Identifying the enemy

"How do we fight nothing?"

Nihilism’s root is nihil, Latin for “nothing.” No meaning. Empty; soulless. What we see is all there is. Nothing else. Nothing beyond. Nothing more. Nothing. What is the meaning? What is gained? What is lost? What is the point? Nothing.

Decades ago, Pope John Paul II popularized the phrase “culture of death.” A culture of death is a culture of nihilism. No meaning to life, nothing to aim toward or organize around, no intrinsic worth or dignity to each person, and no standard of what is good, right, and true to guide and govern us. ....

In C.S. Lewis’s 1942 book The Screwtape Letters, a senior demon coaches his nephew on how to demonize human subjects. To corrupt the soul of a person, he says, the apprentice demon must get his subjects to misidentify the enemy. Using satirical fiction, Lewis was warning readers not to confuse our real foe. ....

The modern playbook for mobilizing others is to sow seeds of fear and harvest actions in service of someone else’s agenda. Such ground is fertilized, writes 20^th-century philosopher Hannah Arendt, under conditions of isolation. Loneliness, she says, heightened in an antisocial century, “prepares men for totalitarian domination.” Related, Kyla Scanlon writes, “Anxiety creates the psychological conditions that algorithms exploit.” ....

When unity is lost, when our bonds crumble, when we literally dis-integrate—who gains? Yes, promoters, programmers, platformers, propagandists, and politicians gain. But who else benefits, spiritually speaking?

I think we are in a war. And there are forces corrupting our souls and stirring our angst.... But let us not misidentify the enemy, which must be named: evil, sin, meaninglessness, and nihilism. Nothing.

So, what do we do? How do we fight? Specifically, how do we fight nothing?

We fight nothing with something. Christians point to something—they point to Someone.

In the Gospel of John Chapter 6, the crowd following Jesus began to leave him. His teaching was hard. They did not like his absolutist claims. He failed to meet their expectations of the coming Messiah. Jesus asked the 12 disciples if they, too, wanted to leave. “Lord, to whom can we go?” responded the Apostle Peter. “You have the words of eternal life.” The most powerful response to nothingness is that which is eternal. Nihilism must not, will not, have the last word. Echoing Peter, Christians ultimately believe meaning, hope, and life are found in a person. ....(more)

Kevin Brown, "Our Real Enemy in the Culture Wars Is Nihilism," The Dispatch, Sept 21, 2025.