Systemic nihilism

Nihilism is a scholarly sounding philosophical term. It basically refers to a belief system that rejects absolute truths, morality, values and any intrinsic meaning or purpose to life.

Its Latin root word is nihil, meaning “nothing”; the word “annihilate” hails from the same etymological origin.

Perhaps because it’s a sophisticated concept, explored most thoroughly in esoteric academic musings, it’s frequently applied to high-level ideology or political sentiment. Discourse of modern politics, for example, often includes each party accusing the other of nihilistic behavior.

But despite extended election cycles, 24/7 “breaking news” channels and pervasive social media memes, ideology doesn’t figure prominently in the daily lives of most folks. The main routines and tasks involved in productive work, family, parenting and housekeeping activities are conspicuously devoid of ideological consideration or influence.

For the majority of Americans, day-to-day living isn’t red or blue. It’s gray and mundane and runs together in an accelerating slush of activities that carries us forward, faster than we often wish to go, in the march of time. But as more everyday citizens become unmoored from religious and moral principles at their base level of existence — the practical layman’s definition of nihilism — civilization and social structure suffer.

This is particularly true for the U.S. and our unique form of independence-based, constitutional self-government.

John Adams wasn’t kidding when he wrote, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

Lots of people today have opinions, blogs or talking points about what the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution means or should mean, but nobody can speak to the true meanings better than the founders.

Thankfully, they were an outspoken, articulate lot.

From the same 1798 letter to the Massachusetts militia quoted above, Adams also issued a warning. “But should the people of America,” he cautioned, become capable of assuming “the language of justice and moderation while it is practicing iniquity and extravagance,” and displaying “in the most captivating manner the charming pictures of candor, frankness and sincerity while it is rioting in rapine and insolence: this country will be the most miserable habitation in the world.”

James Madison was likewise adamant that self-government required “sufficient virtue among men,” or else “nothing less than the chains of despotism can restrain them from destroying and devouring one another.”

George Washington was customarily stern when he advised that “reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”

Such admonitions regarding adherence to virtuous truths and behaviors are everywhere in the founders’ writings, and the unapologetic consensus was that the U.S. constitutional experiment in self-governance was fully dependent on a culture that holds and complies with religious and moral beliefs.

In essence, that means nihilism is kryptonite to American liberty. Nihilism is a categorical repudiation of every condition the founders placed on our national success. And yet, rather than being recognized as the most dangerous threat to the foundational, indispensable and existential glue of our self-government, nihilism has become systemic in our society.

Consider the sources where Americans, from the founding, traditionally received religious and moral instruction: churches, schools and family dinner tables and firesides.

When Gallup first surveyed Americans on the matter of religious preference in 1950, the percentage of people who answered “no religion” or “none” was near zero. It’s reasonable to assume that was likely the same percentage for decades prior as well; there’s no evidence to the contrary.

Today, three in 10 American adults identify as “nones” when polled by Gallup. And the percentage goes up for young people.

As churches have fallen dramatically as a source of moral instruction, schools have followed suit. Unable to teach large segments of our youth to read, write or do much arithmetic, they’re even more dysfunctional as bastions of teaching classical virtue (most don’t even try).

Finally, family time in America is more hectic and chaotic than ever. There’s been an explosion of single-parent households — the U.S. now has the world’s highest rate of children living in such situations, and 80% are headed by women. Unmarried working moms often have two jobs to make ends meet, and even in most two-parent households both work, too.

Bedtime stories or fables and nightly prayers may still be popular, and a widely desirable good intention, but in a significant percentage of homes they’re simply not practicable.

Ancient absolute truths are not altered by our belief or unbelief. If kids aren’t in church much anymore, and if schools have generally diluted morality to mean relativism in the context of various “value adjustments,” where would our youth be expected to learn religious or moral absolutes?

One thing systemic nihilism goes a long way explaining is crime. It may not be causation, but it’s also not coincidence that as lack of religion has gone up, so has criminal activity — especially violence. It’s also an enigma that with the highest percentage of bachelor’s degree graduates ever, twentysomething adults are tragically killed most by their own risky, criminal or aberrant behavior.

Undoing systemic nihilism won’t be easy. But nothing life-changing ever is.