Over the years, I have encountered countless iterations of the same sentiment: nothing really matters. I remember it began as a refrain thrown around over the smallest things that my classmates and I eventually laughed off and forgot. Somewhere along the way, however, the joke quietly crept into my way of thinking until it encompassed my entire psyche.
I cannot pinpoint the exact turning point; the earliest related moment I can identify was watching the animated film “Dead Space: Downfall.” My life bears little resemblance to a science-fiction horror of a universe-ending zombie apocalypse, yet that night, I found myself restless and wondering what I would do in a hopeless situation with no exit.
Would I be the first to die? Would I fight until the end? Or would I simply accept that my fate had already been decided?
Perhaps that is why the question still lingers in my thoughts now. The apocalypse in Dead Space was obviously fictional, but the feeling at its center was not: what do you do once you become convinced that nothing you do can change the outcome?
Nihilism rarely announces itself so dramatically. For most young people, it often arrives as a joke. It is what it is. We’re cooked. Wala na, finish na. Another political scandal swept aside, flooding that returns with every patter of rain, or another transportation fare hike, we laugh, turn it into a joke, and scroll toward the next crisis.
There is something comforting about treating everything as unserious. If nothing matters, then nothing can disappoint us.
For young Filipinos, that coping mechanism is easy to understand. We are told to study hard, secure a good job, maybe even go abroad, save money, and build a future. Yet, that future increasingly slips farther from reach. The cost of living rises, wages struggle to keep pace, climate disasters persist, and political dilemmas are expected now every election cycle. After enough disappointment, expecting nothing starts to feel more rational than hoping for change.
Cynicism is appealing because hope demands vulnerability. The person who expects things to improve risks disappointment; the person who expects nothing can always claim to have been right.
Filipinos are especially adept at weaponizing humor against hardship. Floodwaters become viral TikTok and reel video opportunities. Political controversies become memes before the news cycle ends. We pride ourselves on resilience, on finding ways to smile through catastrophe. There is value in that resilience. However that resilience easily becomes resignation, as enduring a crisis replaces demanding its fix.
There is a difference between recognizing that something is broken and deciding it is irreparable. Corruption is not inevitable simply because it is familiar. Flooding should not be accepted simply because it happens every year. Neither should inequality, poor governance, or environmental destruction become things we merely learn to live around.
The political danger and utility of nihilism is that hopelessness renders accountability obsolete. If every politician is corrupt, why scrutinize any of them? If the planet is already doomed, why demand better environmental policy? “Ganon naman talaga ‘yon; wala ka nang magagawa” becomes the familiar refrain from the public whenever corruption, flooding, or any other seemingly permanent problem comes up.
[That is just how it is; you cannot do anything about it]
Power benefits when hopelessness becomes culturally expected. None of this means we should force ourselves into blind optimism. Sometimes pessimism is simply an accurate reading of reality. What matters is refusing to confuse pessimism with surrender.
I used to think that if everything eventually ends, then nothing we do can truly matter. But perhaps permanence was always an unfair requirement for meaning. A protest does not become pointless because it fails to solve every injustice. An article does not become worthless even if it does not change everyone’s mind. Even correcting a lie, voting, organizing, or refusing to treat preventable crises as normal can matter without changing the world overnight.
Nihilism insists that because we cannot control the ending, there is little point in struggling against it. However, resignation has consequences. We make our problematic realities easier to persist.
So I return to the question that kept me awake that night: would I still fight if I already knew how everything ended?
Perhaps the answer matters precisely because the ending does not.