Have you ever met a nihilist?
Nihilism is the position that that the world, and human existence, is without meaning or purpose. The main character in
The Society of Others, written by William Nicholson, begins with such a view of the world, and hides out in his room in order to avoid having to deal with all the social interpersonal demands the he feels other people place on him for their own selfish purposes, which in the end, have no meaning.
Not such an inviting start to a novel, is it? What kept me interested in reading the book was a serendipitous mention of some of the exact ideas and concepts that was covered in the book
Hooked, which I had just finished reading a few days before.
The main character’s observations in
The Society of Others (who has no name) brings up many of the same concerns and questions that the essays in
Hooked criticize. The interesting thing, to me, was that the conclusions that the character in
The Society of Others came to were vastly different than the conclusions in
Hooked, even though the information was the same.
For example,
Hooked spends a lot of time talking about the futility of chasing after happiness by trying to buy it or somehow earn it. In Hooked, the conclusion is to be satisfied and happy with what we have, and to realize that just being where we are is actually the happiness we’re searching for, no the shiny thing around the corner. In
The Society of Others, the second page, during the main characters description of why he feels that doing things in life is irrelevant, he talks about money:
“I don’t even want money. What’s the point? You see something you want to buy, you get excited about having it, you buy it, the excitement fades. Everything’s the way it was before. I’ve seen through that game. They make you want things so they get your money. Then, they take your money and then they’ve got it, and what do they do? They use it to buy things someone else has made them want. For a few moments they think they’re happy, and then it all fades and everything’s the way it was before. How stupid can you get? It’s like fish. Fish swim about all day finding food to give them energy to swim about all day. It makes me laugh. These people who hurry about all day making money to sell each other things. Anyone with eyes to see could tell them their lives are meaningless and they aren’t getting any happier.
My life is meaningless. I’m not getting any happier. “
The text goes on for quite a while describing the futility of many human efforts, such as loving, being happy, having conversations with people, working, and seeking life’s pleasure. I got to the point, as a reader, that I was wondering why the character didn’t just end it all. Why did he bother to go on living?
The rest of the book deals with his “awakening” and learning why it’s so important to “just keep swimming”. How he gets there, I’ll let you find out for yourself. But the importance of this journey, and the fact that there is a compelling reason to take it, indicates that the nihilistic viewpoint described throughout the first section isn’t pure in its form. Rather, it’s a thinly veiled attempt to cover the fact that he hasn’t found his reason for living yet. Nicholson uses over-generalized and sometimes contradicting self-talk to paint a picture of a character living with his eyes closed to the human condition in himself, and therefore is not able to see it in others.
I wasn’t thrilled with the ending, both how it was written and what happened. I’m just generally not a fan of “it was all a dream” or “it was just a metaphor of all the self-reflection the character’s been doing” or “it was a drug trip”. As a writer, that kind of ending frequently seems to be a cop-out. It’s easy to weave a story into a place where the characters are in deep deep trouble. The trick of a great writer is to get that character out of his jam in a believable and enticing way. The Society of Others had a somewhat abrupt ending that didn’t really allow us to see who the character ended up being, just the realization that he had changed. But what did he change into? We don’t know, we’re left to guess.
I like the entire book up to that point though, especially the philosophical banter and discussions about God and “What’s the point of life?” In many ways, I can relate to the things that the main character discusses in the beginning of the book (and throughout as he gains insight) – about the futility of seeking the ever-elusive “happy life” and how so much in life is about swimming in order to find food to be able to swim more later. I guess, in that regard, I’m a bit of a nihilist myself. I believe that life does not inherently have meaning. That there is nothing about being human or a member of society that gives our lives meaning – in fact, much of what we do to get ahead is spinning our wheels.
But I also believe that, even though life itself has no meaning, being that we are sentient, we can create meaning to our own lives. That whatever reason we have for being here is wholly dependent on why we want to be here. Is it love? Is it giving? Is it helping others? Is it to get as much money as possible? Is it to reproduce? Is it to try every extreme sport there is? Life is what we make it. And how we respond to the things that happen to us is defined by what we deem important.
Being alive is being alive – there’s not much else to it. And one day, all of us, every human on earth, will be dead and gone. And what will it matter then what we did in our lives? So, if we’re going to have meaning to our lives, the only choice we have is to make that meaning now, not save it for later. Or, maybe I should say, to let life happen, and find acceptance and peace in everything that happens, because that’s just how it is.
By the end of the story, that is just the conclusion that the main character makes. When he reaches a point of absolute fatigue and inability to run any further from his pursuers, he says, “It seems so obvious to me that whatever happens is for the best, and could not be otherwise. Like water that flows downhill, it’s in its nature, it requires no effort, wherever it goes is right: so with the universe, so with history, so with my life, which are all the same thing. Whatever comes to pass is the right and only eventuality, and could not be otherwise. “
He doesn’t stay on this thought for very long. But this paragraph, found near the end of the character’s journey, is much like the musings at the beginning of the book: life is as it is, why fight it? In the beginning, the character interprets this as “why bother doing anything and so life is meaningless”. At the end, he interprets it instead to mean, “let things happen and its our choice whether we accept it and enjoy it, or to fight it and run from it.” The same general observations in each case, with a different conclusion.
And that’s what caught my eye at the library – being such a stark contrast to the book
Hooked, which has a Buddhist perspective that acceptance of things is how we are to find peace, it was almost as if
The Society of Others called out to me to realize that it’s all a matter of perspective – life happens, it’s our choice how to look at it.
