Nihilism #1

To make good on my Friday-morning promise that I would the post the first installment on what I intend to be a regular feature of this page, let me say a few words about nihilism. In a "Colt 45 Chronicle" post I poked around the idea that nihilism is what binds fathers and sons. The father leads the way into the unknown and the son haltingly sometimes blindly follows along from behind.

Nihilism means never having your story told. People could not really care any less about what you have to say. Let the tomb take you and the abyss swallow you whole, for there will be less than a mouse click's worth of interest, not even a stifled yawn, when it is time for you to pass over into the unknown.

To wit, a coworker asked me the other day if I might attempt to find something online in the way of an obituary for one of the union local retirees who recently died. I told her I would be happy to. After a broad search revealed little, I narrowed down to the city where he last lived. Sure enough, I found an obit entry in the online classified section of the city -- mid-sized, eastern part of the state -- newspaper. But on closer inspection the obituary was not an obituary but a digital book of condolences maintained by the funeral home who handled the retiree's remains. No one had left any thoughts or prayers let alone sign the book. The page for the retiree read "0 messages." Thinking that I somehow had been careless and that I missed the customary written obituary, I clicked back to the newspaper's obituary page. No, I hadn't been careless. In fact, on closer inspection, I noticed that most of the deceased had digital guestbooks only and not the traditional obit; and most of the guestbooks were empty.

Maybe it was just the luck of the sort. I don't know. But it seemed revelatory. A digital, fully-searchable world where no one searches or comments. We have an electronic infrastructure capable of handling petabytes of information and no seems to care.

I include "Dance With Me" off the 2003 remastered reissue of The Modern Lovers (1976) album because I think those boyish songs of Jonathan Richman wandering around outside in the dark late at night pining over a girl who doesn't love him are wonderful representations of nihilism.