Carl Sagan’s pale blue dot “tale” usually reminds us how small and pointless our world problems are compared to the scale of the universe. The earth photographed by the Voyager 1 from billions of kilometres away renders an image of a tranquil and fragile place.
The analogy is a framework to help us think beyond our problems and soften our differences.
The same applies when we think about a meaning and a purpose related to the human experience. Not having a shared experience around those topics doesn’t make it less valuable. When religion was universally adopted, we felt spiritually interconnected having sociological ramifications.
Nihilism and purposelessness usually are channelled with a pessimistic attitude towards a lack of care. The problem with this point of view is the reality of the statement, which usually feels more like a performative attitude rather than a real point of view. In other words, how can an individual operate without a real care for anything else?
The performative action is based on an individual interpretation of society in which each individual creates a set of preferences. The deduction and interpolation means that society is built by a set of individuals who care about specific things and sometimes, we can found a commonplace. Still, in so many other topics we don’t find a strong commonplace, therefore the performative nihilist kicks in with a pessimistic explanation. Topics can vary widely, but a good example is climate change. The performative nihilist will describe how close to doom we are because climate change is not a preference on an individual level, therefore we lack the global awareness to make the change necessary to transcend an oil-based society.
The issue with this line of thought is that it seems to be a surrender before committing to analysing the topic. The framework does not allow to think critically about the subject matter in detail and allows fewer ways to think about a potential solution. Psychologically, the subject tries to unload the burden of a profound crisis with a pessimist philosophy so the overall worry does not exist anymore. The subject has re-signified existence to make it more bearable but under some heavy mental gymnastics.
With this counterargument I don’t plan to downplay the deepness of any crisis or enter into wishful thinking arguing that technology would solve everything. The main point is to avoid a default nihilist perspective that annihilates any critical thought and with that any future progress to be made to surpass any challenging crisis.