International Day of Happiness: What is happy for those who believe life has no purpose

History was nearly repeated on March 14, the day pestilent BJP MLA Ganesh Joshi and supporters grievously injured police horse Shaktiman in Dehradun. Fortunately for the steed, the rally wasn't bereft of compassionate people. But a nation holds its breath in the hope that Shaktiman – who struggles to stand on three limbs after his shattered hind leg was amputated – will be able revert to a normal life.

For the horse flogged in Turin, Italy, on January 3, 1889, there was no such hope. Neither was it so for the man who tried to save it. This incident, some say, caused the mental breakdown – and subsequent death one-and-a-half years later – of Friedrich Nietzsche, who had collapsed after throwing his arms around the animal.

His criticism of morality and objective truth (not least his quip, "God is dead") made the finely-moustachioed Nietzsche one of the most iconic philosophers ever. His ruminations on nihilism, or the belief that all values are baseless and life has no purpose, trigger debates on concepts like happiness. Because, he argued, happiness shouldn't be an aim, but a consequence of achieving one's aims.

Nietzsche is dead. But his ideas are not.

Thoughts from ANUS

"...trees are the ultimate nihilists. They recognize reality and their powerlessness in it. They see no point in bloviation, neurosis, dualistic religion or morality. They simply grow toward the sunlight and do the best they can. When death comes, they accept it. For all we know, they are more intelligent than us..."
— 'About' page, www.anus.com

You wouldn't be faulted for wondering if the website in question is about a certain part of the human anatomy: it's what Brett Stevens intended, in a bout of absurdist humour, when he formed the American Nihilist Underground Society.

"Happiness is misunderstood. Most people think it means a constant state of ecstatic joy, forgetting that if it was constant, it'd be a very boring life," he says in an email interview.

Stevens, who went by 'Spinoza Ray Prozak' on ANUS, is a black and death metal reviewer and former radio show host. Since its inception in 1987, he's written 188 articles for ANUS. Given his belief that human perspectives are immaterial, it's not surprising that some of what he's written makes Stevens a polarising figure online.
But back to happiness. Nihilists believe that what we perceive to be 'reality' doesn't exist, because everything is clouded by human perception. So can a nihilistic life ever be a happy one?

"Ego-denial is essential to finding happiness. You need to be aware of reality before you find any joy in anything," Stevens feels. "Otherwise it's a projected joy, an unstable and untrustworthy thing. People say you can be happy by acting happy, but the point of the divide between self and world is that the two must be in agreement. Or you'll never believe your own emotions."

Reality check

The concept of nothingness isn't alien to India. Lokayata philosophy, traced to ancient Indian thinker Ajita Kesakambali in 6th century BC, was (and still is) considered nihilist and heretic because it denies Vedic authority. Its overarching message, that knowledge is a sum of our perceptions, resonates with 29-year-old entrepreneur Paras Chopra.

"People think nihilists are eternally depressed and lifeless. On the contrary, realising there's no inherent meaning to anything sets the stage for fulfilment," says the CEO of Wingify, a website optimisation provider.

"When you know you're truly on your own, you stop paying heed to the 'log kya kahenge' maxim."
To say nihilism is widely perceived as Mana for depression is putting it lightly. But parody Twitter accounts like Friedrice Nietzsche (@tinynietzsche) and Nihilist Arby's (@nihilist_arbys) prove that a radically realist – or bleak, as some would say – worldview and a sense of humour are anything but incompatible.

In his book Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism (published in 2003), John Marmysz not only highlights the importance of humour in a nihilist life, but explains how pivotal grief is to personal growth.

"True happiness is a reflective, life-long process of coming to terms with who you truly are. This requires facing not just parts of yourself you are comfortable with, but also those dark corners of the mind where negativity, sadness and despair lurk," explains the philosophy professor at the College of Marin, California, in an email interview.

"For the nihilist, the structure of human life is arranged around an incongruity between our highest aspirations and what we can actually accomplish."

Happiness, adds Marmysz, is possible within a nihilist worldview, but not in the sense of having wishes fulfilled or thinking only pleasant thoughts. "It is possible in the sense of being attuned to the ongoing process of human struggle, suffering and aspiration toward unreachable goals."

