Mike Tyson the Nihilist

I recently saw Mike Tyson do an interview with a child reporter after his fight with Jake Paul. The sweet girl asks him about his legacy. Iron Mike turns her innocent question into a monologue about the finality of death.

Iron Mike apparently forgot he was talking to a child.

It doesn’t get more nihilistic than this.

The term ‘nihilism’ is used quite differently throughout philosophy and literature. Let’s make it easy and just say nihilism is ‘the belief in nothing’. A nihilist believes that life, and everything in life, is ultimately meaningless. This includes human existence. Nihilism comes with a passive, ‘I don’t care’, attitude.

The Ghost at the Feast

In Shakespeare’s MacBeth, Macbeth is haunted by the ghost of Banquo at a banquet. The other guests can’t see the ghost, but it torments MacBeth and causes him to show visible distress.

I tend to think that the belief in nothing haunts the average person in 2025. It’s the reason for much of our culture’s turmoil.

But why?

A short survey of nihilism from the the time of the Enlightenment to the present suggests that nihilism comes to haunt society through three things: