June 4, 2025 • 12 mins
Ep 31: What happens when belief erodes one quiet heartbreak at a time? When joy feels suspicious, and purpose starts to sound like a punchline?
In this episode, London Bambi walks you through the emotional terrain of nihilism a philosophy rooted in nothingness, but often born from real-life pain. Through the story of a man who lost faith in meaning after a series of betrayals and disappointments, we explore how detachment can become seductive, how numbness masquerades as wisdom, and why the idea that “nothing matters” might sound smart but starves the soul.
This episode doesn’t offer cheap fixes. Instead, it traces the slow unraveling and eventual reawakening of someone who asked himself a question that changed everything.
Whether you’ve wrestled with despair, apathy, or the feeling that everything is just noise, this one’s for you.
Because sometimes, it’s not about finding meaning.
It’s about choosing to build it anyway.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:14):
Let's roll up as a new high good laugh.
Some good vibes, a safe space to talk about all the dope things that's on our mind from world philosophies.
We stay stylish.
Coming rock with me is a good time.
We got the sauce to make champagne, which is reality.
We do it for the culture.
Gotta show what we can't be.
This is the high life.
Yeah, we so fancy.
(00:35):
Keep it a GS We are family.
It's the Hood Debutante with London.
Bambi, uh, the hood Debutante.
Yo, yo yo.
What's up? Rock stars.
Welcome to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast with.
(01:01):
Me your host, London Bambi, and today we're going to dive deep into a word I used to be afraid of y'all.
I used to be afraid to say this word out loud, and that word is.
Nihilism.
Yes.
I was scared to even try to figure out what that word meant, deeply, although I had a rough idea, but I didn't want to dive deeper into it.
(01:28):
And it just felt really, really like sterile final, like the emotional version of a closed casket.
Just hearing it used to make me uncomfortable because.
It carried weight, weight that couldn't be softened or it couldn't be cleaned with sage or sweet talk.
It felt like something that, it felt like a spiritual dead end, and that's exactly why thinking about it, I had to explore it because I believe fear is a compass and when a word makes you flinch, you either run from it or you walk straight through it, and that's what I'm deciding to do.
(02:02):
I wanted to just finally do my research and see like what part of this.
Word, had me scared, and who am I gonna become after I interact with it? So we are here.
I'm not here to justify nihilism.
I want to understand its dangers, why it shows up in people lives, how it quietly erodes things that you didn't even know was sacred.
(02:23):
And how if you're not careful, it can trick you into thinking that giving up is the most intelligent thing you will ever do.
Okay? So with this episode, like I stated in the last episode, there's going to be a storytelling.
Element to it, because I believe in order to understand something, sometimes you have to walk beside it.
(02:43):
So I'm going to try to tell a story with the idea of nihilism in mind.
And the name of this story is titled The Man Who Mistook His Silence for Wisdom.
Alright? Because everything has a root every dangerous idea begins somewhere.
Alright, here we go.
Oh, before I go, I should probably also state where the word comes from.
(03:06):
So the word nihilism comes from the Latin word, meaning nothing.
So it doesn't mean chaos.
It doesn't mean violence.
It doesn't mean,.
It doesn't mean anything.
It, it means the absence of anything.
Okay.
Like, I hope that made sense.
So just say it just means the absence of anything.
Okay.
'cause it's crazy to say words don't have meaning.
(03:28):
I just wanna say that because when people start using a word,, to describe love and life and existence itself, I feel like that's what things begin to be heavy, real, real quick, right? Because nothing is in neutral, y'all.
It's corrosive.
It really, really is.
Alright.
Alright, so let's jump into the story.
Here we go.
(03:50):
There once was a man who didn't start out cold.
He was warm, curious, and open, but life has a way of Deming people degrees.
His father passed away and left behind more resentment than wisdom.
He watched a friend overdose on a Wednesday and people moved on by a Friday.
He fell in love with someone who said they would never leave.
Then ghosted like it was just a performance.
(04:14):
But it wasn't just grief, it was the consistent performance around him that started to drain his spirit.
People online were preaching, healing and posting wounds.