Many believe nihilists are misanthropes (maybe not without reason), angry folks living in vans and basements, says Brett Stevens. But for those who live up to the stereotype, he has some (wry) advice:
"Remove the automotive seats and put a real sofa or two in your van. Comfort makes a world of difference."

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Complete Q&A with John Marmysz, author of Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism and professor at the College of Marin, USA:

1. Before kicking off my queries about nihilism and happiness, I'd like to know what you make of World Happiness Day. Here's some information from its Wiki:

The International Day of Happiness is celebrated throughout the world on the 20th of March. It was founded on June 28, 2012 by the United Nations General Assembly, when all 193 member states unanimously adopted UN resolution 66/281, following a multiyear campaign initiated in 2011 by the Illien Global Public Benefit Corporation…

…Each year since the day's inception, the charity Action for Happiness has coordinated an international campaign to coincide with the day, bringing together a coalition of over 60 organisations to promote positive social action to help create a happier and more caring world... Beyond running one of many Day of Happiness websites, they have organised happiness flash-mobs in 12 cities across the world and promoted the sharing of positive messages on social media on the hashtag #internationaldayofhappiness.

Disparaging a day that promotes world happiness is a lot like disparaging kittens. Doing so makes you sound like you don't have a heart, and it probably also earns you a lot of enemies. But as with kittens, you can't expect happiness to thrive just by declaring a day in its honor. Neither happiness nor kittens would be able to prosper if all we did was spend our time surfing websites, participating in flash mobs or tweeting hashtags. These activities are, indeed, probably more of a distraction from the real causes of happiness than they are a serious attempt to understand its origins.

While it is true that "loneliness and isolation" are epidemic in modern societies, social media and a day of celebration are no cure for these complaints. The world's most profound thinkers have wrestled with these issues since the beginnings of human history; and they continue to wrestle with them today precisely because these are matters that are a part of the human condition itself. These are not problems to be solved, but aspects of life that we should strive to understand as an essential part of who we are. Sharing positive messages on social media or participating in flash mobs certainly might make people feel as if they are doing something constructive, but feelings can be deceptive.

And this is the danger. It is easy to be lured into a false state of contentment, distracted by platitudes and slogans encouraging us to believe we don't need to work very hard at all in order to resist human unhappiness.

2. Pragmatists often cite "the happiness industry" as a tool of conformity – the kind, they say, which pathologises sadness/treats it as a pariah emotion. What are your views on this?

It is common for the charge of pessimism to be deployed against those who emphasize the importance of embracing dark thoughts and feelings. This charge rests on the assumption that the whole point of human life is to find happiness. Since feelings of sadness, despair and sorrow are thought to involve forms of unhappiness, it would seem to follow (so the charge goes) that these are feelings best avoided, or perhaps worked though as quickly as possible so that we can move on to pursue what is really important: happiness itself! Don't worry; be happy!

But classifying negative feelings as among the impediments to happiness misconceives what real happiness is all about. To be truly happy is not a matter of how often you think positive thoughts or experience affirmative feelings. True happiness is much more complicated than that. It involves the reflective process of coming to terms with who you truly are; with understanding your inner being. This process is life-long, and it requires facing not just the parts of yourself that you approve of and are comfortable with, but also those dark corners of the mind where negativity, sadness and despair lurk.

To pathologize and condemn negative thoughts and emotions is to censure a part of ourselves that is real and important; and it can lead to no good. In fact, I believe that it actually leads down the road to unhappiness!

The really unhappy person is the one who rejects some part of who he or she is. Self-alienation and emptiness are thus encouraged when the expression and exploration of negative sentiments, which we all harbor, are discouraged.

3. In the nihilistic context, does happiness exist, or is it more an umbrella term for the absence of suffering?

Nihilism is a philosophy premised on the claim that the highest human goals and aspirations are ultimately unattainable. This is because ideals, such as absolute Truth, Justice or Beauty, are human conceptions that we project onto the world. They do not exist as objectively present entities "out there" waiting for us to harvest them like ripe fruit. Our highest ideals are subjective abstractions that we often forget emanate from our own minds. Like an apple hanging from a stick strapped to a donkey's head, these illusory ideals beckon us forward, always receding just as we think we have them within our grasp.

