A Brief History of Nothing

“Historically, human beings worshipped gods or God; modern secular man worships Nothing.”

“Look at Stirner, look at him,
the peaceful enemy of all constraint.
For the moment, he is still drinking beer,
soon he will be drinking blood
as though it were water.
When others cry savagely
‘down with the kings’
Stirner immediately supplements
‘down with the laws also.'”

“The Triumph of Faith” by Friedrich Engels

“Where does it end?” Many of us found ourselves asking this past year as we watched statues toppled and monuments defaced. First, it was Civil War generals, then Ulysses S. Grant himself, then on to Christopher Columbus, then Churchill, Lincoln, Frederick Douglass. Where, indeed, does it end?

Of course, this is not new. Our current revolutionary moment recapitulates many revolutionary moments. These are not simply attempts to alter history or to render history irrelevant. To some degree, they are outright attempts to destroy history and begin anew. The French revolutionists invented a new calendar that began in 1792. The Khmer Rouge declared Year Zero. The Bolsheviks vowed to create a “new man.” Mao Zedong declared an end to the four “olds” etc. etc. Such movements gravitate toward zero; such movements tend to annihilate history.

“Annihilate” is from the Latin “ad nihil,” “to nothing.” When we watch a mob tear down a statue, we are observing forces of annihilation in action. We do not know when it ends, but we do know where it is heading. It is heading to nothing. In such revolutionary moments, nothing may appear both as an idea or an actual force; ideas of annihilation reflect and embody the force of annihilation. The force or power of nothing is manifest in acts of destruction, defacement, deconstruction, decay, and fragmentation. Nothing is not merely a human idea but an actual power that has real-world consequences. The power of nothing draws the mob to itself.

All or Nothing

“…[W]e are straying as if through an infinite nothing,” writes Friedrich Nietzsche in his infamous tale of the madman’s announcement of the Death of God.  Nietzsche’s fable is often interpreted as heralding and confirming our modern condition as being a world without God, a world without some greater guiding power. Secular man acknowledges nothing outside of himself in determining his destiny.