Vacuous Nihilism
by Steve Xoh

A talk I did earlier this year about my (Not a) Lost Cat poster was recently published on the TEDx Youtube channel. Whilst I have a conflicting relationship with “the cult of Ted” (see issue #5), I wanted to do something big to honour the ending of this project and the humans who organise the Royal Tunbridge Wells event are lovely people, so it felt like a meaningful thing to do.

I had no idea that the talk had gone live until I started getting loads of unsolicited messages on LinkedIn from random people congratulating me and asking if I wanted to pay them money to help “grow my brand”. (I didn’t!)
But when I went onto YouTube, I was delighted to see that people had been watching it, liking it and leaving comments. Sadly, most of the comments were nothing to do with the talk itself, but there was one that immediately grabbed my attention. It said “Well, watching that was probably the low point of my week.. about as interesting and inspiring as a dog doing its bussiness on the sidewalk!! Vacuous nihilism”.

Even though I would of course prefer that the commenter loved my work, I genuinely appreciated that they had taken the time to write this scathing appraisal of it. For me, it simultaneously expressed that this piece wasn’t for them but also, in a weird way, that they totally got it. The point of the talk was to explore the wonder of finding meaning and inspiration in the existential pointlessness of everything. To not fall into the trap of everything having to have a goal or an objective but to just follow a rabbit down a rabbit hole and see what happens.

But it was the final summary of this talk as “vacuous nihilism” that fascinated me most. The word vacuous comes from the Latin word vacuus, meaning “empty”, and has come to describe something lacking depth, intelligence or meaning. Nihilism comes from the Latin nihil, meaning “nothing”, and describes a philosophical position that questions the existence of inherent meaning, purpose or truth. So, by combining these definitions, I might describe vacuous nihilism as the superficial dismissal of something as meaningless without fully considering what meaning might be found in it.

And here’s where I find a beautiful irony in the comment. In dismissing the story as vacuous nihilism, the commenter seems to be embodying the very thing they’re accusing it of. A pointless painting of a cat spontaneously engaged thousands of people around the world, each finding their own meaning in something that had none to begin with. The lack of a point wasn’t a failure of the project. It was the point of the project.

Unfortunately, the commenter deleted his original comment after a number of other people began to challenge and debate his perspective. I was sad because it had started to spark conversation and debate about existential philosophy, and I was excited to see where this would go. But I was also sad because, partly, I hoped that the commenter was in fact some brilliant Zen master provoking me with a koan so paradoxically compelling that it would crack open my consciousness. (Although I suspect he was simply a guy who didn’t like my work.)

PS: If you’d like to re-ignite the conversation about the importance of the pointless project (or to call me a vacuous nihlist) then please do add a comment here.