This philosophy – one in which our highest goals are unattainable – has long been labeled as "negative" or "pessimistic" by critics precisely because they see it as incompatible with human happiness. If you never get what you most deeply desire in life, then how is possible that you could ever really be happy? A friend of mine, in fact, once told me that the philosophy of nihilism sounds like an excuse to be depressed! But as I already stated, this misunderstands the real nature of happiness.

A nihilist can be happy, but only if we understand happiness as the earnest process of trying to understand and come to terms with who we are. For the nihilist, the very structure of human life is arranged around an incongruity between our highest aspirations and what it is that we can actually accomplish. We struggle, strive and inevitably fail to reach our highest goals; but this is part of what it means to be human. In a sense, we are all failures, but we are failures who can come to terms with and understand the nature of our situation.

Happiness, then, is possible within a nihilist worldview, but not in the shallow sense of having all of your wishes fulfilled or in the sense of thinking only pleasant thoughts. Happiness is possible, rather, in the sense of being attuned and sensitive to the ongoing process of human struggle, suffering and aspiration toward unreachable goals. This is probably not the most tweetable message for World Happiness Day!

4. In Laughing at Nothing... you've written extensively about humour being a coping mechanism of sorts. But can a nihilistic life be a happy – or rather, fulfilling – one?

According to nihilists, there is nothing that can be done to change or improve the fundamental human condition. We are finite and thus can never, in principle, reconcile ourselves with the absolute ideals we long for. In Laughing at Nothing: Humor as a Response to Nihilism (SUNY Press, 2003), I coined the phrase "nihilistic incongruity" as a name for the gap between our actual, finite existence and the aspirations we have toward the infinite. Nihilistic incongruity is a source of human suffering and frustration, but it is also a cradle of opportunity for active, ongoing and unending striving. Though we never come to the end of the road, nihilistic incongruity at least opens up a kind of space within which we are able to act and create as we vainly aspire toward the impossible.

If it weren't for this gap, humans would become complacent, satisfied and happy with the world as it is, never feeling a sense of lack or the sort of dissatisfaction that spurs us to do something – anything – to try and fill the void.

The absurd nature of human existence is like a hamster wheel that takes us nowhere. On the one hand this might seem sad, bleak and depressing. And let's not fool ourselves; it is all of these things. However, the absurdity of life is also sometimes amusing, comical, and entertaining. Life at times drives us to despair, but at other times it can make us laugh. From the perspective of the nihilist, since at a fundamental level there is no cure for the human condition, laughter may indeed be the best response, since in laughter there is no pretense toward fixing the problem; only a detached amusement gained from regarding the incongruity of life in a way similar to how we regard the punch line of a joke.

And anyone who has heartily laughed at a joke knows what it feels like to be happy, if only for a few moments.

5. What's the greatest misconception people have about nihilism, with respect to concepts like happiness and contentment?

I think the greatest misconception that has been perpetuated about nihilism is the claim that nihilists are necessarily despairing and miserable. As I've already pointed out, there is nothing in this philosophy requiring an attitude of unmitigated negativity. While sadness, despair and unhappiness are not incompatible with nihilism, neither are they implied by it. The viewpoint that life's most valued goals are unattainable can be met with tears of laughter as well as with tears of anguish.

There are other benefits to nihilism that are rarely noted. For instance, I see nihilism serving as a counterbalance to overconfidence in human power and the arrogance that goes along with it. When we consider how in the grand scheme of things humans really don't really matter all that much, and how our grandest aspirations are little more than absurd games, we may finally begin to exercise a greater degree of modesty and humility concerning our place in the universe. Given the proliferation of arrogant, angry and self-confident fanatics who seem to dominate the headlines these days, this is probably a very good thing.

I've tried to illustrate what life looks like from the perspective of nihilism in my latest book, The Nihilist: A Philosophical Novel (No Frills Buffalo, 2015). In this work of fiction, the main character struggles with issues of finitude, impermanence, death and absurdity, in the end discovering a sort of happiness that results from his resignation to the void.

As illustrated in this novel, I do think that nihilistic happiness is possible, though it is not the shallow, simple sort of happiness found through sloganeering on social media. It is a kind of happiness only attainable by facing up to, and reflecting upon, the hard struggles of life and coming to terms with the lessons they have to teach us.