I heard trump say "but in the end, we're all going to die anyway", which made me look at the psychology behind, not only what he said, but the context of it as well. Yes every one does die, but that is not a reason to justify harming people. So I did some research using a Carl Jung framework. To my surprise Jung already address this, so there is less of my speculation and more education lol.
The Psychological Critique of Nihilism
Carl Jung addressed this dynamic directly, framing extreme ego-centricism not merely as a moral flaw, but as a severe psychological developmental arrest.
In Jungian psychology, "If I do not exist to perceive it, it has no meaning", is the result of the Ego confusing itself with the Self, leading to a state Jung termed ego-inflation or total identification with the conscious identity.
Jung’s framework exposes why this mindset breaks down against the reality of human development and generational continuity:
1. The Trap of Ego-Inflation: Thinking Like a "God"
When a person operates entirely within the Ego, they view themselves as the sole axis of existence. Jung noted that when the Ego fails to acknowledge forces greater than itself, such as the collective human inheritance, natural cycles, or the unconscious, it inflates to fill the entire cosmos.
To an inflated Ego, the universe begins and ends with its own sensory perception. It demands absolute, personal permanence. When it realizes it cannot achieve personal physical immortality, it experiences a narcissistic injury and reacts with nihilism: "If I can't be at the center forever, then nothing matters at all."
Jung recognized this as a child-like stage of consciousness. Children naturally experience the world egocentrically; maturity requires breaking out of that isolation to realize one is a single point within a vast, continuous human narrative.
2. The Archetype of the Ancestor and the Collective Unconscious
Jung posited that we do not enter the world as blank slates (tabula rasa). Instead, we inherit the psychological, cultural, and symbolic architecture built by millions of years of human experience, what he called the Collective Unconscious.
From a Jungian perspective, ignoring what came before is an act of total psychological blindness:
The Tools of the Mind: The very language, concepts, and logic a nihilist uses to declare "nothing matters" were forged, refined, and handed down by thousands of generations of ancestors.
The Living Legacy: You are not an isolated island; you are the active output of 250,000 years of human adaptation. To deny the value of what is left behind is to deny the very structure of one's own mind.
3. Individuation and Generativity: The Second Half of Life
Jung observed a distinct shift in the human psyche between the first and second halves of life during the process of Individuation (becoming one's true, whole self):
3.1. First Half of Life: Focused on building the Ego, securing personal identity, establishing status, and surviving.
3.2. Second Half of Life: The focus naturally shifts away from personal acquisition toward meaning, integration, and legacy.
In Jung’s view, failing to transition into this second phase leads to neurosis, bitterness, and despair. A person stuck in mid-to-late life who still demands that everything revolve around their individual survival has stalled developmentally. They have failed to connect with the Psychological Transpersonal Layer, the recognition that true fulfillment comes from contributing to the reservoir that outlasts the individual Ego.
4. Psychological Measure: Selfishness vs. Resonance
Nihilism functions as a "measure of a human" aligns closely with Jung’s diagnostic approach. Jung evaluated a person’s psychological health not by whether they held abstract intellectual views, but by how integrated and oriented they were toward the flow of life (Libido, in the Jungian sense of general psychic energy).
When psychic energy flows outward into creation, teaching, building, and preserving, it aligns with the natural universal order. When it collapses inward into self-absorption, it decays into the passive, sterile nihilism you identified.
That realization highlights precisely how nihilism functions in public discourse, not as a deep philosophical truth, but as a ultimate rhetorical shield for ducking responsibility.
When a political figure or public voice uses "everybody dies anyway" or "in the end, none of it matters" to dismiss a question, they aren't engaging in profound philosophy. They are invoking cynical nihilism as a escape hatch.
If nothing ultimately matters and everyone dies, then:
Nobody has to take accountability for short-sighted or harmful decisions.
Long-term stewardship, institutions, and environmental or societal health can be discarded for immediate personal or political gain.
