The Creativity of Nihilism: On Tinder, Capitalism, & Fundamentalism

Tinder — like Amazon, Judeo-Christianity, and consumerist capitalism — doesn't create endless dissatisfaction. On the contrary, it is born of a will to distraction — distraction from life: in other words, nihilism.

A married friend of mine asked me the other night if I believed online dating made women more distracted, less inclined to commit, as they could just keep shopping for another man as they do on Amazon — the perpetual search for the best widget, the best toaster, the best man. I said no: the will to be distracted, to not commit, was not created by Tinder. Tinder was created by that will.

It is a will that winds and stretches across borders and time. It is a will to not be satisfied with what is. A will that looks anywhere but here, anywhere but at what's actually happening, believing the answer — contentment, fulfillment, happiness, the best toaster — lies elsewhere. Nietzsche called this nihilism.

For Nietzsche, it is this will that gave birth to Judeo-Christianity in what he terms the slave revolt. This will is so self-loathing, so afraid of this world, that it claims that what's happening — the things you see, experience, touch, feel — is not what matters. What matters is what you don't see: the doer behind the deed. They created a truth separate from the world! Reality, they say, is a lie. Truth is not here. Truth is not what happens. Truth is elsewhere. Go find it.

This becomes religion, morality, No-saying, ego: bending the will to meet an ideal from on high, an ideal outside of life, outside of what's actually happening.

Over time, this will morphs into something else: consumerism. We hate reality so much, we hate ourselves, feel so empty, we don't look to God. We look to Amazon and Tinder. The answer is not what's in front of you. The answer is out there, somewhere in the great catalog of stuff, in a better pair of shoes, in the perfect table, place setting, rug, pants, job, apartment, spouse. I have to keep searching, keep swiping. Why? I tell myself it's because I haven't found the right man. But the fact is: I will never be content because I do not accept myself. Because I hate myself. Because I hate life. 

The defining trait of both morality and consumerism is perpetual discontent. They are born of a will to nothing, to nihilism. Amazon and Tinder and religion don't create self-loathing. It's the other way around: self-loathing created Amazon and Tinder and religion. The will to nothing is endlessly creative. It created religion and morality; it created the ego and the self; it created the suicide bomber; it created Tinder and Amazon.

Capitalism, then, is not a cause of consumerism — or of anything, for that matter. To call it a cause is misleading, a misdiagnosis that only perpetuates the disease. No, capitalism is not a system that causes things. It is a form, an expression, of a will to nothing. It's a form of nihilism born millennia ago (or earlier; perhaps it's as eternal as the God they claim exists).

Capitalism is not a system. It is the expression of a will. To eliminate it, therefore, is not to vote for someone different, not to explode a factory (even if both those things offer relief from the symptoms). To eliminate capitalism one must eliminate nihilism.

One of the more absurd components of the modern geopolitical landscape is that the most ardent enemies of capitalism are nihilists themselves: religious fundamentalists who hate life so much they blow themselves, and everyone around them, up. Consumerism and fundamentalism are born of the same will.

We distract ourselves in any number of ways — anything to avoid what's actually happening right in front of us. So we tether our very identity to what we call politics; we feel anger and outrage at this or that. Which is not in and of itself a bad thing. After all, how can one not feel rage over the casual and systemic cruelty of American governance? But to bring that rage and anxiety into oneself, into one's dreams, into one's home; to avoid being self-present; to avoid being a good wife or husband or friend or even citizen (we all know asshole activists, people who speak for respect while being a huge douche to everyone around them): this is not trying to help others. This is avoiding life. This is nihilism.

(Please, I beg of you, do not think I am against 'activism' as I accept the horrors of reality with a beatific smile of White Man Privilege on my face. On the contrary, wanting to help others is beautiful. It is what happens when you look at what's happening and love life: you want to help. And part of that help might very well involve placing explosives on an oil pipeline or disrupting traffic for weeks and the like. I want to locate political activism in a will other than nihilism. But that's for another essay.)

We avoid and deflect life in all kinds of ways — with sports, news, jobs, drugs (from booze and dope to Ativan and Paxil). Rather than feel the cosmos surge through me, I weep and scream because the 49ers suck or my boss hates me or some racist fascist was elected. Rather than feel great joy in the fact of life, in the everyday, I feel sorry for myself, unfulfilled, angry, and anxious — so spend my time mining Tinder and OKCupid or job boards or online sales. Anything, in other words, to not only distract me from myself but to justify my distraction. My team lost! Trump is awful! My job is hard! I can't find the right man! Isn't my life hard? Of course I feel terrible! Now gimme a drink! Gimme my meds!

Nihilism is insidious. It reads this and say: Fuck you, Coffeen, I can't find the right man! I need to keep looking. And to that there is nothing I can say if that is what you believe; an infinite gap, a différend, separates us. So I'll  say this: the other person cannot possibly be the answer in and of him or herself. It's a relationship, after all! This means you — you who are swiping and swiping — need to do something. Commitment doesn't come from someone else. It can only come from one place: from you, from an internal movement, a leap into the unknown here and now, as you face the otherness of your partner rather than search for a better one (I wrote an essay about this a few years ago: Why It Doesn't Really Matter Who You Love (I don't care, in most cases, for "whom").)

Of course, there are aspects of religion, Tinder, and Amazon that are fantastic. The will to nothing is creative and I've enjoyed many of its spoils. I've met incredible women on Tinder — not to mention gotten laid. I just ordered a new chair for my desk from Amazon, saving me the hassle and humiliation of going to Office Depot. And I love reading the Gospels: Jesus is awesome (he's being nailed to a cross and, other than a moment of despair, is so chill he forgives his executioners — as they're killing him!). But, more than anything else, this will to nothing creates elaborate structures of perpetual misery.