Very funny this is partly in response to a Brooks piece. He fits nihilism very well. Doesn’t every really write about much and when cornered contends that most of his attempts to make points are really just vibes[0] like famously claiming $60 spent on alcohol and a $17 burger make him relatable to Americans struggling with inflation[1].
But particularly hilarious is that he wrote this exact piece two months ago in the Atlantic[2]. He argued that the Greeks had it right and we all need to be more virtuous again.
As someone who’d describe themselves as a virtue ethicist I’d be inclined to agree. Utilitarianism leads to the bureaucratic tyranny Arendt discusses and deontology is just as hollow as belief in belief. The reality is that we can’t optimize ourselves out of where we are.
>we need to work to bring back the Ancient Greek model of the polis and in particular the Ancient Greek model of politics as what gives life meaning.
The Ancient Greek model of politics isn't compatible with liberal pluralism. The former assumes a common end and the latter assumes diverse conflicting ends. The Ancient Greek model looks more like modern China than it does like modern America or Europe.
deadeye · 37m ago
This reads more like misdirection than analysis. Suggesting religion is just a collection of empty rituals is just sad.
It's almost as if he's trying to prevent those looking for help from considering religion.
"You don't want those gold bars over there, they're just painted rocks". But are they?
rattlesnakedave · 1h ago
Aside from being true, Christianity is basically the only way to inoculate yourself against mimetic violence spirals. Which is missed here.
puppycodes · 17m ago
The bible episode 1 or the bible episode 2? Which flavor of Christianity? White Jesus? Why not all the other religions? There are multiple and more accurate translations of the 10 "commandments" which itself is an incorrect translation. Better hurry up and try all the other religions just in case.
c0balt · 1h ago
Why in a particular do you believe that Christianity is the only religion and/or belief fit for this purpose? It seems like a very bold statement given the overlapping and diverse nature of religious beliefs.
rattlesnakedave · 1h ago
The sermon on the mount was a moral quantum leap at the time it was delivered. “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you.” You aren’t getting that anywhere else. Additionally, the entire narrative around the crucifixion of a perfectly innocent victim is designed to put the “what if I’m wrong” voice in the back of your head when you’re engaging in mob or retributive violence.
vunderba · 1h ago
Do you have a lot of experience and knowledge around other non-Abrahamic world religions to make such a bold claim?
Because I can think of at least a few (Jainism, various Chinese schools of thought, etc) that capture the spirit if not the exact message of "love your enemy".
Yeah, the Buddhist or Jain approach is more about detachment and non-harm. It feels almost clinical in its universality. “Love your enemies” is much more personal and emotionally demanding. It’s not just “don’t hurt people” or “be compassionate to all beings,” it’s specifically telling you to have positive feelings toward people who are actively trying to harm you. Combine with the innocent victim motif and you get something really unique.
krapp · 1h ago
Jesus was not the first person to preach the concept of loving your enemies. At the very least, everything he preached was based on existing Jewish philosophy, particularly the messianic strain of Judaism he was a part of, but it also existed (and preceded Christ) in Buddhism, Taoism and the Babylonian Councils of Wisdom. Nothing Jesus preached was unique.
I suggest a look at the Esoterica channel on Youtube for a perspective on Jesus as a historical figure in the context of Judaism at the time[0]
I think you’re (or, whoever you’re referencing) is conflating conceptual similarities with actual equivalence. Even if Jesus was building on Jewish tradition, The Hebrew Bible is full of imprecatory psalms calling down curses on enemies. Even the most expansive interpretations of “love your neighbor” in Jewish law didn’t extend to active enemies.
See my other response on eastern thought. “Babylonian Councils of Wisdom” is vague
vkou · 1h ago
Many modern supply-side Christians don't believe in any of those parts of the Bible.
Turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour, etc, etc, are not something they are keen on.
rattlesnakedave · 1h ago
Yeah, that’s the problem. In my estimation a large part of it is because Christianity, especially as practiced in the United States, is a cultural phenomenon. Evangelicalism has won the popularity contest, and it’s not moored by anything. There’s an uptick in new Catholics and Orthodox converts though, which are more “moored” if you will by tradition and at least some kind of doctrinal constraint.
vkou · 51m ago
So, since Evangelicals don't meet the bar, but Catholics do, it's not Christianity (the belief in Christ/a singular Judean God) that is the relevant demarcation, it's adherence to canon.
This undermines your thesis, because it's not the mystic woo about virgin birth and transubstantiation and resurrection (which they all profess to believe in) that's important - it's the canon - adherence to which is entirely orthogonal to faith.
rattlesnakedave · 45m ago
No, it is just Christianity that is the demarcation. I’m saying that when you have American evangelicalism (which functions as a social club, and is not moored by anything other than “get people in the door”) as your delivery mechanism, you’re less likely to get solid catechisis. This is of course not impossible, I know many bad catholic Christian’s and many good Protestant Christians, but your odds of getting the good news delivered correctly are higher in more orthodox settings.
vkou · 37m ago
How does Catholicism not function as the village social club in its DNA?
