 See it kind of, once you're out of the headspace of thinking about philosophy and all those kind of things, you don't want to focus on anything else because you don't want to stop your progress in it. And so I progressed through stages and I looked online and I found this, you know, concept called nihilism which, as soon as I saw it, has completely just matched exactly how I felt and what I believed which is the most important thing. Hello people, welcome to the dark realm. Hello everybody, welcome to another video. Crazy T-shirt Tom here, ready to talk to you about another topic that's been on my mind. Actually, two months it's been on my mind for a long time now. And it's a video that I've always really been wanting to do, but I wasn't sure it fit in with a lot of the things that I've been talking about recently about mental health and autism, all that kind of stuff. But it's more on the philosophical side. I wouldn't say spiritual because I hate that word and I think it's overused, but I would definitely call it philosophical. So today I am talking about nihilism. I'm a nihilist which maybe doesn't really come across a lot in my videos. To be honest, a lot of my depression and mental health and stuff didn't really come across in a lot of videos apart from some that did like a while ago and one of those intense ones that I've posted in the past. But anyway, this is a video all about how I am a nihilist. I'm going to give you a bit of a background of what it is. I am also going to enlighten you. A little link there. On my personal journey with developing this, not condition, this mindset that's been a very integral part of my life for a long time. And it has very large effects on my daily life and my interaction with people. It's a very important thing for me to talk about and I hope it will be interesting for you guys to learn a bit about it. So yeah, at the risk of conforming to YouTube entrances, let's get on with the video. So I had a little Google search about nihilism just to enlighten my own knowledge on the facts. Nihilism in terms of philosophy is the belief that life is meaningless, happy, happy. But there are other definitions for it and it's usually to do with throwing out religious and general society views on life and people and all that kind of meaning for existence and that kind of stuff. So nihilism, a bit misunderstood philosophy is very often linked to a new depression and most nihilists do develop depression either beforehand or because of their nihilism they develop depression. But it is two separate things. Depression is a mental health condition. Nihilism is a philosophical standpoint or a view on life. Just to get that out of the way quickly, it's not meaning depressed, it's my actual views on life and the core values that I hold deep to me. It's very important to me. That's Isaac. Nihilism got us to pick up his Chinese because he tried to coordinate it with him coming home but he's downstairs in the kitchen. I told him that I'd take a spoonful every five minutes that he's away and I'm too nice to do that. Anyway back to the depressing enlightenment of life. Nihilism is my philosophical standpoint and I'm just going to take you through my development through becoming nihilistic and all that kind of stuff. So I've been depressed for a long time and there's a lot of triggers that cause people to delve into the philosophical realm. It's usually either to do with use of psychedelic drugs that some people do and depression, some kind of long-standing illness that they have, death of a family member, or even just general curiosity and philosophy and all its makings. So for me it started about two years ago, maybe a bit before that. All my life as an autistic person I like to understand things logically. That's the only way that I can understand things. I don't understand things by emotions. They don't count as understanding for me if I understand something emotionally, which I usually don't. So logic is a very big part of the reason why I take nihilism so seriously in myself. I keep saying the word, it sounds a bit too exaggerated and over the top. But the thing is it is quite over the top and it's not very common as well. There's a very small percentage of people who are nihilists. The whole there's no meaning of life thing gets thrown about flippantly in these times and days and stuff. And the difference between knowing that there's a possibility that there's no meaning of life and actually having it in your core and believing that it's two very different things and it very much impacts whether you'd be classified as being a nihilist or not. It's not some weird club or anything. It's not good to be a nihilist, it's not bad to be a nihilist. You know it's just how you view the world. There's viewing the world in a negative way, which is everything's rubbish and all that kind of stuff. Nihilism comes from a very deep perspective that takes a long time to reach. So for me I started off being quite depressed. I went through a really bad phase in my second year where I couldn't work. I was researching a lot into science, like the makeup of reality. And as an autistic person I've had a lot of strange experience with reality. I try and solidify my logic behind the experiences that I've had. So for example I experience emotions in different days as different realities. It sounds all psychotic but I've never had a... I've been