Corporations were selling authenticity in a bottle.
The news cycle, tragedy, like it was the weather.
He started to believe everything was fake.
Not just culture, but himself.
(04:34):
Imposter syndrome, anybody.
Mm-hmm.
Jesse.
And that belief didn't just disrupt it accumulated.
That's how nihilism start.
Y'all quietly, persuasively.
It's like a slow rot in the foundation.
And it's funny because my last episode, episode 30 of Hood Deton was titled Cleaning Out the Rod.
So yeah.
(04:55):
Um, catch that right now.
Back to the story.
He didn't call it nihilism.
He called it being realistic.
He called it protecting his peace.
He called it not getting his hopes up anymore.
I.
But his habits change.
He ghosted opportunities.
He stopped celebrating his own wins.
(05:16):
He started deleting texts before sending them.
And every time someone asked him, what do you want? He answered with a joke.
All right, but here's the part I want to lean into.
The part that most people skip over when they wrote romanticized detachment.
Nihilism isn't just deleting meaning, it's deleting your ability to feel meaning even when it's right in front of you.
(05:39):
It makes love seem suspicious.
It makes hope, seems delusional, and it makes effort feel embarrassing.
And here's where I push back.
I believe nihilism, if left unchecked, can absolutely slide in depression.
Now, I'm not saying it causes sadness, but I'm saying it does justify staying in it because it tells you why heal.
(06:01):
You're going to hurt again.
Why try it won't last.
Why care? Nobody else does.
That's not enlightenment.
That is spiritual.
Malnourishment dressed up as insight.
But here's the thing.
He didn't just sit in the dark.
He tried to get out.
He went to therapy, but he left.
After a second session.
(06:21):
He said the therapist was too cheerful.
He started journaling, but every sentence ended with, what's the point? He volunteered.
Now, this is what things started to change in him.
He, he volunteered for something once, but on a whole ride home.
He started crying.
Not from joy, but for confusion.
Alright, so this is where we get our little plot twists, because now Liz wasn't a belief anymore.
(06:43):
I think he realized that it was his identity now it was the lens he wore on everything.
And when your worldview becomes a comfort zone, it's hard to imagine another way to see it.
Now, here comes the big moment in the story.
It was not a breakdown.
It was not an epiphany, just a question.
He was sitting on his porch at 3:00 AM His hoodie was on.
(07:05):
Music was low.
He wasn't thinking about anything in particular, and then it slipped out of him like a breath.
If nothing matters, why am I still here? Now, it wasn't in a dramatic edge of the cliff kind of way, but in a curious kind of way, it startled him because it was an intimate question.
One, he didn't know where it came from.
One, he didn't even know if he'll be able to answer, but he started to say it like a phrase hundreds of times.
(07:30):
If nothing matters, why am I still here? Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
And he started to interrogate it.
He started to say, why was he still here? Why did he keep waking up? Why did he still get his coffee? Just the way he liked it.
Why did he stop to pet dogs on the street? Why did he still hum when no one was around? The question cracked like a glass.
(07:55):
That question became a mouth for him, not a clear one, not even a comfortable one, but a reminder that if he was still living, then something in him disagreed.
With that void he was starting to fill, He started noticing things that he never let himself admit.
That music still moved him.
That beauty still caught him off guard.
That left or still made him feel briefly invincible.
(08:18):
He wasn't out of the fog, but he had stopped believing that it was the only air he could breathe.
Here's the truth that nihilism won't tell you.
Just because something isn't eternal doesn't mean it isn't real.
Joy doesn't need a purpose to be sacred.
Love doesn't need to be forever to be worth it.
Art doesn't need an audience to be revolutionary and meaning doesn't need a goddamn stamp of approval to matter.
(08:43):
Yeah, you can create your own meaning, but that doesn't make it fake.
All right.
Y'all gotta start with this imposter syndrome because I believe when you create your own idea, it makes it earned.
You work for that idea, especially if you're able to manifest it in real life.
So if you're walking through the room where nihilism lives, here are four doors that might help you walk out, right friend, because you know I'm always gonna come up with a solution.
(09:08):
One radical self-honesty.
