In discussing the end of all things (living) for several years, it has often been my experience that moral/value realists are prone to "psychologize" those subscribing to axiological and/or moral nihilism. The charge goes something like this:

Nihilism is, in denying notions of cognition independent normativity, or in the denial of good/bad metaethically, in short, a variation of 'justification' via negating justification, an attempt to short circuit, as it were, moral responsibility and a vehicle to license any action deemed preferable.

Of course, the charge is hasty and perhaps itself a psychological defense mechanism, an attempt to render 'the other' so at variance, ' the other' so monstrous in the eyes of the accuser, a less intimidating a figure, less haunting. I believe nihilism is a kind of haunting, it penetrates and colors one's whole experience, though perhaps and often, unawares, clandestine. A banalized nihilism is likely reflective of a prior banalization of character, an existentially concrete banalization.

As against the charge of nihilism a la 'preference satisfaction justification,' the nihilist may perhaps have the strength (Nietzsche: "how much truth can a spirit bear, how much truth can a spirit dare?") to stand before the abyss and confirm that which, at their core, in the deepest levels of their being, they would prefer not to confirm: there is only the world and horror.

No categorical normativity/transcendent imperative. No moral reality as against preference satisfaction. No 'possible world' outside one's own head such that the actual world is or may become that possible world it ought to be.

Nothing, in summary, to stop Marquis de Sade and company other than preference backed by brute force.

No creator. No experiential meta-context that negates the meta-contextual and ultimate futility of all things.

These days, and perhaps through the ages of history, one hears whispers. Whispers that are growing louder. And what do they say? They purport to reveal a truth that we are, in effect, designed (qua evolution) to reject, and if not reveal a truth, to express it normatively, the ever louder whispers exhort, express a desire, concretized by command:

End the living!

Embrace non-being.

I've recently read our very own Mr. Pearl's essay "More than Justified" and it has proven inspirational, of course, as my mind is disposed to do, to a swirl of thoughts outside the boundaries of coherence, and I shall here give it, in brief, what might be deemed (particularly by Mr. Pearl) a heterodox reading But,

ethics as non-being?

If being is understood, in part, as the continuation in being of being, being as replication of being, then "the ethical event" must be understood as a break, a rupture in being...when "the other" is, as against an existent subjects being-as-process (of continuation), revealed to said subject as 'valuable,' even unto the ending of one's own being-as-process.

What haunts me is this...

The screams. They've always been around. Often, we survive insofar as we can ignore them. But Ivan Karamazov has always had reason to reject the ticket. Screams of suffering.

Might not the supreme ethical event be the rupture in being that occurs when the whispers become as loud as the screams? That is, when being-as-process is ENDED, and mankind embraces its own extinction?

The Priority of Ethics and the Relevance of Subjectivity is the first in a series of essays which I conceive of as Anthropomorphizing Humans.

DerivedEnergy has been a long time staple in the 'antinatalist community' on YouTube. Until recently, I knew nothing of his personal life; apparently he's a British citizen who was teaching English in Indonesia. He was caught with what amounts to two joints worth of marijuana, arrested in his home, and faces 4-12 years in prison. He's already been incarcerated since February. I myself am no friend to the YouTube antinatalist community, indeed, DerivedEnergy and I have gone head to head on numerous occasions, but this is crazy!

Anyways, please sign the linked online petition to help this poor soul. It only takes a few seconds.

http://chn.ge/12Krhbw

Article on this heinous crime:

http://www.thejakart...e.com/home/b...