Abstract

As a philosophical counselor, I encounter many individuals who live with an almost inexpressible grief, hopelessness, and despair. This paper argues that two macro-causes of these affects are philosophical and structural. This paper sets up a distinction between (1) biotic, ontological, rational value, and (2) abiotic, hyperreal, nihilistic value. Abiotic “value” now constitutes the hemorrhagic nihilism of our time. Kant, Nietzsche, Baudrillard, and Kierkegaard will be utilized to construct the philosophical argument tracing the movement from the biotic to the abiotic. This is the first valence of trauma, the cognitive/imaginative valence. Ruin porn, environmental grief, and structurally induced precarity will be utilized to provide historical evidence for the movement from the biotic to the abiotic. This is the second valence of trauma, the somatic-structural valence. The paper concludes that the double valence of hemorrhagic nihilism is, in essence, traumatic. Consequently, addiction to hyperreality has become the pandemic of our time.