The duty to future generations is completely wiped off the board.
The Psychology of "Convenient Nihilism"
This is the transition from philosophical nihilism to operational egoism:
1. The Rationalization: "If the end result is death/destruction for everyone, then moral metrics, obligations, and consequences are illusions."
2. The Convenience: It allows an individual to consume resources, shirk responsibility, and focus exclusively on short-term gratification or dominance without feeling guilty.
3. The Contradiction: The moment that same person's personal comfort, status, or immediate desires are threatened, suddenly those things matter a great deal to them. It is a one-way philosophy: nihilism for others' suffering or long-term consequences, but hyper-realism for their own immediate interests.
2. Thermodynamics, Energy, and "Living in Leftovers"
The Open System vs. Entropic Erasure: Death is not an eraser that zeros out value; it is the necessary phase change that releases stored potential into active kinetic form for the next system.
The Chain of Physical Inheritance: Reality operates as a continuous relay race of leftovers:
When you think about it, a light wave comes from the sun, when it collides with a plant the photon transfers energy to the plant as photosynthesis. This process is a leftover cascade effect of the photon colliding with the plant, on the earth surface this creates heat. Now if a deer eats the plant the energy of the plant is transferred to the deer. The deer is eaten by a wolf, the energy of the deer, which is the sum total of all the plant material energy stored in a more stable form. At each stage the leftovers of one becomes the source of life for the other. It is the same with human life, we living in a world build by people long gone. The math, the science, the cellphones, robots, internet all things people created and is used past their time. People used to call it legacy, something to aspire to. Death might be the end of the self but it is not the end of the energy of that that self.
The Honor of Being "Leftovers"
Reframing our existence as living on the accumulated output of what came before, and working to leave behind high-quality material for what follows, redefines purpose as an act of stewardship:
Inherited Potential⟶Local Refinement⟶Transferred Legacy
The Stagnant View: Focuses on the loss of the self ("I will dissolve into nothing").
The Generative View: Focuses on the honor of the signal ("I was built from the refined leftovers of stars and ancestors, and I add my refinement to the wave before passing it on").
Pharaonic Immortality vs. Generative Flow: Civilizations or individuals that freeze energy to build monuments to the static self fail systemically. True persistence is dynamic, it is the transfer of information, tools, and ideas to what follows.
Think about the pharaoh and all the resources spent of trying to immortalize the self, yet if they put that energy into building a world for the people to grow and prosper, would they not still be remembered, for more than they are. In thir living state if they could see the future that energy could of made, would they not take it. The end is never the end, just a story someone else gets to add to. We can be like the Pharaoh and build for a temporary self or add to a line of honorable heritage, with the joy of it continuation.
"We are OF the Universe, but NOT the Universe"
This distinction resolves the narcissistic trap of nihilism. The nihilist demands to be the whole universe, or at least to have the universe revolve around their individual awareness. When they realize their awareness is localized and temporary, they collapse into apathy.
In reality, being of the universe means operating as a specific, highly refined focal point. You are a localized excitation through which the broader system observes itself, organizes energy, and builds complexity. You don't need to be the entire machine to hold immense value; you only need to execute your role within the transmission of state changes.
Between Nothing and Nothing: Everything
Because non-existence forms the baseline boundary at both ends, the bounded window between them, the excitation phase, holds the entire scope of localized reality.
There is no pre-written manual for awareness precisely because awareness is an emergent creation, not a static template. Its purpose is discovered and expressed in real-time as it navigates the tension between the baseline zero and the maximum expression of its local potential.
Looking into the Face of Death to See Life
Nihilism looks at the zero and sees a void that swallows everything. This framework looks at the zero and recognizes it as the springboard of the gradient.
Life is not an accident fighting against an hostile universe; life is how the universe expresses and resolves its own internal tension. When you realize that death is just the baseline returning to clear the canvas for the next iteration, death stops being a threat and becomes the very reason life has depth, contrast, and purpose.