.
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If you've read or watched Game of Thrones, you know this iconic phrase.
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A long winter is coming for the people of Westeros, and so too is the army of the dead.
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This story element mirrors Nietzsche's concept of cultural nihilism quite well.
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Winter is a stand-in for nihilism, and the army of the dead is the death of God.
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With the rise of scientific explanations for the universe and life on earth, the dominant belief in the Christian God was rapidly weakening in Nietzsche's time.
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Philosophers in the mid-19th century were busy trying to rationally justify Christian values that were quickly losing their spiritual underpinning.
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Ultimately, Nietzsche thought that this was a lost cause and that humanity risked sinking into a cultural abyss.
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He suggests that they actually stem from the resentment of slaves towards their masters.
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Through religion, the slaves elevated the opposite values of their masters, which supported their own way of being.
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They were meek, humble, and forgiving.
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They condemned the values of their masters, suggesting that a life lived this way would land them an eternity in hell.
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For a religion where forgiveness plays such a central role, it's odd that eternal damnation is always such a staple.
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Nietzsche would suggest that this contradiction comes from the nature of resentment.
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The philosopher takes this argument a step further by suggesting that Christianity,
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along with Plato and Socrates, was nihilistic.
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They placed all value in a realm beyond the physical one.
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For Christians, that is the realm of God and the heavens.
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and Socrates valued a world of forms as the source of true knowledge.
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In the Christian scheme, worldly life is deemed worthless.
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Its value is taken away, which is why Nietzsche referred to Christianity as a form of nihilism.
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This life is just a vehicle to get to the good place in the next one.
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Plato and Socrates devalued the real world by putting ideas above how we experience life.
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They used reason as a tool to judge life from an external point of view.
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In Plato's allegory of the cave, he suggests that our sensory experience is like being trapped in a cave, looking at the shadows on the wall.
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These shadows, for Plato, are illusions.
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The real world, which for him was the world of ideas, exists outside of the cave.
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Plato and Socrates ultimately suggest
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that the world you experience is an error compared to the perfect world of ideas that can only be discovered through reason.
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For Nietzsche, this is a big problem as it devalues the physical world
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and makes it impossible to create values based on life.
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Plato and Socrates would accuse those worldly values of just being shadows.
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Nietzsche himself was not a nihilist.
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He believed that nihilism was harmful to humanity, leaving people in a state of despair and directionlessness and prone to destructive tendencies.
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He wanted to help humanity overcome nihilism and move towards something better.
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To accomplish this, he identified two ways of responding to it.
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Passively and actively.
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The passive person finds no value in anything
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and despairs at the lack of a greater purpose in a life that they feel they've lost.
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They turn their back on existence and treat it as a punishment.
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This was how Nietzsche described Buddhism, Hinduism, and Arthur Schopenhauer's philosophy.
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He rejected the idea that life is suffering or that being reborn is a punishment.
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His response was to say yes to the world, to embrace it as it is beyond the structures we impose on it, such as religion, science, and even philosophy.
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To actively respond to nihilism, we have to re-evaluate our lives and consistently and continually create new ones.
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a constant process of deconstruction and creation.
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If we don't continuously overcome values and norms, we risk nihilism again, as these values will eventually not reflect the lives we live.
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For Nietzsche, these values needed to be aesthetic ones about life and vitality.
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In other words, he wanted them to be life-affirming.
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Logic and reason are too systematic.
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Like Christianity, they place a superior dimension above our physical existence.
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Nietzsche is often considered a moral nihilist, but that's not completely true, as we will see.
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A moral nihilist believes that there are no absolute moral or ethical values.
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When we talk about morality, we are actually just referring to social constructs, likely derived from emotions and power relations.
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Nietzsche didn't believe in the absolute nature of moral values.
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The universal morals that philosophers have formulated are better understood not as exercises of reason,
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but as coming from that person's physiological or psychic state, as Nietzsche explains.
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Every great philosophy so far has been the personal confessions of its author and a kind of involuntary and unconscious memoir.
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When we read the moral works of philosophers Immanuel Kant or John Stuart Mill's, we learn not about universal ethical systems,
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but about who we are.
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Just as Nietzsche believed that we should always be constructing new values, we should also be working on moral values.
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However, the idea is not to create values for everyone equally.
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People are different and should embrace morals that are more suited to them.
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Nietzsche believed in higher and lower types, for example, insisting that each should have their own moral value set.
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Free will was always an issue for him.
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Moral systems presume that people have free will and are able to choose between good and evil.
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But Nietzsche, along with many modern scientists, doesn't believe that humans possess free will and are therefore not morally responsible for their own choices.
