When Stories Are Not Enough, How Should One Live?

When Stories Are Not Enough, How Then Should We Live?
(An Invitation to a Serious Engagement with the Book “Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism”)

The aim of this note is not to argue, undermine the foundations of others, or prove a particular position right; rather, it is an invitation to a shared struggle toward creating a meaningful and justified way of living.

This invitation begins with a simple yet fundamental question: “How should one live?” Taking this question seriously does not mean raising it merely in an abstract realm; rather, it means asking it “precisely from here and now, from this very event before us, from this very doubt regarding a certain decision or failure to justify a certain ethical or political action[1].”

First, we must see to what extent the existing stories available for answering this question are sufficient.

Formulating the Impasse[2]

The starting point of this formulation is as follows: human beings are self-conscious and, instead of merely living according to ends such as increasing survival, increasing pleasure, and reducing suffering, they also ask about the “why”; therefore, the audience of this note is anyone who does not wish to disable this questioning in various ways[3].

First, it must be seen what contradictions arise, within the formulation of the book, from living solely according to the ends of increasing survival, increasing pleasure, and reducing suffering[4].

A person is usually afraid of failing to satisfy their desire, and if they are unable to satisfy it, they experience frustration. Yet satisfying survival and desire does not solve the problem either. Satisfying the end of survival—as the conservative end of preserving the existing state of affairs—although it guarantees the biological life of the subject, according to the book’s account, causes desire to fall into boredom. The end of desire is transcendence, transgression, and the attainment of the pleasure arising from them. Therefore, the law of increasing pleasure and reducing suffering is internally contradictory: increasing pleasure leads to increasing suffering—the fear and anxiety resulting from changing one’s condition—and reducing suffering leads to reducing pleasure and, consequently, to boredom[5].

This issue is not limited merely to preserving the existing state of affairs; satisfying desire is usually pleasurable, but the continuation or repetition of a pleasurable experience also leads to boredom[6]. At times, even the satisfaction of desire itself can produce disappointment. Moreover, even if satisfaction is gratifying in the short term, in many cases satisfying desire does not lead to lasting contentment; rather, it creates further and different desires—a mechanism that the book refers to as “greed.”

On the other hand, desire itself is not a single wish, but an intertwined and contradictory collection of wants and inclinations. Consequently, simply referring to existing desires still does not provide a criterion for judging between conflicting desires. Furthermore, desire is not fixed; it changes over time through changes in external and internal factors, and this itself adds to confusion.

Another issue is the dependence of satisfying desire on the external world. Desire is usually not satisfied in a vacuum. Fulfilling desires generally makes an individual a servant of people, institutions, and so on; and in this sense, the greater the satisfaction of desire, the greater the servitude.

Ultimately, the book argues that this selfish, emotion-driven, and greedy approach can lead to making diverse groups less capable of dialogue and to increasing violence in the struggle over limited resources for satisfying desires—which has indeed happened.

Most importantly, choosing among different desires, although seemingly free, arbitrary, or random, operates according to prior and deterministic causes that constitute desire itself[7]. Therefore, within the framework of the book’s argument, acting solely according to these desires and emotions is identical with slavery[8].

Another possible answer to the question of why is the attempt to increase the survival, reduce the suffering, and increase the pleasure of others, or the ideal of an equal distribution of the resources of survival and desire for everyone. The book seeks to show that transferring the object of desire from “oneself” to “others” does not resolve the aforementioned criticisms of the ends of survival and desire. On the other hand, according to the book, “it can be shown that this very wish itself can also arise from the desire to increase one’s own pleasure and reduce one’s own suffering[9].”

On the other hand, if we seek the motivation for altruistic action in emotions such as anger, compassion, shame, pity, hatred, revenge, love, guilt, patriotism, and so on, another problem emerges. These emotions may have evolutionary functions, but acting solely on their basis is, in the same sense mentioned above, identical with being enslaved by emotions. The same applies to the blind mechanism of empathy[10]!

Another answer could be following the divine command. Yet before this answer can become a basis for action, it requires a non-dogmatic confrontation with several questions: Does God exist?[11] If God exists, does God have any end or purpose at all? If God has such a purpose, is it even knowable to us?[12]

The book also claims that in many conventional forms of religiosity, the motivation for following a divine end once again returns to fear of punishment or hope for reward and, consequently, to reducing suffering and increasing pleasure[13].

Even if we assume a divine end independent of survival and desire, the book raises another issue: such an end, because it places the source of value and law outside the subject, is heteronomous[14]. Of course, this criticism is binding only for someone who considers autonomy to possess value.

Another response examined by the book is the attempt to escape the cycle of survival and desire (such as the experience of upekkha or Buddhist equanimity). But, in the book’s words, “such an attempt is negative. That is, it sacrifices pleasure in order not to suffer, or sacrifices life in order to reach the stage of ‘immortality.’ As a result, it does not lead to a life beyond survival and desire, but rather to an ideal against life itself”[15]. In addition, from the perspective of the author of this note, the Buddhist account of the world itself must also be able to withstand a critical and non-dogmatic confrontation.

Another response examined by the book is Kantian practical reason, which attempts to formulate the moral law independently of the cycle of pleasure and suffering. The book does not consider this answer sufficient either, arguing that reason requires a practical motivation in order to realize the moral command; at this point, it considers Kant’s concept of “respect” ambiguous and claims that this concept in practice has one foot in desire[16].

One might respond to this collection of criticisms by saying: then I will make no decisions and do nothing; however, the book reminds us that “every refusal to take a position is itself a kind of position-taking, and every ‘not acting’—both in terms of energy consumption and affect, and in terms of practical consequences and effects—is itself a kind of action”[17]. Therefore, whether human beings accept responsibility for their positions and actions or not, they are choosing and acting at every moment.

Ultimately, suicide too can be presented as one of the possible answers. Within the framework of the book’s argument, this choice does not solve the problem; it merely accelerates the arrival of a cleansing death that erases the question itself. Of course, our current life is not entirely different in this respect either: keeping ourselves occupied until a death arrives that washes everything away[18].

Thus far, a set of possible answers has been reviewed within the framework of the book’s formulation. It is possible that, for the reader as well, for the reasons mentioned or for other reasons[19], living according to ends arising from survival and desire, altruistic action, or some of the religious and philosophical responses examined may prove insufficient. Yet the insufficiency of these answers does not free us from the necessity of choosing and acting.

Why “Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism”?

The question now is this: if pre-given ends are not acceptable, does there still remain a position from which one can begin without concealing this impasse?

The answer of Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism begins precisely from this point. The book claims that even in a situation where nihilism prevails—in the realm of the subject, meaning the absolute dominance of meaninglessness[20]—and where one is unable to justify actions according to previous criteria, a meaningful and justified position still remains: “the resolve to struggle against, or within, meaninglessness.” But what does this struggle mean?

This radical struggle has both a negative and a positive aspect. Its negative aspect is refusing to submit to paths predetermined by natural instincts and civilizational mechanisms. Its positive aspect is finding or creating a source for the justified valuation of life, beyond blind natural reactions or civilizational clichés. Of course, this project offers no guarantee of its own success; rather, it turns the very possibility and manner of creating such values into a question[21].

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In the words of the book itself: “Radical struggle is not, in the first place, a struggle against this or that individual, a struggle against this or that political system, a struggle against this or that religion, or a struggle against this or that scientific theory; rather, it is an all-encompassing struggle against the dominant mode of humanity’s uncritical myth-making, which constitutes all the myths that constitute the present condition as well. It is a theoretical and practical struggle against every deceptive and uncritical myth-making—from the myth of nature and the myth of God to, this time, the myth of humanity itself, and even against dogmatic interpretations of humanity’s ideal myths such as justice, freedom, and truth”[22].

“Radical struggle is above all a struggle against the genuine factors that block the existing condition, and all other struggles become justified only through their relation to radical struggle[23].” According to the book itself, “struggle in the age of nihilism is not meant to suspend other struggles; rather, it is meant to rearrange and justify them within a more comprehensive and deeper framework. Yet the central point is that these struggles must not postpone or overshadow the struggle against nihilism, nor the critical confrontation with struggle itself, even for a moment. For whenever the primary struggle is forgotten, secondary struggles will become meaningless; just as when the battery is removed from an electrical circuit, all the lamps go out”[24].