Ask yourself the questions you are afraid of Hearing the answers to the ones that haunts the silence.
Two crafted rituals.
Create meaning on your own terms.
Y'all know I'm big about that if you need to.
I'm not a plant person, but if you need to water plants, like they're like alters, eat meals, like they're sacred.
I personally take myself out whenever I can and, but make your life feel like it's chosen like it's yours created.
(09:35):
The way you can within your means or with the means you have.
All right, three, emotional literacy.
This is important.
Let your emotions speak even when they contradict your philosophy.
All right? So that's what cognitive dissonance sometimes come in at, but you really have to, it's a part of listening to yourself and learning yourself.
Um, let feelings become proof that you're still in it, that you're here for something.
(09:59):
Okay? And four creative defiance.
I'm big on this as well.
Make art that says I was here.
Make beauty, even if it's going to fade and make your voice louder than the void.
All right? I'm, I'm always in a constant state of creating.
Trust me, even if you don't think you are a creative person, you are a creative person because you can't create something, alright? And it may be just uniquely to you.
(10:25):
Okay? Back to the man.
He didn't become a preacher, y'all.
He didn't start giving Ted talks.
He didn't start wearing linen and talking about vibrations, but he did something much rarer.
He started answering himself again.
When he asked, what do I want? He didn't deflect.
He paused.
(10:45):
He closed his eyes and he listened.
This time he listened to himself.
All right.
This was episode 31 of the Hood Wtu podcast, guys.
So if you ever looked at the world and thought none of this mean anything, I just want to say I do get it.
I do get it.
And this podcast episode was kind of to those people feeling that way.
(11:09):
But the meaning in something.
Isn't what the world gives you do, do you get what I'm saying?, Like meaning, is it something you find like a lucky coin? Like the best way I can kind of put it? It's something you build brick by brick, scar by scar, song by song.
It's what feeds your soul.
All right? The void may be speaking to you, but you don't have to echo it back.
(11:34):
You get to find a word on your life.
Okay.
So until next time, keep breathing, keep asking, keep building, keep existing because you are already here and you are important.
Okay, guys.
All right.
All right.
All righty I feel like I'm rambling and I'm signing off.
I'm still trying to figure out the schedule.
(11:56):
For those of you probably like, oh, you downloaded an episode this week.
I thought you were going to cut it down.
I'm still trying to figure that out, and when I do, you guys will be the first to know.
So Sibly, I'll see you next week.
Peace.
Let's roll up as a new high good laugh.
Some good vibes, a safe space to talk about all the dope things that's on our mind from world philosophies.
We stay stylish.
Coming rock with me is a good time.
We got the sauce to make champagne, which is reality.
We do it for the culture.
Gotta show what we can't be.
This is the high life.
Yeah, we so fancy.
(00:35):
Keep it a GS We are family.
It's the Hood Debutante with London.
Bambi, uh, the hood Debutante.
Yo, yo yo.
What's up? Rock stars.
Welcome to another episode of the Hood Debutante podcast with.
(01:01):
Me your host, London Bambi, and today we're going to dive deep into a word I used to be afraid of y'all.
I used to be afraid to say this word out loud, and that word is.
Nihilism.
Yes.
I was scared to even try to figure out what that word meant, deeply, although I had a rough idea, but I didn't want to dive deeper into it.
(01:28):
And it just felt really, really like sterile final, like the emotional version of a closed casket.
Just hearing it used to make me uncomfortable because.
It carried weight, weight that couldn't be softened or it couldn't be cleaned with sage or sweet talk.
It felt like something that, it felt like a spiritual dead end, and that's exactly why thinking about it, I had to explore it because I believe fear is a compass and when a word makes you flinch, you either run from it or you walk straight through it, and that's what I'm deciding to do.
(02:02):
I wanted to just finally do my research and see like what part of this.
Word, had me scared, and who am I gonna become after I interact with it? So we are here.
I'm not here to justify nihilism.
I want to understand its dangers, why it shows up in people lives, how it quietly erodes things that you didn't even know was sacred.