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For the average person, this take on morality will come across as nihilism.
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We are very used to thinking about this in terms of moral absolutes.
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Our culture is still very informed by the long shadow of Western philosophy and religion.
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for Nietzsche, the idea is to push beyond nihilism into a mode of value creation.
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The philosopher was certainly bold for his time, but he wasn't the first thinker to question moral ideals.
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Some of the earliest critiques of universal morals can be found over 2000 years ago in a Chinese religion.
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Taoism is unique among religions in that it is uninterested in moral claims
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or in any notion of a greater purpose that would inform our actions.
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For the creators of Taoism, morality is an ineffective way to deal with our problems.
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It's not particularly good, for example, at encouraging others to behave better, as righteousness often inspires the opposite,
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and it only temporarily seems to soothe us like a painkiller.
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Taoism instead suggests that morality comes from finding an outcome desirable
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and wanting to repeat that outcome despite how futile that struggle will be.
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When we try to eliminate what we consider morally bad, we're trying to control what we cannot control.
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It's like demanding more flowers and less dirt where one requires the other.
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For the Tao, moral ideals result in hypocrisy
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and also an attitude of hostility to parts of ourselves that don't live up to our moral standards.
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We often then project that hostility outward to target others who don't live up to our moral expectations.
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That's why you often see morally righteous people targeting others while ultimately being hypocrites themselves.
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According to Taoism, the source of our problems is that we are not following the great Tao or the Way.
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You can follow this path through a series of practices such as taking non-deliberate action leading to a sort of harmony.
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You accept the bounds of flour and dirt, and you don't demand more of one than the other.
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Many would go on to describe Taoism as a form of moral nihilism, but just like with Nietzsche, that misses the point.
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The religion rejects the notion of living with a greater purpose.
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It's more about following a way than a purpose, and that is what creates harmony.
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Beliefs are ultimately useless to the Tao.
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However, However, this lack of a greater purpose or meaning is a difficult pill for many to swallow,
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especially those with a background steeped in Christian and Western norms.
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After Nietzsche described the death of God, many philosophers reckoned with the challenge of meaning.
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This created a philosophical movement known as the atheist existentialism.
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Life has no meaning.
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There is no existential human nature and no grand purpose.
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Existentialist writers in the 20th century wrestled with these conclusions, that the death of God had laid bare.
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Without the illusions that society was built upon, we're left with nothingness.
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We're in a state of nihilism.
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Just like Nietzsche, philosophers of this movement tried to respond actively to nothingness.
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The French existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre insists that because of our nihilist reality, we are condemned to be free.
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We are thrown into this world with no default essence or purpose, and as a result, we are ultimately responsible for everything we do.
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He goes on further to suggest that we are free in every moment.
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Even when tied down with ropes, we are free to choose how we approach that situation.
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When we stand on a bridge high above a body of water, some of us are struck with a fear not that we will accidentally fall, but that we'll throw ourselves off.
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Sartre described this feeling as an anguish towards our freedom.
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Nothing prevents us from throwing ourselves off.
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We are always free to do so.
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To live authentically, we have to take full responsibility for our freedom by choosing our own values
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and how we live in general.
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We can't appeal to a higher purpose and a pre-existing set of rules.
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We have to choose for ourselves.
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For Sartre, nihilism is the burden of freedom.
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The French writer, Albert Camus, took a different approach to the concept of nothingness.
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He found the idea of pursuing our own meaning or creating values to be self-defeating.
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There's no escaping the absurdity of human life.
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We yearn for meaning from a world that doesn't give us answers.
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He compared human absurdity to Sisyphus's struggle.
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In a Greek myth, Sisyphus was forced to push a boulder up a hill for eternity.
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When he reached the top, the boulder fell right back down, and he had to start again.
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For Camus, this struggle is just like our continual push for meaning.
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Just when we think we've found a sense of purpose, it eludes us.
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Life has no concrete answers for us, and the boulder rolls back down the hill.
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Camus' answer to the problem of nothingness was to live facing absurdity directly.
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We should confront nihilism by carrying on despite its consequences.
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live authentically is to be fully conscious of the abyss and to defy it with our head held high, just like Sisyphus boldly marching down the mountain.
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While atheist existentialists grappled with meaning in a world that offered none, postmodernist philosophers rejected any sort of metanarrative.
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They would not entertain them or seek them out in some vain struggle.
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Instead, they embraced nihilism in an almost cheerful way.
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They were extremely skeptical of truth claims and moral hierarchies, and with this attitude they deconstructed how truth functions in society.
