©2000 David Schultz

"I know what it means but . . . I can’t explain . . . "
(The Scorpions, "Can’t Explain.")"

And speech that is indistinguishable from silence is nihilism."
(Stanley Rosen, Nihilism: A Philosophical Essay.)

At one point Nietzsche defines "nihilism" as "everything is permitted." Dostoevsky said "If God is dead, then everything is permissible." If this in fact is the core of philosophical nihilism, then the Mac Web is nihilistic. I have talked about nihilism generally, about Apple’s nihilistic overtones, and now, in the final installment of this series, I turn to the Mac Web itself. It sure seems to this writer that on the Mac Web indeed "everything is permitted." It also seems this won't last much longer.

I need to get straight on some things first. When I use "nihilism" here I do so in both a specific and fluid way. I am thinking of philosophical nihilism, and this in fact in a very fluid concept. It is not the same as the kind of nihilism we find in Russian literature; it is not always the same as political nihilism either. So far I have made the following claim: Apple’s actions, some of them at least, can be interpreted along the lines of Nietzsche’s "to create one must first destroy" notion. Nietzsche said he does philosophy with a hammer - - think of the "1984" commercial and Apple’s smashing of old designs and old technology even to this day. But thisis a very fluid concept which acquires different meanings in different author's hands. Today I stop messing around and stick to philosophical nihilism as the belief in Nothing, and whatever that amounts to.

Also, it is important to understand one thing: Most I call nihilists or nihilistic would shun the description. Apple wouldn’t call themselves nihilistic after all, and neither would many writers on the Mac Web. But I see it; it’s there, and it's everywhere. James C. Edwards (see reading list below) has even coined the term "common nihilism" because it is so pervasive.

Today I move to the core of nihilism as the belief in Nothingness and show how we see it on the Mac Web. The nihilists believe that Nothing is the ultimate reality - - we face the abyss at each point. With the failure of Christianity and Enlightenment optimism we are left with Nothing and must make the most out of it. The assumption is that's all we had to go on - - religion or Enlightenment rationalism are the best ideas we could come up with to date, so with them gone we're gone as well.

All of life can be interpreted as either our trying to escape this emptiness or build something, which is really nothing, in its place. We enjoy entertainments of all kinds so as not to notice; we stay busy and find any distraction we can. Why do you think the steamier side of the Web is such a big business? And it doesn't matter what it is as long as it does its job - - to distract us. Violence in the streets, world wars, relativism in the media, and cosmic forlornness are its effects.

The reason everything is permitted is because, simply put, there are no standards, boundaries, authorities, or rules. If there is nothing then certainly there are none of these things either. The result is that it makes no difference what we do in anything; the question "Why?" is empty. If it made a difference then of course there would be something, but there is nothing so it makes no difference what we do in any way. We can justify action A as well as action not-A equally. Every decision proceeds ex nihilo with no reason or cause of its coming about at all. Anything we do is generated from a spontaneous assertion of our wills which can, as Rosen says, "be negated with equal justification." It’s the "will to power." Nihilism is liberating for some who call themselves "cheerful nihilists." With nothing there, there is no constraint, not limits, no impediments to our actions and will. This is radical freedom and we find ourselves with a responsibility to use it we did not ask for.

I want to point out several aspects of the how we relate to the Mac and Mac Web where we see nihilism being expressed and worked out, albeit unwittingly much of the time. First, we see it when we read people talking about what the Mac is.

One answer to the question "What is the Mac?" is: "Whatever you want it to be." The symptoms are usually along the lines of people naming their Macs, anthropomorphic dealings with this machine (projecting a "personality" on the Mac), and in talk about the freedom the Mac brings. All sorts of weird behavior is seen in fact. It includes the desktop patterns we choose and the icons we place on our desktops, as well as the sound sets we distract our coworkers with. The reason the Mac is whatever you want it to be is because, I would suggest, there is nothing there to begin with. So knock yourself out! Make it into anything you want; let your friends make their's anything they want. By a sheer act of the will, like a deity, we create our own Mac world ex nihilo.

Obviously this cannot be true. There is something there, and it sits right before your eyes and my eyes. (See below.) So why do so many resort to nihilism when trying to explain what the Mac is? Lack of imagination. It’s what we philosophers call the "conceivability disproof" - - I cannot conceive it so it must not be. But all along there is something there, and the lack of conception is no justification for the silliness we see.

Most people do not have the time to think it through; reflection as a practice (not a faculty), as our writer Roger Born says, is not something exercised very often in this fast and noisy society. Reflection takes time and quiet, and these are two things which are lacking in this society. "I don’t know" with a shrug of the shoulders is our motto. Go ahead and ask someone some deep questions and you will get this response. It doesn't take long if my students are any indication. People are just too busy to reflect. And it comes out on the Mac Web as well - - one of the fastest ad noisiest places on the planet.

There is another reason for the nihilistic stance - - it’s called "applelust." As you know if you have read us this is a technical term for us. Applelust is, pure and simple, that level one reaches when words fail him. We see this with the Mac all the time. One way we see it is the degradation of vocabulary when trying to talk about the Mac. We resort to flip words such as "cool," "awesome," and "insanely great." These are indicators that one’s vocabulary has run its course. We know what it is, but we can’t explain. We feel it; we see it; we touch it; but we can’t talk about it. Much of the Mac Web is in fact, perhaps, talking about things which cannot be talked about at all? Or does it just lack imagination?

