What is nothing?

[magic_doglover]

i think that nothing is a very complicated subject. a lot of people have been saying that the fact that we have a word for it and try to define it means that it is something, but i can disagree. if you think of an apple, the idea of that apple exists, but not necessarily the apple itself. nothing could be thought of the same way. however, when you think about it, that fact could be used to say that nothing exists at all, other than our consciousnesses. we don't directly experience anything, after all; we perceive things through the use of our senses, which means that, in a certain sense, we only ever experience the ideas of what we believe to be real.

now for an argument for nothing having some measure of existence. as i said, nothing is an idea, but it also might just be a paradoxical state of being. if a certain thing doesn't exist, then that is the type of existence it possesses. that state cannot be changed, except through some sort of logic-defying event. although, even logic can easily disprove its own absolute validity, so that's kind of a moot argument. but that a whole other conversation.


the bottom line is that nothing can't be adequately defined. in fact, it may be that not even existence can be properly defined. we have these conversations to occupy our time, not because they can ever really resolve anything.  

[Mad Haru]

Nothing is not a thing, not a thing at all.
Now shut up about it.
You saw nothing.  

[beaulolais]

i sense things subjectively

and for me the best description of nothingness is in this subjective but moving account from DH Lawrence in his


"New Heaven and New Earth":

I SHALL never forget the maniacal horror of it all in the end
when everything was me, I knew it all already, I anticipated it all in my soul
because I was the author and the result
I was the God and the creation at once;
creator, I looked at my creation;
created, I looked at myself, the creator:
it was a maniacal horror in the end.

I was a lover, I kissed the woman I loved,
and God of horror, I was kissing also myself.
I was a father and a begetter of children,
and oh, oh horror, I was begetting and conceiving in my own body.


IV

AT last came death, sufficiency of death,
and that at last relieved me, I died.
I buried my beloved; it was good, I buried myself and was gone.
War came, and every hand raised to murder;
very good, very good, every hand raised to murder!
Very good, very good, I am a murderer!
It is good, I can murder and murder, and see them fall
the mutilated, horror-struck youths, a multitude
one on another, and then in clusters together
smashed, all oozing with blood, and burned in heaps
going up in a foetid smoke to get rid of them
the murdered bodies of youths and men in heaps
and heaps and heaps and horrible reeking heaps
till it is almost enough, till I am reduced perhaps;
thousands and thousands of gaping, hideous foul dead
that are youths and men and me
being burned with oil, and consumed in corrupt
thick smoke, that rolls
and taints and blackens the sky, till at last it is dark, dark as night, or death, or hell
and I am dead, and trodden to nought in the smoke-sodden tomb;
dead and trodden to nought in the sour black earth
of the tomb; dead and trodden to nought, trodden to nought.


V

GOD, but it is good to have died and been trodden out
trodden to nought in sour, dead earth
quite to nought
absolutely to nothing
nothing
nothing
nothing.