Newism: Preface – Dragons, Sex, and the Abyss

I wrote in my journal today: from my early 20s, I had the terrible habit of muttering to myself ‘Nothing means anything.' Sometimes it takes the form of a cruel joke I’m playing on myself, daring to believe in something, being the dark punchline. Or when I'm grappling with some personal struggle or thinking over some social event, it appeared as an unconscious angry outburst. I would bark to myself negatively, 'Nothing means anything, you fucking idiot! Why do you care about this small personal incident when even the grandest, events in the world amount to monkeys farting in the vast silence of the void?’ This morning I found myself energised to deconstruct why I was drawn to reinforce such a bleak notion continually. In a period of furious self-analysis, I found a compelling influence.

It's true. Nothing means anything. And everything means nothing. Meaning itself is an empty vessel which we fill with whatever intoxicating distraction suits us best. People fill their meaning cup with traditional elements like spirituality, religion, conspiracy theories, nationalism, social justice, charity, extreme sports and so on and so on. None of those ever really stuck for me, I blame my cursed obsession with self-psychoanalysis. I’d pick an 'Ism' to fill my cup with and no sooner did it feel appropriate, did I ruin it by aggressively asking 'Why? What weakness brought you to some external cause of meaning? What inadequacy, does that ideology seem to fill?’

For a long a significant time in my youth, self-awareness felt like a super-power. To the degree, I felt superior to my peers and even some adults, including my parents. Thought my superiority complex came with a sense of sadness, I pitied others who were so wrapped up in their immediate surroundings and who appeared as victims to their intense emotions. ‘Poor fools! Life is a game! Emotions and beliefs are for losers!’ I thought. At the age of 28, the opposite feels true; I’ve cursed myself by being so aware of the excruciating meaninglessness. I find myself wishing I could drink the Kool-Aid and enjoy the simple bliss of belief.

It hasn’t been all bad, 2019 was the best year of my life. I attribute why I did so great and felt so good to my diagnosis with ADD at age 27. For most of my life, I was always harsh on myself. I wanted to change the world but my ADD and other psychological blocks, made me afraid to act; terrified of the work that was required to achieve my lofty ambitions. Even as I grew more world-weary, and focused on just figuring out who I am and what I career path would suit me best; I picked perhaps the most ambitious vocation of all. I’d become an artist and spread a positive message with my work; the sheer joy of creation would be enough to sustain me. I filled my cup with the Kool-Aid of being an artist and of 'achieving my potential'. After my diagnosis, it was a year of increasing excitement and accelerating momentum. I worked hard – let the effect of my medication Dexamphetamine, not be doubted – and I played hard. I climbed the mountain of life and sipped the sweet nectar of purpose.

Twelve months after my diagnosis, however, I’m back to cursing myself, drilling a meaninglessness hole into the bottom of my cup. ‘Achieving my potential’ wasn’t enough; it was temporary. After I hit a new peak of my happiness and productive output, then the desensitisation hit. A new question tormented me ‘What does all this amount to?’ Whereas previous states of depression and anxiety compelled me to ask myself ‘What is the point of trying?’ Now I find myself asking an even more disturbing question ‘What is the point of succeeding?’

The answer is… nothing. History will interpret my actions however it chooses, or it won't record them at all. Then the sun will consume the earth, and even if humanity escapes such a fate, heat-death will make all energy and movement meaningless.

I turn, therefore to a Zizekian notion of ideal happiness, that of the 'revolutionary lover'. Zizek’s theory is that the happiest individuals are those who attach their egos with suicidal fervour to an external cause. For example, two passionate, Communist revolutionaries are deeply in love with each other. Then one or both are called to die in the name of the revolution. The other lover does not try to stop them or weep for their loss because the true love of the revolutionary exists within Communism itself. In dying for their external cause, the revolutionary-lover dies happy, knowing their existence contributed to their internal moral convictions and the external revolution. For Zizek, the tragedy is the revolutionary lovers surviving. Either they would lose passion for each other, realising that Communism was what maintained their love, that they are both terrible, selfish people. Or worse, they would see their revolution turn into Stalinism or the rise of China's one party-Capitalism.

My addition to the metaphor of the revolutionary lover is an evolutionary-psychology read into the idea. Part of the reason the revolutionary lovers are happy is that they are young, make passionate love and care for each other with a deep romantic intensity. This bond is amplified by their context as revolutionaries, knowing death always close makes love, kindness, sex, and life so much more immediately precious. It is hard to 'Live each day as if it may be your last,' unless it actually might be. I want to be the revolutionary lover. I want happiness, and yeah, a hot girlfriend to have sex with. I want to achieve something together that is grand enough to distract me from my existential dread. I need a transient ideological distraction; an external cause that aligns with my deep moral values; an evil to defeat, a ‘Dragon’ that I would be the just knight to slay or die tryin'.

Any revolution first needs first and Ism to be, and an Ism to be against. This is where I get stuck. When I look deep into myself to find an Ism that suits me, I see the void. There is that sentence again 'Nothing means anything'. At last, I’ve realised or at least accepted, that my Dragon is Ism itself. When I try and reconcile 'Nothing means anything', and my place as the architect of our my meaning, only hedonism and narcissistic ignorance comes to mind. ‘Should I just jerk off and cause others suffering and indulge my earthy desires?’ Yuck. Even more repulsive is the notion of pursuing purely selfish compulsions and imbuing it with a self-congratulatory veneer of post-modern enlightenment. 'I am nothing; I do nothing. Good on me! I'm practically Buddha!'

Something can mean everything; I just need to find that something, I need a Dragon to slay. But I struggle to find any particular Ism continually satisfying, I can't seem to find any Ism to be absolutely evil either. I'm the first to criticise Communism's failures and fallibility to power-hungry egos. Nor do I accept that Capitalism is inherently evil and that therefore its overthrow would bring about 'Good' into the world. I can’t accept that Anarchism and Libertarianism belong on the fringes of political thought by the value of their consistent fringe appeal. I can't even assume that Fascism, Nationalism or even Nazism are inherently evil, or destructive phenomena that should be discounted in totality.

My Ism must therefore be ‘Newism’ my Dragon must be Newism also. So, that's why I am creating this book, this idea. I’m committing to creating something that I don’t fully understand what it is or what it may achieve. It's the only thing convoluted enough to distract me from current depression. I write this simply for something to do. And yes, hopefully, to change the world for the better.

Despite my awareness of the impossibility of 'Changing the world for the better', I intentionally ignore that fact; I chose belief. Time will tell if it works on me, but at least I may enjoy the ideological ride.

Hopefully still, I'll score a hot girlfriend. And we’ll die pointlessly, slain in a battle with the Dragon, sipping on cool aid before this book is complete.