(02:23):
And how if you're not careful, it can trick you into thinking that giving up is the most intelligent thing you will ever do.
Okay? So with this episode, like I stated in the last episode, there's going to be a storytelling.
Element to it, because I believe in order to understand something, sometimes you have to walk beside it.
(02:43):
So I'm going to try to tell a story with the idea of nihilism in mind.
And the name of this story is titled The Man Who Mistook His Silence for Wisdom.
Alright? Because everything has a root every dangerous idea begins somewhere.
Alright, here we go.
Oh, before I go, I should probably also state where the word comes from.
(03:06):
So the word nihilism comes from the Latin word, meaning nothing.
So it doesn't mean chaos.
It doesn't mean violence.
It doesn't mean,.
It doesn't mean anything.
It, it means the absence of anything.
Okay.
Like, I hope that made sense.
So just say it just means the absence of anything.
Okay.
'cause it's crazy to say words don't have meaning.
(03:28):
I just wanna say that because when people start using a word,, to describe love and life and existence itself, I feel like that's what things begin to be heavy, real, real quick, right? Because nothing is in neutral, y'all.
It's corrosive.
It really, really is.
Alright.
Alright, so let's jump into the story.
Here we go.
(03:50):
There once was a man who didn't start out cold.
He was warm, curious, and open, but life has a way of Deming people degrees.
His father passed away and left behind more resentment than wisdom.
He watched a friend overdose on a Wednesday and people moved on by a Friday.
He fell in love with someone who said they would never leave.
Then ghosted like it was just a performance.
(04:14):
But it wasn't just grief, it was the consistent performance around him that started to drain his spirit.
People online were preaching, healing and posting wounds.
Corporations were selling authenticity in a bottle.
The news cycle, tragedy, like it was the weather.
He started to believe everything was fake.
Not just culture, but himself.
(04:34):
Imposter syndrome, anybody.
Mm-hmm.
Jesse.
And that belief didn't just disrupt it accumulated.
That's how nihilism start.
Y'all quietly, persuasively.
It's like a slow rot in the foundation.
And it's funny because my last episode, episode 30 of Hood Deton was titled Cleaning Out the Rod.
So yeah.
(04:55):
Um, catch that right now.
Back to the story.
He didn't call it nihilism.
He called it being realistic.
He called it protecting his peace.
He called it not getting his hopes up anymore.
I.
But his habits change.
He ghosted opportunities.
He stopped celebrating his own wins.
(05:16):
He started deleting texts before sending them.
And every time someone asked him, what do you want? He answered with a joke.
All right, but here's the part I want to lean into.
The part that most people skip over when they wrote romanticized detachment.
Nihilism isn't just deleting meaning, it's deleting your ability to feel meaning even when it's right in front of you.
(05:39):
It makes love seem suspicious.
It makes hope, seems delusional, and it makes effort feel embarrassing.
And here's where I push back.
I believe nihilism, if left unchecked, can absolutely slide in depression.
Now, I'm not saying it causes sadness, but I'm saying it does justify staying in it because it tells you why heal.
(06:01):
You're going to hurt again.
Why try it won't last.
Why care? Nobody else does.
That's not enlightenment.
That is spiritual.
Malnourishment dressed up as insight.
But here's the thing.
He didn't just sit in the dark.
He tried to get out.
He went to therapy, but he left.
After a second session.
(06:21):
He said the therapist was too cheerful.
He started journaling, but every sentence ended with, what's the point? He volunteered.
Now, this is what things started to change in him.
He, he volunteered for something once, but on a whole ride home.
He started crying.
Not from joy, but for confusion.
Alright, so this is where we get our little plot twists, because now Liz wasn't a belief anymore.
(06:43):
I think he realized that it was his identity now it was the lens he wore on everything.
And when your worldview becomes a comfort zone, it's hard to imagine another way to see it.
Now, here comes the big moment in the story.
It was not a breakdown.
It was not an epiphany, just a question.
He was sitting on his porch at 3:00 AM His hoodie was on.
(07:05):
Music was low.
He wasn't thinking about anything in particular, and then it slipped out of him like a breath.
