Nihilism is the belief that everything in this world is pointless. Now, I’ll start by telling you how I see things as pointless. Let’s start with the simplest and most random thing I could think of, birthdays.

Birthdays are pointless for one main reason. They’re highly debateable. A pessimist could say that you are celebrating a year closer to your death, whereas an optimist would say you’re celebrating the passing of a year of life.

This might not seem to say that birthdays are pointless, however, it shows that, as you can prove neither the pessimist’s nor the optimist’s view, it is impossible to say which is correct. In such a manner, it is impossible to say whether anything has a point to it or not at all.

Now, let us get into further detail as to why everything is pointless by looking at the Christian point of view.

“On the first day, God said,’Let there be light,’ and the world came out of the void.”

Now, this void, which everything supposedly came out of, was comprised of nothing. In this same sense, if we apply this to chemistry, you’ll see that you can not create energy from nothing. Now then, if everything somehow came from nothing, then it is easily arguable that a point has come from it too. However, it is quite easy to see that the only things that came out of the void is that which is corporeal. In this sense, you can see that emotions, thoughts, and opinions, which are all parts of the mind, are incorporeal. With this incorporeality, it is simple to see that, as the point to things is incorporeal (seeing it is a state of mind), you could say that the points of things carry no value. In fact, corporeal objects hold no true value, and a way to show people this is through a common maxim.

If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around, will it make a sound?

Now, if you’re scientific, you’d say yes, and if not, then your answer is questionable, but, let’s get to the main and pointless point of this part of the article. We’ll be talking about everyone’s favorite subject, money. Everyone wants money, right? Well, if no one was around to fight over money or spend money, it would mean that money was of no value, as the only reason we believe money is the greatest thing in the world is because we can’t do otherwise. It is much like gold, you can do all sorts of things with gold, but gold itself does nothing for us except look shiny and cause people to go to war due to rarity. However, if humanity never decided to create an economic system, then gold would be just another element out there with no specific purpose, such as the 105+ elements found on the Periodic Table.

Now, another way to see the world as pointless is through the view of if we all disappeared. Now, if humanity became extinct, then the rest of the animals in the world would more or less live the same way. The only difference is that we wouldn’t be there as a looming shadow to harm the other organisms on the planet. Aside from that, the bird that sings every morning would continue to sing and nest on the trees. The bees would still be going crazy inside their hive, and the cashier in the liquor store you go to every week will still be waiting for you (implying they’re not human.).

This article may seem confusing, so, I’ll try to summarize it a bit.

Everything is pointless. (Hopefully, that is an adequate summarization.)

Cagayan de Oro City

English Language Department

ENGLISH ONE – STUDY AND THINKING SKILLS

Course Outline

A. Presentation of Parts of Speech

B. Sentence Concepts and Structures

C. Building Longer Sentences with Modifiers

            1. Phrases

                        a) Prepositional Phrases

                                    a.1 Adjective Phrases

                                    a.2 Adverb Phrases

                        b) Verb Phrases

                        c) Verbal Phrases

                                    c.1 Gerund Phrases

                                    c.2 Infinitive Phrases

                                    c.3 Participial Phrases

            2. Clauses

                        a) Independent Clauses

                        b) Dependent Clauses

                                    b.1 Noun Clauses

                                    b.2  Adjective Clauses

                                    b.3  Adverb Clauses

D. Recognizing Sentence Errors

            1. Fragments

            2. Run-ons

                        a) Fused sentence

                        b) Comma splice

            3. Sentences with Dangling and Misplaced Modifiers

E. Writing Principles

1. Principles of Rhetoric

                        a) Unity

                        b) Coherence

                        c) Emphasis

            2. Principle of Brevity / Conciseness

                        a) Avoidance of cataloguing trains and features

                        b) Integrating Concreteness and correctness

            3. Principle of Parallelism

            4. Principle of Diction

            5. Principle of Effective Sentence Construction

                        a) Avoiding Fragments

                        b) Avoiding Run-ons

                        c) Sentence Variety

                        d) KSAS / KSAF

F. Writing Paragraphs

            1. Paragraph Structure

                        a) Beginning sentence

                        b) Middle sentences

                        c) Concluding sentence

            2. Application of Rhetorical Elements

                        a) Unity

                        b) Coherence

                        c) Emphasis

            3. Paragraph Components

                        a) Topic

                        b) Topic Sentence

                        c) Supporting Sentences / Details

            4. Paragraph Development

G. Writing Compositions: Four Types of Written Discourses

            1. Description

            2. Exposition

            3. Argumentation

            4. Narration

H. References

            1. Books

            2. Internet

            3. Clippings

            4. Magazines

            5. Newspapers

Prepared by:            Marlon C. Pagan

                                    Instructor, English language

In the case of using a noun, one can think of a small sentence like “Here is a man”. In order to extend it I can use the interrogative word who to extend it, as “Here is a man who plays golf”. The fact that he plays golf tells me about the man and so can be considered as an adjective clause. A similar clause can be made by using which instead of who when choosing an object. In both cases the clause is dependent because it cannot stand on its own when beginning with an interrogative word.

The same rule can be applied to an adjective or adverb clause such as the adjective clause will follow and amplify an adjective and the adverb clause will be more descriptive than the adverb alone.

In a sentence, “He ran quickly.” by explaining why or how he did so, I am amplifying the activity. That can be done by saying, “He ran when he wanted to avoid the traffic.” Here the question word, “when” helps to initiate a group of words or clause that describes the verb.

In a sentence, She learnt guitar, there is no need to expand but if one wants to describe the conditions of learning guitar, one could say something like, “ She learnt how playing guitar would make her feel better.” The part of the sentence initiated by the how helps to answer the question “what did she learn”.

To summarise, an independent clause is not going to depend on another part of a sentence for it’s meaning, in other words it can stand on its own as in “The club members contributed their membership fees.” When the clause is supplying an explanation for something else, then it cannot be used on its own and so is dependent.