3:AM: The initial sense of where your philosophy begins is undoubtedly what one could call a pessimistic moment. You have said that philosophy begins in disappointment and you acknowledge nihilism as something prominent that needs to be overcome.

SC: Yes, nihilism is the obvious response to the death of God, by which we mean the collapse of any transcendent basis for morality, the value of everything. Just to say well God is dead in one breath is to say in another that nothing means anything, and nothing means anything is the moment of nihilism. Nihilism is the affirmation of meaninglessness. That’s my conception of nihilism. Nihilism is the moment that’s been punctured in a way which can lead you to declare nothing means anything [and] one element in youth culture which is persistent; a rejection of the old gods.

3:AM: Romanticism and fatalism.

SC: You find that in punk, in the Sex Pistols, the cult of death in musical figures. So we abandon. The meaning evaporates, and we feel abandoned.

¶ 2:05 PM