One distinctive aspect of this project is its emphasis that a meaningful and justified way of living should not remain merely on paper; rather, realizing such a way of life requires a trained subject. For this reason, in the appendix “Exercises for Strengthening the Subject,” the book introduces the notion of practice: exercises aimed at strengthening the subject’s awareness and preparedness in confronting anti-awareness factors and internal/external elements of enslavement[25].

Here, the body is no longer merely an object of philosophy; it itself becomes a field of struggle. The subject is not supposed merely to know how emotions, desires, habits, and fears have shaped them; they must be able to see them, endure them, gain mastery over them, and cultivate within themselves another way of seeing, understanding, and acting[26].

Practice, in this understanding, is not merely a means for reaching an external end; its end is ultimately life itself, or, in the book’s expression, “living as a continuous practice”[27]. From this perspective, the appendix on exercises is the practical aspect of the very project that the main body of the book formulates theoretically[28].

The audience of this book is someone for whom nihilism and a justified confrontation with it are problematic—a serious issue. Someone who has become disappointed with all other paths—even with being hopeless about oneself. As a result, they see themselves as so desperate that they now take even the vaguest glimmers and the least likely hopes seriously. Such an audience is a desiring being who seeks transcendence beyond desire; that is, someone who has found merely living according to the cycle of pleasure and pain—meaning pre-constructed natural, divine, or civilizational ends—insufficient and is searching for another “value” and “meaning” for their life.

In this sense, regardless of the constructed nature of the subject, and regardless of all external and internal constituting and determining factors, the condition of possibility for struggle is a “decision”: a “decision” to transcend meaninglessness and unfreedom based solely on surrendering oneself to drives and desires; a decision to find or create another end and to create a meaningful and justified way of living[29].

Here, an issue arises that the book itself explicitly raises: if all foundations and methods of reasoning are called into question, how is the very “decision” to struggle—which the book accepts as an axiom—justified? The book emphasizes that this decision is not the product of an individual free will, but rather the result of the chain of causes constituting the individual; nevertheless, the person can still “decide” at this very level, even if this occurs at a level of secondary agency—that is, a level of decision-making that itself does not stand outside the chain of prior causes.

Elsewhere, the book explains the justification of this decision on two levels. At the first level, which is negative and preliminary, the decision is considered justified because it is directed toward escaping the existing impasse. Therefore, every effort to exit this condition is justified at this level, and the decision itself, regardless of its motivations and the manner in which it is formulated and realized, is considered a justified step against the impasse as a “desire for freedom.” But at the second level, which is positive, this decision must be evaluated within the overall framework of the system of struggle. After the criteria, foundations, and principles of this system have been formulated, the decision itself, its motivations, and the manner of its realization must also be assessed according to those same criteria. Therefore, at this stage, not every negative reaction or every decision to escape is necessarily justified; it may be based on motivations or foundations that are even more unjustified than the initial condition[30].

Ultimately, one of the criticisms that the author of this note raises against the book concerns a tension between its formulation of “justified dialogue” and the way the book itself confronts certain audiences and rival positions. In the chapter on logic, the book emphasizes that in a critical encounter between a justified system and a rival system, dialogue should, as far as possible, begin from the foundations of the opposing side; the critic, rather than evaluating the rival’s conclusions according to their own criteria, should demonstrate the possible inconsistency of those conclusions with the rival’s own criteria. According to the book, a constructive encounter does not merely seek to negate the other; rather, it should be a justificatory relation—that is, it should create the possibility of the systems involved in dialogue becoming more justified or richer[31].

However, the text departs from this criterion in some places. For example, a person who decides to transcend the priority of survival and pleasure is described as someone who steps out of the “line of the dead” and “suspended souls”; an expression that effectively places those who have not yet made such a decision on the opposite side of this distinction[32]. Elsewhere, it is also stated that although the book considers everyone its potential audience, it does not intend to “lower its assumptions and arguments to the level of this everyone and their presuppositions and concerns”[33].