to have a psychosis diagnosis. I was trying to be serious there but I did not mean to do that. But yeah I've been through the whole psychosis thing and all that but they don't really classify anything that's not hallucinations as psychosis and stuff like that. So you can assume that I am generally mentally clear. I sort of disagreed that. So after I went through this really bad it was a combination of a breakup. I had very prominent cycles of depression and anxiety that occurred throughout my life. It would happen for maybe three or four months, maybe up to six or eight months like it did in second year. It was the whole of second year at university. And it can take an impact on you and especially when you don't have anything to make you happy. And when all of your logic and stuff isn't sound and you can't really get a grip on things like I like to do to make me grounded and understand things and be happy in myself. Looking into philosophy was one of my escapes and it was one of my interests as well. I was extremely interested in philosophy, particularly in writing my own stuff. I looked a little bit online. I looked at some like science documentaries and obviously I've got a background in science so I'm aware of evolution and all that kind of thing. In my times making these notes I went into a very intense giving up experience. When I say giving up I'm not saying I didn't see the meaning in anything anymore and I didn't like anything. Not in that sense. I spent the good part of a month isolating myself in my room because I went through an existential crisis. Which is, you can look it up, it's when all of your beliefs and fabric and reality and stuff just like dissolves for you. I'm not trying to make this some weird spiritual thing. I'm trying not to use these words. I feel like they're not used in the right way but that was the experience that I had. All my friends just turned into pieces of walking meat. My ambitions dissolved into the ether. I didn't see any point in living anymore and I didn't see any point in interacting with life anymore. So I just spent extending the amount of times on my own. Just panic attacks and all day and being put on meds to keep them under control. Having a friend to talk to, then that's it. Just eating, sleeping. That was what my life was for a good part of a month. It didn't stop there. I did get my grip together. I did get myself together and I started to do stuff. I started to welcome a YouTube channel and started to try to connect with people, make friends. I started to be more positive on the whole philosophy thing. I wouldn't classify myself as a nihilist at that point but it definitely was one of the existential crisis. I had one previously to that when I was younger. Many, to be honest, I think, were psychologists. They can't really do anything when a patient is just completely just out of it in terms of accepting anything that they say because how do you accept something from something that you don't value? Not value but that sounds horrible. It's kind of like you know the meaning of things, you know the true meaning behind anything and everything that someone tries to tell you to make you feel better about it. It's the existential crisis. It sort of goes past your radar because you've already thought of that because obviously I've done a lot of work into it so I've already thought of the suggestions and any suggestions that were made were just completely obliterated by my way of thinking. As I went to Thailand I started to work on myself a lot more. I started making a lot of developments and friends in my personality and working on my confidence. My ability to talk and all those kind of good things. I still went through another one where I spent an extended amount of time. I did still function. I didn't function very well. I was eating a lot. I was staying on my own a lot. I was very actively trying to isolate myself. I don't know why. Once you're out of the headspace of thinking about philosophy or those kind of things you don't want to focus on anything else because you don't want to stop your progress in it. So I progressed through stages and I looked online and I found this concept called nihilism which as soon as I saw it it was completely matched exactly how I felt and what I believed which is the most important thing. Once I found about it I was quite relieved. I felt not as alone when I found out that other people think like this and there's philosophers who date back in history who just completely lost the plot because of these concepts. I remember this one philosopher that I read about and he spent the rest of his life drinking because he thought that everyone around him was either dream or a simulation or whatever you want to call it and that was a case of the whole diving deep into philosophy which is quite a dangerous thing to do. It's really difficult. I know I might be sort of darting around the subject quite a lot but it's really difficult to communicate it without people thinking that you're exaggerating or being intense or just being silly or just being depressed and not realizing that that's that's that but I can tell you honestly that that is how I think and it can have a lot of negative impacts on your life which is one of the reasons why I feel so bad about talking about it openly because I don't want anybody to read into it. I don't want people to become like me. It's not the best all of a kind of life. You know a lot of nihilists they get into. There's a very high incidence of an addictive substance abuse, alcohol, cigarettes all those kind of things and I kind of dip in and out of addictive substances quite a lot because of my, I get on paths of feeling good and stuff and I ignore it which is a big part of it because although it is called to you the only way that you can really escape from doing nothing and wallowing in your own misery or enlightenment if you want to cope with that and just not doing anything with your life and that's the only way that you can do is by pretending and pretending so much that you forget that you're pretending and then you go about your daily life and then only to be reminded of it once again and then it happens like that. The cycles of getting out of it and then going back in and then making even more philosophical progress if you want to call it progress learning about new stuff and it solidifies you've used more until it becomes and take it apart yourself and you can't escape it anymore. I'm not going to lie. I don't feel bad about being an analyst. I like it. It's when I set out my philosophical journey I don't like using that word either. I'm trying not to use these bloody words but they're so hard not to use. Most people call it like spiritual journey but I think it's, as I said before, it detracts from real philosophical meaning and stuff when you start adding in this all spiritual side to it and stuff and basically like a religion which is why I try and segregate myself from my nihilism from the spiritual community. Well once it's a part of your personality and it's there to stick it can be very difficult. You can get a lot of people who are very critical of your way of thinking if they'll ask you, you know, if you'll mention it if you mention it on any off chance or usually because, you know, your views on life and what you do stuff usually to do with some kind of sadness or depression or negative outlook on life and it's hard not to just tell them about this thing that's like just always there for you and it's just such a big part of your life. And when you try and talk about it with people it can get like intense, so it can be too intense for people and it can bring down the mood which is a bad thing and it's a very difficult thing because you want to be able to communicate with people who are like-minded and want to be able to share your emotions and thoughts on life but if you do then it's gonna make everyone worse which is hard to talk about it. There is a lot that I want to say about nihilism and I know this is just one of the videos that I'll be putting out about it there's a lot of videos in the bank that I'm putting out on my notes page and stuff that's all ready to go out talking about the different aspects of nihilism but obviously when I get talking it's really hard for me to stop so I'm gonna have to try and limit the amount that I say in this video just for the purpose of structuring out but there are positives to nihilism and I will be going over those positives as well I'm not some depressed wreck I'm not even negative which is in your mind how can you not be negative if there's no meaning to life it's relative positivity that I have the positivity that I have is even though there's no meaning to life you can make your own meaning and that's one of the core reasons why I believe that it's not to do depression it can be very highly linked to it anyway, that is the end of the video if you want to know more about nihilism if you don't want to know about it if you think I'm exaggerating or being silly or going too far off the plot just let me know I'll probably cut them out anyway since it's very cathartic for me to talk about it just ignore them if you want you guys are my main priority and I want to make videos that you want to watch and I want to make videos that you can relate to and find interesting all those kind of things so that's the main goal here but also to tell you about what it's like for a very minority of people like myself who are nihilists it's very important to know more about it in future videos and keep trying not to do that like and subscribe at the end but you can if you want to you can give me a little thumbs up and a sub and a comment shame on you aren't I absolutely shame on you anyway, I love you guys I've had such positive comments and likes and just the sheer amount of views just a small amount of time and I know it's you guys the ones that are watching my stuff properly and not just like watching one and subscribing and forgetting about me you guys are the ones who are diligent and you I don't know if diligent is the right word you're loyal I don't want to say loyal that sounds weird but you I really appreciate you especially you guys I appreciate everybody watching my videos I really appreciate it and you know you can always reach out to me and talk to me I love it when people comment no one's going to think really of you for commenting on it I'm going to be really happy you're going to feel happy because you get to talk to Thomas Henley nah, nah I don't know forget about it but yeah I really appreciate you thank you very much for watching I'll see you in another depressing video in the future or not a depressing video maybe I'll do something about autism and sex tell me everything I'll see you in the next video goodbye