If nothing matters, why am I still here? Now, it wasn't in a dramatic edge of the cliff kind of way, but in a curious kind of way, it startled him because it was an intimate question.
One, he didn't know where it came from.
One, he didn't even know if he'll be able to answer, but he started to say it like a phrase hundreds of times.
(07:30):
If nothing matters, why am I still here? Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
Nothing matters.
And he started to interrogate it.
He started to say, why was he still here? Why did he keep waking up? Why did he still get his coffee? Just the way he liked it.
Why did he stop to pet dogs on the street? Why did he still hum when no one was around? The question cracked like a glass.
(07:55):
That question became a mouth for him, not a clear one, not even a comfortable one, but a reminder that if he was still living, then something in him disagreed.
With that void he was starting to fill, He started noticing things that he never let himself admit.
That music still moved him.
That beauty still caught him off guard.
That left or still made him feel briefly invincible.
(08:18):
He wasn't out of the fog, but he had stopped believing that it was the only air he could breathe.
Here's the truth that nihilism won't tell you.
Just because something isn't eternal doesn't mean it isn't real.
Joy doesn't need a purpose to be sacred.
Love doesn't need to be forever to be worth it.
Art doesn't need an audience to be revolutionary and meaning doesn't need a goddamn stamp of approval to matter.
(08:43):
Yeah, you can create your own meaning, but that doesn't make it fake.
All right.
Y'all gotta start with this imposter syndrome because I believe when you create your own idea, it makes it earned.
You work for that idea, especially if you're able to manifest it in real life.
So if you're walking through the room where nihilism lives, here are four doors that might help you walk out, right friend, because you know I'm always gonna come up with a solution.
(09:08):
One radical self-honesty.
Ask yourself the questions you are afraid of Hearing the answers to the ones that haunts the silence.
Two crafted rituals.
Create meaning on your own terms.
Y'all know I'm big about that if you need to.
I'm not a plant person, but if you need to water plants, like they're like alters, eat meals, like they're sacred.
I personally take myself out whenever I can and, but make your life feel like it's chosen like it's yours created.
(09:35):
The way you can within your means or with the means you have.
All right, three, emotional literacy.
This is important.
Let your emotions speak even when they contradict your philosophy.
All right? So that's what cognitive dissonance sometimes come in at, but you really have to, it's a part of listening to yourself and learning yourself.
Um, let feelings become proof that you're still in it, that you're here for something.
(09:59):
Okay? And four creative defiance.
I'm big on this as well.
Make art that says I was here.
Make beauty, even if it's going to fade and make your voice louder than the void.
All right? I'm, I'm always in a constant state of creating.
Trust me, even if you don't think you are a creative person, you are a creative person because you can't create something, alright? And it may be just uniquely to you.
(10:25):
Okay? Back to the man.
He didn't become a preacher, y'all.
He didn't start giving Ted talks.
He didn't start wearing linen and talking about vibrations, but he did something much rarer.
He started answering himself again.
When he asked, what do I want? He didn't deflect.
He paused.
(10:45):
He closed his eyes and he listened.
This time he listened to himself.
All right.
This was episode 31 of the Hood Wtu podcast, guys.
So if you ever looked at the world and thought none of this mean anything, I just want to say I do get it.
I do get it.
And this podcast episode was kind of to those people feeling that way.
(11:09):
But the meaning in something.
Isn't what the world gives you do, do you get what I'm saying?, Like meaning, is it something you find like a lucky coin? Like the best way I can kind of put it? It's something you build brick by brick, scar by scar, song by song.
It's what feeds your soul.
All right? The void may be speaking to you, but you don't have to echo it back.
(11:34):
You get to find a word on your life.
Okay.
So until next time, keep breathing, keep asking, keep building, keep existing because you are already here and you are important.
Okay, guys.
All right.
All right.
All righty I feel like I'm rambling and I'm signing off.
I'm still trying to figure out the schedule.
(11:56):
For those of you probably like, oh, you downloaded an episode this week.
I thought you were going to cut it down.
I'm still trying to figure that out, and when I do, you guys will be the first to know.
So Sibly, I'll see you next week.
Peace.
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