Nihilism is the conviction that there is no meaning to life, that the world we currently live in is inhospitable to our most profound hopes and dreams. Dovetailing on the former, Nihilism ensues a sense of reluctance to believe that there is a higher power to justify suffering. To be a nihilist is to flirt with despair with the sentiment that life breeds more melancholy than it does virtue. The modern West, marginally more than any other place and time, falls ill to the grip of the antagonist that is nihilism.
The specter of nihilism has been looming on the fronts of the West for the better half of a century now, creeping its way into the day to day activities of the modern folk, waiting to make its grand appearance in the most eerie sense. Alas, the values we have had thus hitherto draw their final consequence. Nietzsche heralded the belief that after the proverbial ‘Death of God’ which roughly translates to people reverting from religious belief and converging to true world theories, there would be a surge of nihilistic tendencies.
I pose the quite controversial argument that technology is not only aiding one's sense of nihilism, but is propelling it all the more. When one gets sucked into the digital world they are somewhat transformed from being a tenant of reality to being a tenet of the quite mystifying digital realm that embodies principles of nihilism, distraction, and erosion.
When radio & television appeared, thus began the gradual emergence of early modern nihilism (i.e. the final destruction of Traditions). The Internet gradually became, (and is all the more becoming) the extension of a further nihilism. At least during the early age of modern media, the masses continued to retain the social protocols of dressing well on various occasions.
Even that social vitality (the dress code) no longer exists having begun its collapse in 1970. By 1975, such self-destruction became complete. Today's lack of dress code is the most apparent of nihilisms. Anyway, I digressed.
For the Historical We (i.e. sons & daughters of the West): either we return in the main to what was not broken to begin with…