Again, go ahead and stand around some Macs at CompUSA and watch how people react to them. (Forget about mutated Wintellers who are covered in so much misinformation they cannot say anything nice about the Mac.) More times than not the reaction is nonverbal. They express grunts and moans and awes rather than an intelligible sentence, if even for a second. Because the Mac hits us on this level if one fails to get beyond it then words fail him for a lifetime. And once his words run out his ideas die and the Mac becomes nothing but what he makes of it. Think about it . . .

What is it that is there all along? Once we get over the first primordial impressions then we have a very large task indeed - - to explain why the Mac has this effect on people. (Which, I might add, some cars and other consumables have the same effect.) Let me explain, at least, why some never get beyond the basic impressions to something deeper - - they conflate two ideas which need to be separate. The primordial reaction synthesizes ideas which are distinct. I have said it before and I will say it again: We must always keep in mind the distinction between the Mac as a computer and the Mac as a Mac. The Mac as a computer is there, unchanging and constant (until we come up with a new definition of "computer"); the Mac as a Mac is fluid, changing and growing in our minds. It is the stuff of lore, myth, personal expression, natural manipulation, denatured fantasy, beauty and simplicity, all the things which make a Mac a Mac and not just a computer. When I was in Cupertino, on campus, I sensed the lore and myth, the history and personalities which have made this Mac thing. I wasn’t even thinking about a computer anymore, so computer language at some point becomes inadequate for me; if we try to retain it we fail and end up expressing odd thoughts in even odder grammar. This is a sure sign we need to look for more logico-linguistic devices. Many, sadly, don't. Rushing around . . .

If one does continue to think about just a computer then of course words will run out. Then throw aways such as "tool" and "machine" rise up. But these are only descriptive of the Mac as a computer and not the Mac as a Mac. It is placing one dimensionality on a multi-dimensional object, the way we do with so many things in our society like women, money and gods. The death of imagination is not a good thing for anybody.

That is what I mean by a lack of imagination.

There are other symptoms of nihilism on the Mac Web. One symptom has to do with the sense that we can do whatever we want, that the Web is a place of absolute freedom with no rules, no standards and no guides; if we impose these on the Mac Web then we kill it, we fear, for we take away from its essence. And that essence is nothing in itself, it is what we are creating as we publish sites and articles. "What do you want the web to be?" we are asked in commercials. A code of ethics? No, that would be censorship, some say. Journalistic standards? No way - - we’re free, and we’re not part of the real publishing world. Accountability? Fogetaboutit!! No, we are in the land of nothing. We surf Alice‘s Wonderland where logic is void and contradiction makes sense. But it doesn't matter in the end anyway if it's all "true."

All this is changing of course. The FBI is making sure of that with "Carnivore." And Adobe is going after a web site for publishing trade secrets; lawsuits, or the threat of the same, are thrown around with nauseous regularity on the Web. We don’t like rules and accountability yet we act as if we cannot live without them. And this is the point isn’t it? Think about it . . . it might be called the practical objection to nihilism - - it cannot be lived.

Anyway . . . the old Mac Web of amateurs, hobby sites, and half-baked ideas is going away. Publishers are being replaced with real editors who place demands on writers for content and who will not post anything they get. It was only a matter of time before this would happen. Once some realized that money could be made on the Mac Web (a belief I do not find wholly justified), then the pros, the ones with the money, resources and training would move in and drown out the hobbyists. More and more we see people publishing who are not rank amateurs. We see more highly educated people coming on to say something. (You would not believe all the academics out there behind many sites; I run into a new Ph.D. or professor qua web publisher all the time.) People with a lot of training and resources are buying up sites and trying, in my opinion, to professionalize the Mac Web. Meanwhile, the old Mac Web is fighting, or trying to beat down, the new-comers. It's not a war of titans by any stretch, but it's there.

I am ambivalent about it all. I think the Web and Mac Web have a way to empower people by giving them a voice they might not have otherwise. I think this is a good thing. Could the professionalization of the Mac Web kill these voices? Yet at the same time I see much nonsense out there, and what is even more amazing is that people read it. Professionalization almost killed my philosophical impulse, and I hope it does not kill the sometimes ironic and comical Mac Web. Yet I see the need for higher standards and better writing - - in a word, we need more pros. It’s already there, for some of the best writing on the Mac Web comes from real pros, like David Every and Del Miller, and the lately departed (for Apple) John Martellaro. We all know when someone doesn’t know what he’s talking about and those who do naturally have a louder voice. We'll see where they take us, if they take us anywhere. Who knows, maybe there is no place to go?

I have detoured a long way from nihilism in this article it seems, but I have not strayed that far really. In fact I will end where I began. We have a love-hate relationship with the idea, and we see this on the Mac Web and with our relating to the Mac itself, like we do so many other things in the cosmos. Though we do not always realize it we make the move to nihilism when time, schedules, and imagination outrun us, and when standards and policies impolitely cuff our hands. In a society where sports outranks reflection, where we turn people into objects, and the universe seems so large and we feel so small, nihilism becomes problematic because it becomes a "live option" in William James's phrase. Then we are left with nothing but impulse and the will to power. The problem is that we are not gods: The Mac just makes us think we are (like any technology). However, God's will to power, the ability to create, is measured by his omniscience - - he knows how to use it. We want instructions on how to use our power, but not rules. Never the less, like money, power does not come with the intrinsic instructions we need to use it; and we don't like the extrinsic instructions we've been given. And instruction on how to use it takes us back to the idea of transcendence which the nihilist rejects in the first place. Think about it . . .