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Summary: The Rise Of Nihilism

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“How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren’t real?” This is something the great philosopher Jaden Smith tweeted a few years ago when trying to come to grips with his sense of reality. Many people made fun of him for nonsensical tweet because he is just some rapper that is known for his silliness, but this is a type of question that many of us ask ourselves every now and then. We often question what matter is, and how the reality of matter affects us. This was the question trying to be answered in Jan Westerhoff in his short introduction of reality. Jan came to the conclusion that trying to answer this question was a never ending cycle of why. So if matter doesn’t matter do our decisions in life have actual consequences? The recent rise of fake …show more content…

The safety of our society is how safe we are from crimes like homicide, harassment, etc. This aspect of our society is vulnerable to nihilism because of the rise of fake news. One example is referenced from a PBS Newshour article written last year of a crazed gunman believing that a pedophile ring ran by the government was stationed at a pizza place called, Comet Ping Pong. The gunman had learned of this conspiracy theory online where he had read fake news causing him to barge into the pizza place with a gun threatening the people inside. This incident is an example of the violence that can be created by fake news online. Even though these were just accusations and ideas that had no basis in reality, lack of care of other people’s safety caused that gunman to threaten a person’s safety because of his belief that his truth is the only truth. The lack of empathy is a product of the nihilism created after the gunman believed his own reality of the world to be true after he was bombarded with fake news. Another example of fake news causing disregard for safety would be from another incident from the same article where a woman was accused of having Ebola after a trip to Africa. This woman has harassed by random people, almost losing her job in the medical field, and her husband actually losing his job. This all happened because of a false narrative having caused panic of an outbreak of Ebola after they lost control of said narrative. The safety of their livelihood and privacy was invaded of false narratives and fake news. This was all caused because people didn’t care about the moral principle of not messing with a person’s life and safety because of fake news fueling people’s personal realities. Actions based on personal beliefs without care for people’s safety causes nihilism in society, thus destroying it. Fake news can cause our society to threaten

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