Normies are nihilistic
Modernity has demoralized most of our peers in ways they can't see
"In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations, and epochs, it is the rule."
—Friedrich Nietzsche
It’s common to be talked out of trying that crazy startup idea, writing a movie script or seriously pursuing a talent or hobby. In fact, I would argue most people who proceed down these paths simply never asked others for permission or feedback. Because if they asked, they’d be told they were crazy or not to proceed. Normal people have been conditioned to tamp down ambitions and creativity by school, parents, media and so when they witness it in others their unconscious reaction is to do the same. Too risky. Too different. It’s not ‘for you.’
I think school is particularly guilty of this, and systematically trains agency out of us. You’re told you need a specific piece of paper or title to be capable in a given arena. When in reality, anyone can learn anything, at their own pace, thanks to the internet and summoning the will to power. Online courses are free and open on YouTube. Anyone can download creative software and make something. You can just do things.
But because of this training, most people badly wish for everyone else to stay in their particular lane and not pursue a renaissance-esque life, or worse, have an aversion to creative works containing beauty and optimism. There’s a phrase awhile ago I recall people say that ‘hating popular things isn’t a personality,’ and if that was all you did perhaps that’s true. But at the same time, developing a deeper interest in something eventually necessitates you start to look around and wonder why more people don’t, and also that most things manufactured in the culture factory are nihilistic work for nihilistic people. And this isn’t just in culture, I warned earlier about the rise of AI nihilism, and we’re now seeing this sentiment actively expressed by technologists. I think it’s okay to stand up to this. I think we should see pushback and critique as laudable personality traits, as this is frequently the impetus to decide to create. We should make hating things cool again, lest we arrive at this:
They say “Just enjoy it,” and you sit there puzzled, calculating how anyone enjoys Wish, The Marvels, Gremlins 2, etc. For charity sake, you make excuses in your head for them; giving the movie the benefit of the doubt; you know, in the sense of “maybe I missed something the first time,” or “perhaps I reated you too harshly.” Or the grand excuse: “perhaps it will grow on me.” But friend, can the taste of cement ever grow on anyone? Garbage may be recycled. But who can redeem the taste of faeces? Then you sigh deeply and accept your fate that you are stuck in this world with people who love the taste of wet cement.
I’ve written about this phenomenon in music before, because I make music. I wrote that pop music is the TV dinner of our cultural diet. I used this one, and can plainly see the parallel because I have recently gotten into cooking, and since making my own dishes from scratch, I’m able to discern just how much better a fresh meal is than a frozen dinner or meal from a QSR (quick serve restaurant). And that’s kind of the point, right? I can’t unsee our cultural industries are no different than fast food establishments, with the same playbook and ethos present in each (it’s the same dismal MBAs running everything). Assembly line, average products for average people. The interesting thing is the bar isn’t that high in either to do better, but they won’t. It’s because we’ve decided to optimize for averages in culture, something that probably is more OK in food, but for pure creative pursuits like music or movies it’s just so dystopian, and functions to demoralize the population in ways we can’t even comprehend. Some say the demoralization is the point.
The fast food industry and fast culture industry both poison us. We are free to be poisoned, or we can walk away (or at least minimize, it’s impossible to fully escape, they literally pipe in aural toxins to our public spaces).
Gen AI is already better than most pop stars at music. Because here, it’s not really about the product, it’s about the person, but once you stop worshipping false idols you’ll notice these are mostly terrible people to look up to. If they were different they would use their platforms mostly to promote obscure, up-and-coming talent. They’d make additional works with depth in addition to the entertainment pieces. But they’re incapable. They don’t care about the art form. They care about the spectacle.
And this brings me back to the topic at hand, I truly believe most normies are nihilistic. They don’t dive deeply into anything. Building something yourself is strange to them, and if you ask them why they don’t they’ll say “they’re too busy” or produce any number of excuses (meanwhile if you saw the hours they spent on Netflix or scrolling TikTok, you’d know they were lying). If you create something different and share it with them, they won’t know how to process or react to it. Their closest taste to being generative is building something from IKEA (or an equivalent paint by numbers task). Their pallets have been conditioned to the TV dinners of culture, their motivations and consciousness stripped of depth.
Another Substacker Tina K wrote on the world of normies, and I think she gets to the heart of this situation well:
The world of arts is an expression of what humanity on the whole has become: A hollowed out simulacrum of a person, it looks like a human, talks like a human but it is just a shell that hides its inner vacuum behind a wall of empty words and expressions. Something which only a fool is fooled by. This is the normie, this is the npc. And this is their world.
…this is not a world for the soulful and the people that appreciate beauty. It is the world for the normies and npc’s who are content to be told what to find beautiful. Never once does it occur to them that their sense of beauty is something else than what they are told. Arguably this makes them no better than a farm animal, who beyond the fulfillment of their basic needs has no need or desire for beauty.
What’s the solution, if you’re a creator? You have to understand the tradeoff here. You can sell out to get what you want financially, but perhaps there’s a better way (you can do more than one thing, there’s no reason to be a starving artist). If you do this for attention, in a way you also suffer from the same brand of nihilism, a pandering to the bland, timid masses. Robert Greene talks about how it used to be different, and there was reverence for the antithesis (law 6 in the 48 laws of power). I actually have some optimism that we might return to this world (everything is cyclical). But today it is not reality, because we live in a world of nihilistic normies.
Anyone reading this site likely has an expansive, complex inner-world that you express through some sort of creative outlet. It’s likely not for financial return, and that’s honestly for the best here. I believe all humans possess this to some degree, and the ones who are anxious, depressed or nihilistic just aren’t doing anything with it. Really the only options to end the normie nihilism are to re-find god, or make art. Perhaps these are the same phenomenon.
For me, what you're describing is the continued commodification of our world. Capitalism is a strange beast that needs to continually find new avenues of consumption, which writers like Guy Debord thought alienated us from everyday life.
Even things like rebellion are commoditized through rock and roll or skateboarding. Art is commoditized as a day out at the museum, complete with an expensive meal at their cafe and a stop at the gift shop on the way out. The danger, emotion, and risk are removed to water it down, commoditize it, and give it mass appeal.
While I don't have all the answers, I think the antidote is to take more risks.
The commodification of everything is an inevitability we can't avoid, but we can choose to do difficult things and avoid consumption as a hobby or pastime. The satisfaction you get from mastering something like playing a musical instrument, baking, or racing bicycles will be far more satisfying than passively observing someone else's life through a screen.
I spent a lot of years struggling to find a creative outlet that was for me first, the world second, so I especially resonate with the later sections, particularly this:
"Anyone reading this site likely has an expansive, complex inner-world that you express through some sort of creative outlet. It’s likely not for financial return, and that’s honestly for the best here."
Reminds me, too, of Austin Kleon in his book "Keep Going":
"The minute anybody shows any talent for anything, we suggest they turn it into a profession. This is our best compliment: telling somebody they’re so good at what they love to do they could make money at it. We used to have hobbies; now we have 'side hustles.'"