It can't in large parts of the US because it's a fringe minority, but doesn't it behave in the exact same way in an area where it is the dominant social affiliation?
Its rituals are just as odd and esoteric as the practices of the stranger evangelical churches.
rattlesnakedave · 29m ago
It does, but the distinction I’m making is that is not its primary function, unlike many evangelical churches in the United States.
Because this is the case, and because of the hierarchy in place for interpreting scripture and handing down sacred tradition, it becomes less likely that there will be problematic theological dilution or drift.
krapp · 1h ago
Christianity has been awash in "mimetic violence spirals" for a thousand years, and some of those memes come right out of the Bible. WTF are you even talking about?
rattlesnakedave · 1h ago
People have free will and make poor decisions, but on whole it has pulled society in the right direction over the long arc of history.
krapp · 59m ago
I would argue that on the whole post-Enlightenment secularism has pulled Christianity in the right direction over the long arc of history.
rattlesnakedave · 53m ago
The enlightenment wouldn’t have happened without Christianity. universal human dignity, individual rights, the concept that reason can discern moral truth, the university system where Enlightenment thinking developed all grew from Christian soil
notmyjob · 1h ago
Religion is anti-fragile. The more persecution and negative press it gets, the more certainty we feel in our faiths. I would point out that nihilism is the opposite of religious faith, so the author is a little bit confused on that point.
kelseyfrog · 44m ago
This is only true for some religions. Since the author mentions Nietzsche, it feels fair to pull in On the Genealogy of Morality.
Many religions today have this feature because they out-competed religions that didn't, but it's not a universal feature of religions by a long shot. If anything, religions that have this feature are inextricably connected to social coping mechanisms(evidently due the persecution).
codemonkey-zeta · 2h ago
The absolute best resource I've found for educating myself about this topic is John Vervaeke's free online course "Awakening from the meaning crisis". You can search it in YouTube or Spotify.
He explains in detail exactly why a "nostalgic return to religion" cannot save us from, not just nihilism, but the entire set of crises western society is undergoing.
mallowdram · 1h ago
The crises stems not from a loss or lack of meaning, it's from recognizing how limited our forms like narratives and myths/religions provide access to meaning. If we fully recognize the meaning load in any event, it's endlessly connected to past and future events. Any event's local-load is likewise massive. The idea we use metaphors as meaning sinks is bizarre. Metaphors are arbitrary, meaning is not, it is specific. This is the inherent problem.
The scaffolding we use for meaning, language, myth, causality, narratives, these are all Pleistocene tools that have long overstyed their welcome. Access to meaning is a total failure of imagination of the basics.
The author's understanding of ritual/tradition as the sum total what religion means is at best extremely naive, but I am receiving it as condescending and dismissive. There was a way for the author to redeem the subtitle of the article. He could have gone down the route of "ritual for ritual's sake is not good, but the bigger thing that ritual is attached to is good". But instead, the argument went "religious ritual is empty and has nothing else attached to it, and that's bad; let's be sure to attach Humanism to the ritual to make it good."
The irony of the whole thing is that Humanism is a religion too, though many people won't recognize it as such. This makes the author's argument doubly misguided.
AaronAPU · 39m ago
Well, Church isn’t God.
So I’ll grant them the title. But the stronger claim, that God won’t save us from nihilism, I disagree with entirely.
kelseyfrog · 1h ago
> In a recent op-ed, [David Brooks] warns that a rigid political climate on the left has led people on the right of the political spectrum to actively embrace nihilism.
That’s a strange dodge. "The Left made me do it" is a child's excuse, not an analysis.
The deeper truth is that nihilism isn’t born of politics. Nihilism what's left when after the exhaustion of meaning under total commodification. It's born of the spectacle, the replacement of reality with its endless representations. Every human relation is mediated through an economic relation, and eventually every gesture, every feeling, every passing thought gets rendered into a commodity.
We are desperate for connection, and the spectacle knows it. So it offers us platforms that promise intimacy but can’t deliver it. They were designed not to connect us to other humans but to make us friends with brands. We log in for friendship and get advertising.
Go outside? Good luck. It's empty because this stupid city was designed around cars, and even if there are people, they're tucked into their phones. It's a social ghost town.
If I propose to decommission the spectacle, I'd expect to receive a bewildering array of responses: "naive," "utopian," "impossible." So here we are, trapped in a world of our making where no one has the choice to enter nor to leave and everyone has been leveraged to maintaining it despite no one wanting it.
Good job. We have only ourselves to blame.
DaveZale · 1h ago
Sure, but for many, it's a place for community too. Rites of passage. Selecting a godparent. And singing! Hey without gospel music, we might not have had Motown.
