David Shapiro · Tech & AI
TIER 4 Sun, 29 Mar 2026 12:41:33 +0000
Postnihilism is emerging, and one facet is what I call Somatic Realism. Let's unpack this. ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ ͏ | | ---|---|--- | | | Forwarded this email? Subscribe here for more --- # It's time to take our bodies seriously ### Postnihilism is emerging, and one facet is what I call Somatic Realism. Let's unpack this. | | David Shapiro --- | Mar 29 --- | --- --- | | | --- | | --- | | --- | | --- | | READ IN APP --- The job of philosophy, according to some, is to provide guidance on how to live well. Others say it's to catalogue everything outside of science until it becomes science. I like these salt-of-the-earth takes on philosophy. Academic philosophy has largely departed from both pursuits for roughly the last century. When I first began working on Postnihilism, I thought it was up to me to engage in a heroic effort to define the next frontier of philosophy. Over the years, however, I've come to realize that philosophers never define such things. We merely observe, articulate, and name them. Nietzsche did not invent nihilism, he simply gave it words. Carl Jung later wrote about how Nietzsche was an exquisite example of the collapse mode of an unintegrated human. In other words, philosophy exists before philosophers put words to it. Reality precedes thought. That is the realist tradition, and realism seems to be a major part of Postnihilism. In this article, I will simply describe Somatic Realism. I will not attempt to get my arms entirely around Postnihilism. For starters, I am not there yet. I have not observed enough and I do not yet know enough about the world to even take a shot in the dark. Secondarily, I believe that Postnihilism is still emerging. It is still taking shape. But the first solid component of Postnihilism that I can articulate is Somatic Realism. So let's get into it. | | ---|---|--- # Somatic Realism, Defined Here's an attempt to define it. Keep in mind that words are only the finger pointing at the moon, not the moon itself. This definition is shorthand and not all-encompassing. **Somatic Realism** holds that the human body, as a biological system, constitutes an irreducible ground of truth that is prior to and independent of cultural interpretation, linguistic framing, or philosophical commitment. The consistent needs of the human organism--for nutrition, movement, sleep, social bonding, sunlight--are not values we choose but constraints we inherit by virtue of being the kind of animal we are. These needs generate genuine normative force: not moral commandments handed down from abstract principle, but structural imperatives that follow from the nature of the system itself. To ignore them is not to hold a different philosophical position. It is to get sick. Let's use fiber as an example. Postmodernism holds that all truth claims are relative. Everything comes down to personal narratives, social constructs, and interpretations. But colon cancer doesn't care about your epistemics, and it's not socially constructed. Today, colon cancer rates are rising for young people--as young as in their 30's--because of diets high in UPF (ultra-processed foods) and low in fiber. When I proposed "body-first living" a few years ago, I had someone unironically bring out Hume's Guillotine. They said something like "You cannot make an assertion [about prioritizing your body] as a moral/ethical assertion." Okay, buddy, well I prefer not to get colon cancer, so I'm going to eat fiber and exercise. Postnihilism, as it is emerging, seems to reject these abstractions and mental gymnastics and treats the human body as a truth instrument. If something hurts, it might just be bad for you. If it feels good, maybe it's good for you. And before you say "well what about exercise!" Yes, we know that exercise doesn't always feel great in the moment. And then before you pivot, and crow about "But what about heroine!" Yes, I know that you can hijack pleasure centers. The point of Somatic Realism is not to just blindly follow pain and pleasure. But to treat the body itself as a source of ontological grounding and epistemic centering. # Don't Die, the philosophy Bryan Johnson is perhaps the greatest exponent of Somatic Realism, though he's never used the term as far as I know. Like many workaholics, he pushed his body very hard during his early entrepreneurial phase. He wrote checks his body couldn't cash. He ended up burned out, sick, depressed, and suicidal. His pivot was simple; _I fucking hate how I feel right now so I 'm going to take my body seriously._ And he did so based on empirical metrics, objective science, and algorithmic optimization. That is a highly Realist approach. Of course, being from the tech world, everything is viewed as an optimization function. What's the utility function you're optimizing for? He has settled on "Don't Die." It's part marketing slogan, part philosophy, part tech-bro optimization function. Bryan talks at length about how this is not just a health goal, but a spiritual disposition as well. 1. Don't Die means that you value life. You want more of it. 2. Don't Die means that you take your body's signals seriously. 