The Suffering and Nihilism of Eelam: Perspectives from Nietzsche and Frankl
Ruben Nagesparan Chandrakumar, BS
Nihilism is a philosophy that dates to the 19th century, depicting a worldview that views life as devoid of meaning where humans have no purpose. Several causes led to the rise of nihilism within the world; of these, the Enlightenment era and the rule of rationality, along with the threat to fundamental religious beliefs from the rise of scientific and technological discoveries, are primary. The Enlightenment philosophers believed in skepticism, reason, and individualism—all of which shook the foundations of fundamentalist religions and resulted in the descent into cynicism, disbelief, and nihilism. This, in conjunction with the revolutionary ideas that arose within the scientific endeavor, broke the well-developed belief structures that had grounded different civilizations across the world. As a result of these developments, the structure of perception that humans depend upon to see a world that can be interpreted in infinite ways and to guide their actions amidst infinite potential was shattered, leaving us with a descent into chaos. The issue with this collapse in the structure of perception is that it presented a problem of higher order—the lack of faith within any structure of perception, given reality’s infinite complexity. Without this faith, humans drown in the “dizziness of freedom,” as Kierkegaard eloquently articulated, suffering from existential angst and anxiety from the impossibility of figuring out the next step forward. When left in this state, as was experienced by those in the 19th and 20th centuries, nothing remains but Nietzsche’s salient observation that “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”
How did this nihilism seize its grip on the psyche of Eelam? The overwhelming changes and threats posed by the emergence of a Marxist dream of communal utopia, the challenges of holding faith amidst the brutal oppression and suffering that has characterized life under the Government of Sri Lanka, the advent of science and technology that threatened traditional religious views, and the philosophy of skepticism contributed to the rise of nihilism in the erosion of the religious substructure. Within the human psyche, as described by Carl Jung, there lies a religious dimension that—collectively—forms a religious substructure, a hierarchy of values, that forms the core of a culture. As nihilism grew in strength, the belief in the religious substructure dissipated, leaving a vacuum within the psyche where uncontrollable chaos festered. In response to this chaos, which remains an eternal threat to humans, there is a propensity and a temptation to fill the void with political ideologies. When the collective submits to this temptation, the atrocities that permeated the fascism and communism of the 20th century are inevitable. How may this temptation be avoided considering the inevitability of forming structures of perceptions that are not entirely commensurate with the nature of reality—thus dooming us to the uncomforting truth of ever-present chaos and uncertainty? It seems that having faith not in a single structure of perception, but in the human ability to generate new structures through adaptation to new information and the judgment of former structures—as Dr. Jordan Peterson has described—is the best approach.
The current state of Eelam encompasses all the threats and grips of nihilism in addition to the disintegration of the faith in the LTTE. Given the collapse of the LTTE, the promised dream of a revolutionary socialist utopia within Eelam has been replaced by a national psyche tormented by feelings of despair, hopelessness, resentment, betrayal, and cynicism that form a nihilist philosophy. This leaves the collective psyche in a state of inaction and passivity; this has caused sentiments that display an acceptance of the suffering, oppression, and poverty which are caused by the Government of Sri Lanka. It displays a defeated acceptance of the influence of China within Eelam. It displays an acceptance of the war crimes and crimes against humanity that India committed. It displays an acceptance of the inaction and silence of the international community. It displays an acceptance—and even a celebration—of the sins of the LTTE, with an ill-formed nostalgia based in ignorance, revisionism, or both, alongside a fantasy for their return. This sentiment must be battled in the psyche of the nation if the collective—and the individuals that comprise it—are to generate a new structure of belief and perception. This requires refining the vision, based on all the information and lessons learned from Eelam’s history, to inspire a philosophy of hope and action; this would not be one based in naivety or nihilism, but rather in a balance of faith and logic—an appreciation for the order and the chaos. It is through this path, the Middle Way, that the two extremes can be avoided, and balance can be attained. It is this path that marks the realized religious psyche—the nature of an enlightened spirit.
The fundamental claim of nihilism may very well be the purposelessness of existence—the dearth of meaning. As is described brilliantly by Nietzsche, “it is an error to consider ‘social distress’ or ‘physiological degeneration’ or, worse, corruption, as the cause of nihilism.” The reason for not blaming sociological factors, physical illness, or the malevolence of reality as the cause of nihilism is that there is a multiplicity of interpretations to any given event and circumstance. Viktor Frankl, who lived through the Nazi concentration camps, was perhaps the quintessential example of this argument. He observed that there were those who conducted themselves decently—no matter the treachery and tragedy that they had endured and were forced to face every hour of their lives in the camps. As he articulated in his book Man’s Search for Meaning, “Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” This freedom to choose, and to seek the omnipresent meaning of life, is what Frankl believed to be the way of transcending the inherent suffering of life. Furthermore, Frankl viewed religion as “the search for ultimate meaning”—a direct counter to nihilist philosophy. Another individual who mirrored this same perspective was Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, who had lived for years within the Gulags of the Soviet Union; in these camps, he was impressed and deeply admired the behavior of religious individuals in the most hellish of circumstances. It was this, alongside a thorough analysis of his own psyche and the socio-political landscape, that led his movement towards Christianity and his desire for his country to return to the religious.
The need to fight against nihilism and its manifestations through a balance of faith and logic is at the crux of Eelam’s survival and prosperity as a nation. By abandoning ideological views of the world and adapting to all new information to modify previous belief structures, there is the potential for goodness, benevolence, and incredible levels of meaning to imbue the individual and collective psyche. By rediscovering the spirit of the religious, beliefs will not be held to a stringent and rigid order. The spirit of the religious is the balance between the known and explored, the dogma, and the prophetic, revelatory elements that threaten the known through novelty. Without this nondual path, individuals and the nation will fall to one extreme—in a state of disarray.