Dear Jeyamohan Sir,
I am Kabilan (age 24).I am working as a software engineer. I have been following your website for the past one and half years. I have read some of your books. I have also attended one of your talks in Coimbatore. I deeply admire your intellectual rigor and being rational about rationality, which I find rare in Tamil society.
I am involving myself in intellectual pursuits(அறிவியக்கம்) reading Literature, History, etc and have recently started visiting historical places across India alone and my thoughts are greatly influenced by people like You, Nassim Taleb, John Gray(Philosopher). I hesitate to ask this, but I feel the need to reach out. However, I struggle to socialize. Being an introvert and a shy person, I have very few social interactions—I rarely step out of my room, barely talk to even my parents, and have no friends. Because of this I find it difficult to articulate my thoughts clearly while speaking.
I am optimistic about humanity yet as an individual I am very nihilistic. I find myself not mature, not courageous, not useful. I am very sensitive and I am taking funny things seriously. I would be grateful for any guidance or advice you could offer on improving myself.
Regards,
Kabilan
Dear Kabilan,
To be precise, you are not a nihilist or introvert. You want to believe that you are one. Most lonely people want to believe something like that.
Who is an introvert? By nature, an introvert harbors a sense of loneliness in his mind, and his behaviour reflects this. He is an introvert because he can’t be otherwise. An introvert is a fully grown personality, a well-defined character.
But at a young age, we never try all the ways possible to socialize and express. Suppose a person never tried to reach a society he could fit perfectly in and never tried to express himself in a suitable manner. Can we call him an introvert? No, he is just a reluctant person; he has a not-mature personality.
Nihilism is a philosophical position; a well-learned person can only hold it. He must have enough knowledge to argue for it. A person who has no strong belief in anything is not a nihilist. A person who refutes every idea of current society is a nihilist. You have to understand the things before you dismiss them.
Ivan Turgenev presents nihilism in his renowned novel, Fathers and Sons. Basarov, the main character in it, is the best example of that philosophical personification. He refuses everything because he wants something new to sprout out from that void.
Simple journalistic writing has contaminated the word nihilism. Many use this word synonymously with skepticism. Skepticism is a philosophical position that has no hope for the future. But it is a strong standpoint with its own logic.
You find yourself in a situation where the simple anxieties of your age group prevail. You have more intellectual faculty and sensibility than most of the people around you. That makes your communication impossible. Slowly you became a loner. It is a situation of life, not a particular character or a philosophical position.
You have to learn everything that interests you. You have to make clear the doubts you have on culture, history, and philosophy. Above all you have to find the intellectual circle that you can fix yourself. Then you will find your own folk. You will develop your inner language, which will enable you to communicate clearly with others. Almost all creative and thinking individuals experience this pace of life, and they eventually emerge from it.
So, start to learn what you are interested in and develop your personality. If you are still an introvert and nihilist after that, well, it is you. If you are hesitant to start and learn, you are a lazy person, nothing more. Don’t cheat yourself with words.
jeyamohan.