The issue here is not merely the harshness of the tone or the book’s right to make evaluations. The book, based on its own value system, can naturally criticize certain ways of living or thinking and even stand against unjustified positions. The question is whether some of these expressions are entirely consistent with the model of engagement that the book itself proposes in the chapter on logic; a model that emphasizes openness, persuasion, beginning from the other side’s foundations, and immanent critique. If the language of engagement places the other side in an inferior position beforehand, there is a risk that, instead of creating the possibility of critical and justificatory dialogue, it may provoke a defensive, dogmatic, or hostile reaction and consequently make it more difficult for the very noteworthy points that the book seeks to present to be heard.

Therefore, in this note, Principles of Struggle is not presented as a final answer, but rather as a serious proposal for beginning from within this very impasse. Ultimately, if it is possible to create another meaningful and justified way of living—whether through “Principles of Struggle” or through criticism and transcendence beyond it—all the better; otherwise, the issue remains, but this time, deeper than before.

[1] Mohammad-Mehdi Ardebili, Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism: Based on the Theory of Systems of Representations, Volume One: The Level of the Subject, second edition, winter 1403, p. 11.

[2] In this section, I have formulated and reconstructed the book’s account of the condition of “impasse” based on my own understanding.

[3] For example, through excessive busyness, indifference, drugs, gaming, alcohol, art, socio-political activity, psychiatric medication, travel, nature excursions, gatherings with friends, family, romantic relationships, sexual desire, or even Eastern traditions, and so on.

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[4] For this formulation of the ends of survival and desire and their internal contradictions, see: Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism, pp. 414–433; also p. 36.

[5] Even the idea of balance turns into boredom after it is achieved.

[6] In a reconstructed formulation of Principles of Struggle, one may say that human beings generally respond to boredom by seeking new, diverse, intense experiences and attractive adventures (for example, foods, goods, a new partner or home, travel, or migration to a new city or country, etc.). After satisfying these fantasies, the same cycle of desire, satisfaction, and boredom may repeat itself. Of course, if even these experiences are generalized into a whole, after a while even new experiences no longer have an effect; because there is no longer anything genuinely new. Therefore, one should be as attentive as possible to details and pay attention to differences!

[7] For a detailed defense of determinism and a critique of free will, see: Robert M. Sapolsky, Determined: A Science of Life Without Free Will, translated by Abbas Seyedin, Tehran: Novin Publishing, 1404.

[8] See Spinoza, Ethics, Part II, Proposition 35, Scholium; where he states: “Because humans are conscious of their actions and desires, but ignorant of the causes by which they are determined, they believe themselves to be free; whereas as long as they are under the domination of emotions and passions, they remain in a kind of bondage.”

[9] See Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism, pp. 432 and 433.

[10] See: Paul Bloom, Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion, translated by Mehdi Malek-Mohammadi, Tehran: Roshd Publications, first edition, 1402.

[11] See: Mostafa Malekian, Arguments for the Existence of God, lecture notes no. 5, Imam Sadegh Institute, 1371.

[12] Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism, p. 428.

[13] Ibid., pp. 426–427.

[14] Ibid., pp. 427–429.

[15] Ibid., p. 425.

[16] Ibid., p. 430.

[17] Ibid., p. 13.

[18] Ibid., pp. 5, 37.

[19] For example, Robert Nozick proposes a thought experiment: suppose there exists a machine that can create any experience a person desires. Neuroscientists can stimulate the brain in such a way that the person feels they are writing a great novel, finding a friend, reading an engaging book, or experiencing any other desired life, while in reality they are floating in a tank with electrodes attached to their brain. While connected, the person does not know that they are inside the machine, and everything appears completely real to them. Nozick asks: Would we choose to connect ourselves to such a machine?

[20] The book explicitly states that it refers to someone who “no longer believes in any of the previous meaning-giving stories—from religion to science, from political utopias to artistic creativity.”

[21] Adapted from p. 145 of Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism.

[22] Principles of Struggle in the Age of Nihilism, p. 38.

[23] Ibid., p. 107.

[24] Ibid., p. 79.

[25] Ibid., pp. 758, 760.

[26] Ibid., pp. 758–759, 763, 767–768.

[27] Ibid., p. 760.

[28] Ibid., p. 766.

[29] Ibid., pp. 8, 38, 141–143.

[30] Ibid., pp. 40–41; also p. 33.

[31] Ibid., pp. 233–234; see also p. 229 for the definition of a constructive and justificatory relation.

[32] Ibid., p. 438.

[33] Ibid., p. 39.