Yes I agree! Nihilism lets you dictate the terms so dealers choice how you decide to create meaning.
Also agree that pessimism is probably the more immediate opposite but I kinda like negativism because it feels like it carries a little more agency for some reason.
Yeah I’d say so with their shoot first vibe, also think some true crime fans I know fit in the category of ‘radical negativism’ (haha I’m going to try to normalize your term).
The only answer is radical optimism: trust that things can turn out better than the facts say they should.
Any moderate/rational takes on reality predict only failure so we have to lean into radical optimism on the off chance that we can pull off a miracle with enough determination and work.
At the very least don’t squish someone else’s radical optimism!
This is one reason I refuse to carry pepper spray despite it being a reasonable response to the realities in my area. To do so is to treat each stranger as a potential threat and I refuse to live like that (this isn’t advice don’t put away your pepper spray! Just an irrational choice I’ve knowingly made so I can squash reality into the kind world I think is worth living in).
Been catching up on All Creatures Great and Small (Masterpiece on PBS) to counter the world’s chaos.