Nihilism, the Web, and Grandchildren

 A friend of mine shared a short story he has written, asking for feedback.  It was a good story in a haunting post modernist style.  Here was my response:

Thanks for sharing your story, Jerry   Quite evocative and somewhat descriptive of our lonely times.  It brings to mind the book Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber:

He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologically destructive when paired with a work ethic that associates work with self-worth. Graeber describes five types of meaningless jobs, in which workers pretend their role is not as pointless or harmful as they know it to be: flunkies, goons, duct tapers, box tickers, and taskmasters. He argues that the association of labor with virtuous suffering is recent in human history

I looked up Maus and it fits well with your story:

it depicts Spiegelman interviewing his father about his experiences as a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor. The work employs postmodernist techniques and represents Jews as mice, Germans as cats, Poles as pigs, Americans as dogs, the English as fish, the French as frogs, and the Swedish as deer. Critics have classified Maus as memoir, biography, history, fiction, autobiography, or a mix of genres. In 1992, it became the first (and is still the only) graphic novel to win a Pulitzer Prize (the Special Award in Letters). Spiegelman depicts these experiences, from the years leading up to World War II to his parents' liberation from the Nazi concentration camps. Much of the story revolves around Spiegelman's troubled relationship with his father, and the absence of his mother, who committed suicide when he was 20. Her grief-stricken husband destroyed her written accounts of Auschwitz.  

Life is good these days, while it lasts.  Technology is amazing and infinite knowledge is just an Internet connection away.  My current interest is in combating nihilism.  

Nihilism (/ˈnaɪ(h)ɪlɪzəm, ˈniː-/; from Latin nihil 'nothing') is a philosophy, or family of views within philosophy, that rejects general or fundamental aspects of human existence,[1][2] such as objective truth, knowledge, morality, values or meaning.[3][4] Different nihilist positions hold variously that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some set of entities do not exist or are meaningless or pointless.[5][6]

I followed up with this personal reflection:

Jerry's check-in and short story inspire me to do the same.  I will build upon one of my comments in response to Jerry's short story:

infinite knowledge is just an Internet connection away

Here are a couple of examples of this in my life from the past two days:

1. I replaced a 3-way light switch on Wednesday, something I had never done before.  I looked it up on YouTube and instantly found a couple of videos showing how to do this, making it relatively easy.  I followed up later with another video that included an animation showing the mechanism, giving the why it works in addition to the how to do it. 
2. I picked up Lawrence's kids (ages 7, 9, and 12) from school yesterday and they wanted to play math and geography games in the car.  They were able to answer most of my questions.  It turned out that Chase was using his cell phone to get the answers with a calculator or Siri lookup.  Sean ratted him out for using the cell phone in the back seat, but I think it's impressive that a 10 year old can instantly find the answers to many basic questions.  It reminds me of the wisdom of the old proverb:  "Give a person a fish, (s)he eats for a day.  Teach a person to fish, (s)he eats for a lifetime."

I find creative works such as your "On Watch" meaningful, in something of a paradox.  The fact that you write this and share it with friends demonstrates a desire to find meaning in life, in my view.