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The French philosopher Jean-Francois Lyotard described these meta-narratives as language games that we use to make sense of the world.
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These are fields like religion, science, and philosophy.
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There's no all-encompassing order to the world that we can understand, we just have these language games to interpret it.
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Lyotard believes that these games shouldn't compete for supremacy the way science sometimes is used to undermine religion.
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He insisted that they should exist in paralogy, running alongside one another with no hierarchy.
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Another French philosopher, Michel Foucault, described this process as a form of enlightenment.
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We are freeing ourselves from the assumptions about knowledge that control our lives.
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In his view, knowledge is not objective or neutral, it's shaped by power relations.
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Power influences how knowledge is produced and even what is considered to be knowledge.
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When producing researcher journalism, for example, we don't just freely follow our interests or act randomly.
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Power determines what is an acceptable pursuit and what isn't.
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Often, what is considered knowledge is determined by its economic value.
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Does it make the institution you're operating in more revenue?
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Does it free up space in the budget?
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Does it draw an audience?
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Via institutions, power uses knowledge to shape individuals, and as Foucault insists, this is to create compliant citizens.
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This is why most institutions in society are designed like prisons.
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The idea is that subjects in these places, such as schools or psychiatric wards, are either being observed or in a state where they are potentially watched at all times.
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The individual then conforms their behavior under the assumption that they are being monitored and could be punished, even if they aren't necessarily always under that watchful eye.
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What all post-modernism has in common is a near full embrace of nihilism, which aims to disassemble the larger narratives that control our lives.
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It is an active deconstruction inspired by the likes of Nietzsche, only they weren't so much interested in creating new values.
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The point is to free us from the imperfect knowledge
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that insidiously controls our behavior in society and the many institutions that it comprises.
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I've seen people online embrace something called optimistic nihilism, and I wanted to clarify what that is in the context of the categories that we've already discussed.
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The basic idea is that life is meaningless, but that means that we're free to find joy and meaning wherever we please.
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Some of you may have already realized that optimistic nihilism sounds awfully similar to existentialism, especially in Albert Camus' Absurdism.
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And it is.
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Except that the concept is much simpler
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and perhaps created by people who are only so familiar with the history of existentialism and philosophy in general.
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In our exploration of nihilism, there's a common thread in each classification.
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The philosophers and writers involved don't consider themselves nihilists.
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And given our close examination, we've demonstrated that they're not advocates for nothingness, but deal with it directly in their writing.
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They bravely face the reality of nihilism and actively negotiate what to do despite its consequences.
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But there is a notion of a true nihilism, one who sits in nothingness and passively lets it consume them.
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This is what we call a postmodern nihilist.
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Well, not to be confused with the postmodernists that we just discussed, although postmodernism is often referred to as postmodern nihilism.
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I'm sorry if this is getting confusing.
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They're described as being indifferent conformists who put all of their energy and effort into hedonistic endeavors.
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They're deeply resentful and alienated, occasionally exploding into violence.
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They have no sense of greater purpose and languish in its absence.
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The philosophers who reckon with nihilism are generally trying to steer humanity away from becoming this kind of person.
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Nietzsche described a similar type as, quotes, the last man.
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People who preoccupy themselves with comforts and security while taking no risks.
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You could also describe them as passive nihilists.
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In Camus' book The Stranger, his main character, Mersot, finds no value in anything.
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He's indifferent to his mother's passing and feels nothing in his relationships.
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Mersot is also not emotionally impacted when he kills someone.
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In the book, however, he eventually embraces the absurdity of life as he is about to be executed.
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What is clear from every type of nihilism is
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that those who engage with it were not interested in sitting idly in nothingness.
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The point was always about navigating the world without a pre-existing purpose and universal truths.
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Finding no value in anything is not a healthy way to be,
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as Nietzsche famously said, He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster.
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And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.
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When you spend so much time dwelling on nothingness, you slowly become it.
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Finding value is important for your well-being.
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It may not be a universal truth, but most of us will struggle as we sit in that abyss.
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The lack of a greater truth was not the most interesting part about nihilism.
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It is the opportunity to pursue new or just different truths separate from the narratives that have shaped the society around us.
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The established truths we're accustomed to can be comforting for sure, but they can also alienate others and lead to dangerous convictions.
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People kill for moral convictions all the time.
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And you could argue that large-scale murder is often done for the sake of a deluded sense of morality.
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But what if we're free to assign purpose to whatever we'd like?
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Sometimes we belittle our interests because they don't contribute to a higher purpose that was instilled in us at a young age.
