“Nihilism is a declaration of meaninglessness, a sense of indifference, directionlessness or, at it’s worst, despair that can flood into all areas of life. For some this is the defining experience of youth – witness the death of numerous young romantics, whether Keats, Shelley, Sid Vicious or Kurt Cobain; and their numbers continue to multiply – for others it lasts a whole lifetime.”
Simon Kritchley
A nihilist or nothingist is a person who doesn’t believe in anything. ‘Nihilist’ will soon become a catchall term for young, disillusioned English speaking Colombo intellectuals whose thoughts and actions are regarded as worthless. Their impact on Sri Lanka and those around them, in effect, nothing. Nihilism in Colombo is developing and expanding and we must accept this as a real and unavoidable phenomenon. The fact that Colombo’s youth are dealing not with nothing but nothingness.
Nietzsche treated the subject as serious philosophical matter. A result of collapsing traditional morals and values. God dead. Religion no longer holding sway over modern culture. The youth’s excuse to ‘Party’, take drugs, alcoholism, greater debt, living beyond their means, living for today, all the result of the absence of absolute values. Divorce, suicide, forced sex with minor for favours ranging from job security to financial freedom, spouses blatantly cheating, and Colombo’s society ignoring all and any infraction of traditional values.
Am I preaching? NO, NOT. Take a look at all our blogs, the most popular and unpopular. Look at the values that drive them, what message they give of Colombo’s youth and society. The death of moral equity. Everyone looks away or those who commit the sins hide under the excuse of today being a modern world. Youth, young adults and those who work and play with them, mentors, bosses, colleagues: all who bow to no authority, accept no principle at face value, no matter in how much respect that principle is held. Sound familiar? Is this you?
30 years of war, a country and it’s people torn in conflict. The death of the greatest leaders. The gradual dearth of a proper leadership with vision and more importantly moral equity. The unprecedented slaughter of over half a million civilians in the three-decade long war. The creation of the suicide bomber, our gift of innovativeness to the world. What will remain to be written in the annuals of world history, Murali’s Doosra? Sana’s pinch hitting and changing the short version of the game of cricket? Lasith’s slingers? The LTTE suicide bomber?
The horrors of the war. The LTTE atrocities. The 300,000 Tamil Sri Lankan civilians trapped in camps. It seemed that ‘civilised’ society was incapable of committing these atrocities. Three decades on we are proved wrong. Thugs who become politicians and high government officials, the rule of the law belonging to those who wield the most amount of money and power, a government with no conscience, the very citizens of the country murdered in broad daylight, a decline of moral equity.
The youth of the country, who grow and are nurtured within these values. Dealing with not nothing, but nothingness. No conscience.
Painters, artists seek inspiration from images of terror and death.
Photographs of blood, gore and death. Devourer with glee, especially the youth. How many of you received the email with the Photograph of Prabakaran’s face in a death glare with the hanky removed?
Media and film more gore, more death.
More excuses for people to live, as they see fit, with no moral equity, or proper guidance, no future. No philosophy can be written or a remedy prescribed. A generation too spoiled to care and too arrogant to dig deep, unwilling to face what lies within.
After the holocaust where approximately six million Jews were killed in concentration camps, the United Nations pledged that horror of that magnitude would never happen again. But since 1945, genocide has been a terrifying reality in Cambodia, Bosnia, Rwanda and our own country Sri Lanka.
For Nietzsche this nothingness is temporary. A momentary void out of which history will give birth to something entirely new. The collapse of absolute values and lack of moral equity as the opportunity to re-examine our fundamental truths, to retool our systems to better fit our world.
I pray so. For the sake of our country Sri Lanka. Say something I haven’t heard before, but please don’t kill the messenger.