Also, in some religions the temples are places for job searching, business networking... nothing wrong with that.
I wish I could have faith, a double major in science and philosophy killed all of that. But mystical moments still happen without all of the religious trappings, in conversation or nature.
I just don't know. Here in the US, Christian ethics still predominate, usually, and without organized religious participation, will that continue? Is it too much work to agonize over decisions without it?
metalman · 1h ago
The best way to deal with nihilism is by also becoming a narcisist, which as we can see from many of the people in power, is extra creeply effective.
NooneAtAll3 · 1h ago
and the best way to deal with narcisism is becoming a nihilist, thus creating the spiral of doom
But particularly hilarious is that he wrote this exact piece two months ago in the Atlantic[2]. He argued that the Greeks had it right and we all need to be more virtuous again.
As someone who’d describe themselves as a virtue ethicist I’d be inclined to agree. Utilitarianism leads to the bureaucratic tyranny Arendt discusses and deontology is just as hollow as belief in belief. The reality is that we can’t optimize ourselves out of where we are.
[0]: https://www.foodandwine.com/1911-smoke-house-bbq-david-brook...
[1]: https://newrepublic.com/article/142708/david-brooks-tyranny-...
[2]: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2025/07/trump-admi...
The Ancient Greek model of politics isn't compatible with liberal pluralism. The former assumes a common end and the latter assumes diverse conflicting ends. The Ancient Greek model looks more like modern China than it does like modern America or Europe.
It's almost as if he's trying to prevent those looking for help from considering religion.
"You don't want those gold bars over there, they're just painted rocks". But are they?
Because I can think of at least a few (Jainism, various Chinese schools of thought, etc) that capture the spirit if not the exact message of "love your enemy".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohism
I suggest a look at the Esoterica channel on Youtube for a perspective on Jesus as a historical figure in the context of Judaism at the time[0]
[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=82vxOBbYSzk
See my other response on eastern thought. “Babylonian Councils of Wisdom” is vague
Turn the other cheek, love thy neighbour, etc, etc, are not something they are keen on.
This undermines your thesis, because it's not the mystic woo about virgin birth and transubstantiation and resurrection (which they all profess to believe in) that's important - it's the canon - adherence to which is entirely orthogonal to faith.
It can't in large parts of the US because it's a fringe minority, but doesn't it behave in the exact same way in an area where it is the dominant social affiliation?
Its rituals are just as odd and esoteric as the practices of the stranger evangelical churches.
Because this is the case, and because of the hierarchy in place for interpreting scripture and handing down sacred tradition, it becomes less likely that there will be problematic theological dilution or drift.
Many religions today have this feature because they out-competed religions that didn't, but it's not a universal feature of religions by a long shot. If anything, religions that have this feature are inextricably connected to social coping mechanisms(evidently due the persecution).
He explains in detail exactly why a "nostalgic return to religion" cannot save us from, not just nihilism, but the entire set of crises western society is undergoing.
The scaffolding we use for meaning, language, myth, causality, narratives, these are all Pleistocene tools that have long overstyed their welcome. Access to meaning is a total failure of imagination of the basics.
https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLND1JCRq8Vuh3f0P5qjrSdb...
The irony of the whole thing is that Humanism is a religion too, though many people won't recognize it as such. This makes the author's argument doubly misguided.
So I’ll grant them the title. But the stronger claim, that God won’t save us from nihilism, I disagree with entirely.
That’s a strange dodge. "The Left made me do it" is a child's excuse, not an analysis.
The deeper truth is that nihilism isn’t born of politics. Nihilism what's left when after the exhaustion of meaning under total commodification. It's born of the spectacle, the replacement of reality with its endless representations. Every human relation is mediated through an economic relation, and eventually every gesture, every feeling, every passing thought gets rendered into a commodity.
We are desperate for connection, and the spectacle knows it. So it offers us platforms that promise intimacy but can’t deliver it. They were designed not to connect us to other humans but to make us friends with brands. We log in for friendship and get advertising.
Go outside? Good luck. It's empty because this stupid city was designed around cars, and even if there are people, they're tucked into their phones. It's a social ghost town.
If I propose to decommission the spectacle, I'd expect to receive a bewildering array of responses: "naive," "utopian," "impossible." So here we are, trapped in a world of our making where no one has the choice to enter nor to leave and everyone has been leveraged to maintaining it despite no one wanting it.
Good job. We have only ourselves to blame.
Also, in some religions the temples are places for job searching, business networking... nothing wrong with that.
I wish I could have faith, a double major in science and philosophy killed all of that. But mystical moments still happen without all of the religious trappings, in conversation or nature.
I just don't know. Here in the US, Christian ethics still predominate, usually, and without organized religious participation, will that continue? Is it too much work to agonize over decisions without it?