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We may reject the idea of wandering aimlessly up a mountain because it doesn't improve our workplace skills.
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We may reject friendships because our faith in God devalues the other person and their lifestyle.
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As consumerists, we often indulge in the immediate pleasures of media consumption or video games
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because they reflect an ingrained value that we have.
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You work hard and you play hard.
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Your consumption contributes to economic growth and so it has value.
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Coming face to face with nihilism is a painful process that does open up new possibilities in our lives,
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but it's not all misery.
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It can also relieve pressure and anxiety from the demands of those higher purposes.
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Most of us don't live up to the standards that are placed on us, and now we don't need to worry about it.
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How is your career going by the way?
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Don't answer that.
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It doesn't matter.
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What I want to know is how the texture of wet rocks makes you feel.
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It's important to me, at least in this moment.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Why Nihilism is Taking Over Modern Society”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: nihilism, value, Nietzsche, moral. This video has 306 sentences and 4306 words to shadow. The speech runs for 28:10. The speaker talks at a natural 153 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. Only 78% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is demanding.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| nihilism noun | /ˈnaɪ.əˌlɪz.m̩/ | The view that all endeavours are devoid of objective meaning. |
| philosopher noun | /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/ | A lover of wisdom. |
| nothingness noun | The state of nonexistence; the condition of being nothing. | |
| nihilist noun | /ˈnaɪ.(h)ɪl.ɪst/ | A person who accepts or champions nihilism. |
| morality noun | /məˈɹælɪti/ | Recognition of the distinction between good and evil or between right and wrong; respect for and obedience to the rules of right conduct; the mental… |
| abyss noun | /əˈbɪs/ | Hell; the bottomless pit; primeval chaos; a confined subterranean ocean. |
| absurdity noun | /æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/ | That which is absurd; an absurd action; a logical contradiction. |
| indifferent adjective | /ɪnˈdɪf.ɹənt/ | Ambivalent; unconcerned; uninterested, apathetic. |
| ideology noun | /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/ | Doctrine, philosophy, body of beliefs or principles belonging to an individual or group. |
| existentialism noun | /ˌɛɡzəˈstɛn(t)ʃəˌlɪzəm/ | A 20th-century philosophical movement emphasizing the uniqueness of each human existence in freely making its self-defining choices; also (generally), a… |
| existentialist noun | /ɛɡzɪsˈtɛnt͡ʃʰələst/ | A person who adheres to the philosophy of existentialism. |
| morally adverb | /ˈmɔɹəli/ | In terms of morals or ethics. |
| boulder noun | /ˈboʊl.dɚ/ | A large mass of stone detached from the surrounding land. |
| philosophical adjective | /ˌfɪl.əˈsɑ.fɪ.kl̩/ | Of, or pertaining to, philosophy. |
| passive adjective | /ˈpæs.ɪv/ | Being subjected to an action without producing a reaction. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| back down verb | To take a less aggressive position in a conflict than one previously had, or has planned to have. | |
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. | |
| fight back verb | /faɪt bæk/ | To defend oneself by fighting. |
| figure out verb | To come to understand; to discover or find a solution; to deduce. | |
| get off verb | To move from being on top of (something) to not being on top of it. | |
| give up verb | To surrender (someone or something); to inform on (someone). | |
| open up verb | To open. | |
| roll back verb | To return to a prior state. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Your data shouldn't be their currency.
- We're in a state of nihilism.
- Does it make the institution you're operating in more revenue?
- I'm sorry if this is getting confusing.
- How is your career going by the way?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| “Used to” used to + verb — a past habit or state that is no longer true | used to discredit · used to thinking |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have wasted · has always been interested · have been wronged |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | is dubbed · were told · was intrigued |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who has · those who have · Anyone who has |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 51 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, we're, can't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: myth /mɪθ/, atheist /ˈeɪ.θi.ɪst/, ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/, threaten /ˈθɹɛt.n̩/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: existentialism /ˌɛɡzəˈstɛn(t)ʃəˌlɪzəm/, deconstruction /diːkənˈstɹʌkʃən/, retribution /ˌɹɛt.ɹɪˈbju.ʃən/, socialism /ˈsoʊʃəlɪzəm/, illusion /ɪˈl(j)uːʒ(ə)n/
- Long words — get the stress right: philosopher /fəˈlɑsəfɚ/, morality /məˈɹælɪti/, absurdity /æbˈsɝd.ɪ.ti/, ideology /aɪ.diˈɑ.lə.d͡ʒi/, existentialism /ˌɛɡzəˈstɛn(t)ʃəˌlɪzəm/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like nihilism, philosopher, nothingness.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.