Nihilism In The Bet

Nihilists are people who have adopted a variety of negative philosophical beliefs and political views, often times to the extreme. Originating from the Latin word meaning Nothing, Nihilist tend to believe that is no point to our existence, and extremist some even argue that our existence isn’t real (Nathanson).This form of thinking may appeal and encompass the way a lot of people might feel, but the concept really limits one’s full enjoyment of life. While we all are living with a very limited amount of time, microscopic in the big picture, the impact one can make in that time is tremendous. Living with the idea that our existence doesn’t matter at all will only hurt a person’s potential to do great things.

The story that led me the farthest to the conclusion I made was Anton Chekhov’s The Bet. In this story, the character of the lawyer spends fifteen years in self imposed imprisonment for the sake of a bet. At the end, he believes himself taught that the world doesn’t matter, after having read through hundreds of thousands of books. He believes

In his story, Darrow goes a lot more philosophical, arguing that once the memories of events are gone they are dead, and so is the person you were when you lived those memories. Darrow argues our consciousness is only alive as long as we are aware of it, and able to recollect from it. However, this ideology doesn’t fully take into consideration the way our pasts shapes us far past our memories. Many of our beliefs are shaped by things we cannot completely recall, yet have accepted and continued to allow as part of our lives. For example, most people cannot recall themselves during their gender assignment, but still accept the gender that they were given (Beemyn). Simply because we don’t have a picture perfect memory of an event or moment, doesn’t mean that they do not continue to affect us now, even as that event becomes fainted in our