What is nihilism? Well, the Cambridge dictionary defines it “as a belief that all political and religious organizations are bad, or a system of thought which says that there are no principles or beliefs which have any meaning or can be true” and the Collins Pocket dictionary defines it in just four words, “rejected by the society”.
The word society has a very different meaning for me. It is something that comprises of people basically where a very large group of people live together, form laws and rituals that they consider is beneficial for all. But I don’t consider it true. It is rather a set of laws made by people who have compromised with their principles and ideals for things like career, vanity and the entire materialistic things one can consider. And the people who defy these set of laws are considered to be against the society basically “the nihilist”. A group of people can only talk, shout and blame among themselves for the wrong doings in the history of mankind. When it comes to work or doing something the word called society just disappears.
It’s never the ambition of a group but the spirit and passion of the individuals who do things with integrity that gets the work done. If it is called a team work, then it is just a chain of inspiration from one individual to another. But it will always lead to a single source. That source may or may not be the leader of the team but the one who chose to perish his ego for the completion of task he is willing to do. It is the just the human will power that has propelled the mankind from living with animals to reach out into space.
Its people like Spartacus, Einstein, Gandhi, Mandela who have changed the face of this world. It was their will to do things that got the things going. They worked tremendously hard to make their imaginations a reality. They were the ones who refused to get succumbed to the circumstances surrounding them.
I have recently come across a poem:
Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.
In the fell clutch of circumstance
I have not winced nor cried aloud.
Under the bludgeoning of chance
My head is bloody, but unbowed.
Beyond this place of wrath and tears
Looms but the Horror of the shade,
And yet the menace of the years
Finds and shall find me unafraid.
It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishments the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.
This poem is titled as invictus which means “The Unconquerable”. This poem was written by William Ernest Henley. Henley wrote this poem while sitting on the hospital bed. He had a bone tuberculosis since the age of 12. He wrote the poem when he was 26. That means he had already battled disease for already 14 years. And he was still willing to fight it till the end. He ultimately had to get his leg amputated but lead an active life till the age of 53.
Nelson Mandela had dreamed of a country where everybody was free facing no oppression. He was put in jail by whites for fighting for his right. But when his days came, he forgot what the whites had done to him and his family just to work tirelessly for his country. The so called society expected him to take vengeance from whites. But he did what a true patriot should do for his country.
When I read about such people, I always wonder. What made these people insane to themselves just to achieve what they had always dreamed of. Is it the nihilistic treatment that they get from the society which makes them redundant to the annotations they get from the world?