3. Don't Die means that you measure what you can. I frequently harp on the DD (Don't Die) movement because it is the most systematic expression of Somatic Realism. Bryan rigorously approached every behavior, from diet, exercise, sleep, screen time, sex, and everything else, to figure out what optimizes his health. Bryan's work underlines one keep belief or observation: _you cannot philosophize your way out of metabolic disorder._ Much of anxiety, depression, and dysphoria is actually downstream of inflammation. Countless philosophers throughout history were physically miserable. Nietzsche chief among them. To tie Don't Die back to ancient philosophy, it achieves _ataraxia_ and _aponia_. The cessation of pain and disturbances. And it does so by foregrounding the body. Call it "body-first living" or Somatic Realism. It doesn't really matter to me. But this is very clearly a major trend that is emerging. It goes far beyond Bryan Johnson and the Don't Die movement he started. He just happens to be the poster boy for it. | | ---|---|--- # Whorelords and Bimbos Another dimension of Somatic Realism is the operationalization and radical acceptance of the human animal. Namely around sex. Sex-worker-turned-sex-research Aella has systematically studied what makes people horny. She organizes her own gangbangs and hosts sex conferences. I categorize this under Somatic Realism because she takes a data-centric approach and basically drops all moralizing. Sex is not 'sinful' or 'morally abhorrent'--there are no priors or negative doxa in her worldview. Doxa, if you haven't heard the term, is like a meta dogma. If a dogma is an axiomatic belief that you can articulate (such as "sex is sinful") then a doxa is the epistemic milieu that you don't realize you're swimming in. In the case of "sex as sin" the doxa would be the entire Judeo-Christian canon, Original Sin, and the notion that the Bible and Christianity are indeed sources of epistemic grounding and ontological truth. The doxa of Postnihilism is more animalistic. I don't mean that in the "unrefined, barbaric" connotation. Postnihilism recognizes "we are basically just apes." It is the boiled-down result of Postmodernism. Once you shrug off all religious metanarratives, and quasi-religious philosophies like Modernism, what you're left with is "yep, we're mammals alright. Horny, filthy animals." And sex feels good. Just because Aella has thrown morality out the window (at least traditional morality), ethics are front and center. Consent being the highest virtue. There are quite a few people writing about this stuff here on Substack, including Aella and several of her friends. One such periodical that I would classify as highly Postnihilist and Somatically Real is SlutStack. See below for an example. SlutStack I Stopped "Following My Heart." Here's What I Do Instead. Disclaimer: This post includes personal preferences, evo psych references, and overanalysis of dating… proceed at your own risk. These dating strategies were developed by a reasonably attractive, highly educated, 20-something woman dating in the Bay Area, who nonetheless found it difficult to find the right men. Plus I'm a weirdo seeking other weirdos … Read more a month ago * 34 likes * 16 comments * SlutStack and Pandora Delaney Again, Somatic Realism is not just dopamine-maxxing. In the case of scientifically and systematically approaching sex and relationships, with evidence-based views, it's more about asking "what really works here? And why?" In the case of the hypersexual among us, they're simply optimizing around this very animal experience. Many people argue against them, saying "you're destroying relationships and the sanctity of sex!" To which they respond with evidence about all their relationships, the fact that they are having children, and that they've actually elevated sex to a truly sacred practice. # It seems too obvious… I've long reflected on "how the hell did we get here?" Here are some thoughts. I was raised atheist. Not as a specific movement. I was raised with the explicit absence of religion. I was so ignorant of religion that when we got to the religion unit in fourth grade, I laughed out loud in class and said "who believes this stuff?" I thought religion was being taught as a "look at how primitive we used to be" sort of thing. The same way you teach the Salem Witch Trials or heliocentric models of the cosmos. Little did I know that the vast majority of people were religious. Oops. Numerous thinkers have bemoaned the death of religion. From Seraphim Rose to Joseph Campbell and more recently, Jordan Peterson. They cling very desperately to the old ways of thinking. The old ontological and epistemic models. But I've never really found any use for them. Studying Christianity is about the same as studying The Force to me. Both are very obviously fictions, one just happens to be deeply embedded in culture. That's not to say that there aren't real morals, values, and insights in Christianity (and other religions). Why do I bring this up? The doxa of the Western world has been thoroughly Judeo-Christian for hundreds of years. Even "outside the box" thinkers were still somewhat preempted by Judeo-Christian thought. There must be a Creator of some kind. Meaning must come from on high. Those sorts of things. The entire Nihilistic Crisis that