The Last Ditch Positivity of Willing Nothingness

"man would much rather will nothingness than not will..."

Nietzsche from The Genealogy of Morals

When we feel we don't have the power to will anything positive; when we have no values or criteria with which to choose what to will; when we are overwhelmed by the weight of history; when we are over-burdened by flippant criticism; when our ideals and goals are empty and contextless abstractions (which threaten to empty each of us and strip each of us of our context, and thus of our own identity and meaning); when we see ourselves as mere cogs in a machine that in the end will just crush us one way or another, sooner or later; when we have nothing to will and no motivation will to it; when we have nothing to aspire to... we will nothingness.

But this is not done out of despair; it is done to escape despair. We will the mindless, superficial and easy because despite having no motivation to will and no reason to will and nothing to will for, we need to will to be. (I think therefore I am? No, I will, therefore I am.)

Much of what is seen as worthwhile is so big it is beyond our ability as individuals to will it in any meaningful way; it will be with or without us. Willing against it is futile; our will, will never win.

The way out is to find something positive to will, but everything is so divided and negative or ethereal... no worse yet: insubstantial. The positive is empty and impersonal; it is abstract and detached. It is out of context while we are still shaped by context. Ideals that are so vacuous, hollow, mist-ified (but not at all mystical), so detached from our everyday life and remote from our lived and felt tradition that thought we may find them attractive, we do not find them grounding or sustainable. We may like them, but we don’t feel secure living by them let alone suffering for them.

But we need to will… So, we will addiction; we will distraction; we will ourselves on to a treadmill and pretend we are moving; we will conflict without ends or a goal; we will self-defeat: we will nothingness. But most importantly, we will. And so we stay; we remain; we tarry on; we linger....

It is like the Nine Inch Nails song says, "I hurt myself today, to see if I still feel." If all else fails, through pain we might know we can still feel.

We will nothingness to keep from passively passing into nothingness. (What? ‘Do not go gently’?) Even if what we will is negative and destructive, at least we are willing. And when we will, we are, and we are struggling to remain at least a bit longer. And the struggle is worth the possibility of bringing on the inevitable end sooner. Why? Because it is better to will a struggle and hasten then end than to remain only passively and end anyway. It is better to will nothingness than to not will at all.