The Nihilist Defence:“Seriously? Well now that you mention it, I do recall reading something along those lines in NO SHIT magazine, the periodical for things that are blisteringly obvious.” 16 unlocked eyes with 8 and glanced down and stared depressedly into his pint, ears stinging from the rebuke of his friend, teacher, whatever. Concentrating on the way the bubbles stuck to the inside of the glass before tumbling upwards didn’t make it any easier.
They’d been coming and meeting for coming up on a year now, they’d put an ad out on the internet, and numbered everyone who arrived for the first night. Thought it was easier that way, some of them moved around academia, some in the murky wastes of far-left and far-right politics, and most of them were slated for great things. They didn’t want their good names to be sullied by association if anyone found out what was going on in this back room: they were preparing for something but exactly what, none of them knew. As time went by, more and more of them had stopped coming, whether they’d been scared off by their own actions, or the actions of others in the group, 16 wasn’t sure. He knew for sure that questions were being asked at higher levels as to the suitability of some of the people he had been mixing with. Tonight it had only been 3 of them, but as soon as 27 had found 8 was there he made his excuses and left, faking a text message and almost sprinting out with a face which gave him away too easily. So it was just to be the two of them.
16 chose his words carefully and went on, enunciating slowly to keep his train of thought smooth and lithe to negate any chance 8 had of unravelling it and leaving it tangled and useless, “I’m not saying there’s nothing worth believing in. I’m saying there’s nothing that most people find they can make a choice to believe in. You can say that people believe in TV or something, but they wouldn’t admit they did. But if you asked them, really pressed them, they’d believe in human nature or innate goodness or something, surely”
“Bollocks. There’s no proof or anything resembling proof for any of that trite humanist shite” 8 shot back. 16 slumped down in the booth and scanned the room, inspecting the faces of the drinkers in the room. Some laughing, some looking morose, but all together. Surely it couldn’t be true that there was a complete lack of belief in the room? They had to believe in something surely, even if it was only themselves? Ok, new plan of attack, how to get round 8’s ridiculous entrenchments. This was like chess. But more like boxing.
16 looked up, stared at the point directly between 8’s eyes so he didn’t have to make eye contact, and ploughed on, “True, but then there’s no proof for anything that’s worth believing in, everything’s a tenuous arrangement of social mores, traits and…” pausing to take a sip of beer and spilling a foamy stream down his front, he went on, wiping the beer into his sweater and looking around the snug for moral support “…opinions. Houses of cards true, but at least the cards are real.”
Warming to his subject, he went on “Anyway, you’re only calling them nihilist bastards because they don’t believe what you believe – them not agreeing with you is enough, you don’t actually give a fuck about what they believe. It’s easier to say they don’t believe anything – when you look carefully most people are more romantic than nihilist.”
8 fiddled with the spilt peanuts on the table, shepherding them round his beermat, as from the table next to them, a part of secretaries from the building next door erupted into braying, cacophonous laughter. He winced, grimaced, collected himself and continued. “My friend, when you look carefully at something, you miss everything else that’s going on in the background. People aren’t romantic in the least, they just want to get a guilt-free fuck, be ignored most of the time, and pad out their nests with some flatpack trash. They might pretend to be romantic to get one or more of the previous, but the only reason the vast majority of people aren’t self-confessed nihilists is that they couldn’t fucking spell it.”
16 sighed, and took a breather. You couldn’t argue with 8 like this, it just turned into him telling you what he thought and you ended up either trying to chip away with some logical tools until he gave in and professed disinterest in the whole rigmarole, or until he blew up and the argument became a fist-swinging fight. The amount of people that couldn’t deal with him was probably around 95% of the human population, must be the day job that meant he had enough of diplomacy and just wanted to vent when he got out. People hated him, really hated him. Normally mild-mannered men and women were reduced to wrecks: a notable pacifist journalist had left the group after threatening to shank 8 in the eye with a bicycle tyre lever over a discussion about HIV infection in Africa. More people would have told him to fuck off, but you didn’t do that to him. Not when you found out who he was, what he did. 16 calmed and centred himself, reappraised the situation, jockeyed for position and went on “Just because all the BIG things people used to believe in have fallen away, political views, philosophical and ethical standpoints, doesn’t mean there’s nothing else. If you look through the rubble of all this, what’s happening. People destroying their own isolation, creating community, they’re always on Facebook, social networking, interest groups. Foucault talked about this, he called it the insurrection of subjugated knowledges”.
“Ooh Foooocoe!” 8 mimicked as he smirked over the rim of his pint, “Well done. Monkey reads! That’s pretty fucking good actually…have you been practising? Remember, you’re not allowed to defend something you actually believe in.”
“Nah, don’t believe a word of it. Facebook’s for checking up on people you hate, people are cunts, as are you. Anyway your turn, defend democracy.”