Nietzsche articulated was itself (in my view) a temper tantrum of the Western world at coming to terms with the fact that their ontologies and epistemics were, indeed, mostly fictitious. Hegel tried to rigorously prove the Absolute was "out there somewhere" and in my eyes, that was the most heroic effort to resuscitate a dying ontological viewpoint. The death of God began with the printing press, Hegelian works were CPR, and Nietzsche was when it all went to code. But if God is dead, God has always been dead. It's all a very curious psychodrama from my viewpoint as a lifelong "atheist." My doxa was very much anchored in "what you see is what you get." Unsurprisingly I grew up to be a pretty strong Materialist until I did psychedelics. Materialism, in this case, means that everything real can be measured and observed. Part of the Judeo-Christian dogma (not doxa) is that our bodies themselves are made of sin. That we are in a poor, degenerate state of being. In fact, many cosmogonic cycles say as much. The Hindu view is that we are the decrepit descendants of towering beings who were perfect and beautiful. And it makes sense. We wake up in a world that is confusing, painful, and often short. So, to make sense of it all, we come up with a cosmic narrative _that someone royally fucked up along the way._ Otherwise why would most of our children die before the age of five? Why are we riven with parasites and hunger and disease? Before modern science and technology, _life was fucking miserable._ It was not a very large leap of faith to come to the conclusion "we've been abandoned by our Creator because we clearly did something verboten." And we had to unpack all that before we could start to accept "yep, we're just mammals. We're upright apes who accidentally evolved big brains, and that was basically opening Pandora's Box, because now we don't just have ordinary anxiety, we have ✨ _existential anxiety! ✨"_ Go us. [Note, none of this is to say that religious people can't engage in Somatic Realism. Many people do. I am just commenting on the long historical narrative and how twisted religion made us feel about our bodies.] | | ---|---|--- # Final thoughts, why Postnihilism? I've done a poor job identifying all the connective tissue. I've jumped from Hegel to Nietzsche to Hinduism. So why call this Postnihilism at all? The larger movement is pretty simple: _we 're really fucking tired of Postmodernism and Nihilism._ I call it Postnihilism simply because the Nigredo of Nihilism and Postmodernism seem to have run their course. We tried full force Nihilism for more than a century and where did it get us? We're obese, sick, lonely, addicted, and it's not getting any better. If Postmodernism and Nihilism were paths to happiness and wellbeing, we'd have figured it out now. But they aren't. They are not paths to insight, wisdom, mastery, happiness, or health. I personally see Somatic Realism as perhaps the fulcrum about which this next movement will coalesce. _Yes, yes, yes, whatever wordy blobs you can write are fine, but those are just symbols on a page. In the meantime, I feel better when I eat good food, spend time with loved ones, and get sunshine. So … fuck off Schopenhauer._ My personal view is that if philosophy does not serve the human animal, then it is maladaptive rumination that has simply been formalized into an academic status game. And that is _most philosophy today._ In the same way that LLMs can turn psychotic if they recursively process their tokens, so too I think that most philosophy is a recursive cognitive collapse mode. Somatic Realism teaches us that the optimal amount of philosophy is however much it takes to serve the human animal. Just enough to have better sex, better relationships, better health. But also, there are superior _tools_ to do each of those. One of the central delusions of philosophy is that it is the be-all end-all of human thought, and attempts to annex _all_ rigorous or reflective thought, claiming post-facto that all math, science, logic, and meditation are intrinsically philosophy. This kind of intellectual appropriation is, in my estimation, a symptom of a very sick discipline. The Egyptians invented geometry long before the Athenians invented philosophy. Math existed independent of philosophical thought for hundreds of years. Postnihilism seems to reconcile with that reality. It right-sizes philosophy to say "yes, here's an attitude that can give you some ontological, epistemic, and moral grounding, but that's just your permission slip. Now go forth and be free." Philosophy that deludes and enslaves is harmful. Somatic Realism is liberating. It liberates from the tyranny of viewing the body as profane. It liberates from the Nihilistic delusion that you are "free to make your own meaning." You are not. Your meaning mostly comes from relationships and social embeddedness. Sorry, you don't get to opt out of being human by reading books. * * * This is getting too long and ranty now so I'll call it a day. You're currently a free subscriber to David Shapiro's Substack. For the full experience, upgrade your subscription. Upgrade to paid --- | | | Like --- | | Comment --- | | Restack --- (C) 2026 David Shapiro 548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104 Unsubscribe