Hello faithful readers,

I want to share a few stories and articles I’ve encountered the past few weeks that I’ve found particularly relevant to the themes we explore in this newsletter. I always feel like there’s more to read, which is different from the pressure to keep up with the pace of events, more like, “If I have to live through an authoritarian takeover of our democracy, at least there is a lot of smart journalism and analysis to read and keep me sharp.” The stories below are as important to me for their moral clarity as for the quality of their ideas and writing.

First though, I’d like to share again last week’s post from Haley Young:

Haley’s essay was, for me, a necessary reminder that reading The Atlantic and following the news will only help so much, we also need to get out into the world and experience our country. A few days ago I saw my favorite band, Punch Brothers, play in a concert hall in Annapolis, Maryland that had been converted from a high school auditorium. They weren’t slumming it, exactly, but they embarked on this relatively short tour to road-test new material, and I guess they aren’t in a choosy mood. I’m just saying, they’ve literally made it to Carnegie Hall. It was my first time seeing them since fiddler Brittany Haas replaced founding member Gabe Witcher. They were transcendent, and I am so grateful I was there. I encourage all of us to seek out opportunities to witness creativity, to share a room with artists or chefs or storytellers or whoever it is that makes the things we love, and to do our own creating.

Here is a 14-year-old video of Punch Brothers performing the song they opened with on Thursday, “This is the Song”. For me it really meets the moment. Some lyrics: “Until our heartbeats drown out the clock ticking–and the song becomes ‘I love you and always will’–good luck. These are tough times, but we’ll get by.”

Now, consider reading one or a few of the stories below if you are looking for context or insight about this moment, 4 months into what will be our 4-year-long effort to save America from our current administration. Like last month, these are all free or gift links, so you won’t encounter a paywall even if you don’t subscribe.

George Saunders: Shame on the White House

Great American writer and modern-day transcendentalist George Saunders published a blistering brushback pitch this week in the opinion section of the New York Times on the firing of librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden:

The White House also stated, with an inaccuracy that would be comic if it weren’t so sickening, that Dr. Hayden put “inappropriate books in the library for children.” The librarian of Congress doesn’t put books into the library. And presumably, the American people benefit from having access to the widest possible collection of books. Even those American people who are children, who, after all, have parents to decide what is inappropriate.

In the real world, the world of cause and effect, when we tear down the best among us and provide bogus reasons for why we did it, reality will eventually come for us. To behave honorably requires that we be in contact with the truth, to be able to supply honest answers to simple questions.

…When a ship is sinking, there’s value in knowing how fast and calling it out. When a country is self-sabotaging, ditto. So let me just say it: Shame on the White House. Shame on those who should be stopping this slide into autocracy and aren’t. (I’m looking at you, John Thune, Mike Johnson and Marco Rubio.) Shame on all of us if we let these ignorant purveyors of cruelty reduce this beautiful thing we’ve built over these hundreds of years to a hollow, braying, anti-version of itself.

Who Counts as Christian?

Elizabeth Breunig writes in The Atlantic about a new commission established by Donald Trump dedicated to “eradicating anti-Christian bias”. There is a lot in here about the Christian right’s push to impose their beliefs on public life and governance. What really struck me was how Bruenig captures the ramifications of appointing a governmental body with the power to determine what does and doesn’t qualify as Christian and anti-Christian, because the administration is already doing this to American Jews even as he insists it is on our behalf:

“Christians shouldn’t conclude that this new commission will necessarily defend their interests, let alone fix it ‘so good.’ Eliminating anti-Christian bias will require the task force (and thereby the government) to rule on what exactly constitutes authentic Christian belief and practice—not a straightforward determination to make, nor one that should be entrusted to the Trump administration…To what authority would this task force appeal in order to prove otherwise? Tradition, scripture, the majority opinion of the faithful? Even the most learned Christians disagree on how to derive religious authority, and I doubt this task force will finally settle the debate.”

Subscribe now

Trump Is No Longer the Most Important American

NYT columnist David French explores the consequences of the election of Pope Leo XIV for America and American Christianity, and his inhospitable reception by the Christian right. Despite French being an evangelical from the rural south who did not know any Catholics until he got to law school, he makes it clear in his column that he is a deep and well-studied admirer of Catholicism:

We belong to churches that measure their existence in months or years, not centuries or millenniums. Our oldest denominations have existed for only the tiniest fraction of time compared with the Catholic Church.

That lack of perspective ends up exaggerating the importance of politics. It narrows our frame of reference and elevates the temporal over the eternal. It leads to absurd declarations, such as Trump’s vow this Easter to make America “more religious than it has ever been before.”

And when you believe the success of your religion depends on the success of any politician, it’s only a matter of time before politics becomes your religion. That means that too many Christians will evaluate even the pope through a partisan political lens.

…In the case of Leo, the church’s witness to the world also becomes part of America’s witness to the world. Millions of Americans have been lamenting that the most prominent American in the world is a person who embodies cruelty and spite.

Many of us (and certainly many dissenting evangelicals) are also lamenting that Trump owes his victory to the evangelical church more than to any other group in American life. He won the votes of white evangelicals by a 65-point margin. He lost the rest of the electorate by 18 points. Trump’s election, in other words, isn’t just an expression of American political will; it’s also an expression of American Christian will.

But American Christianity does not speak with one voice. It contains multitudes. And so does Leo…Oh, and he’s a White Sox fan, so he has a heart for hopeless causes.

Thanks for reading, friends, and take care.

Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of this newsletter, Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert and works in the marketing department of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.

Actionable:

• Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

• Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

• Follow O/o/N on instagram

by Haley Young

“We live in a world of such marvels. We should wake in the morning and as we put on our trousers, we should remember the seahorse, and we should scream with awe and not stop screaming until we fall asleep, and the same the next day, and the next.”
— Katherine Rundell, Vanishing Treasures: A Bestiary of Extraordinary Endangered Creatures p. 136

Between the waxing gibbous moon and artificial glow above the southeastern horizon, Key Largo some forty miles in the distance, tonight is bright.

We’re in Everglades National Park for a guided hike on Anhinga Trail. We walked it on our own earlier, but I’m sure we missed things out of ignorance—and in the wake of funding cuts, I’m happier than ever to support NPS programs. Our group dodges mosquitos and shares pleasantries before Ranger Ashley introduces herself with an easy smile beneath her wide-brimmed hat, a park service signature. “Half the park is after dark,” she rhymes. “Even though this sky isn’t all that dark.” I’m surprised by our shadows’ contrast as we set off.

We spot an alligator by the glint of a single orange eye, then a toad catching crickets along the pond’s brick wall. We hope for cottonmouths (some of us more eagerly than others) and whisper over the evening sonnet of singing frogs and flapping wings and rustling lilies. As we turn from an observation deck’s dead end, a woman gasps. “A shooting star!” She clutches her friend’s arm. “I’ve never seen one before!”

Last September Sean and I lay on our backs in the Badlands and the sky rewarded us with wonders between astronomical twilight and moonrise: the Milky Way, faint smatterings of other suns, several shooting stars. I’ve missed tonight’s here in the Everglades, but I don’t mind. I’ve seen so many that I almost take them for granted.

Almost. This group’s excitement reminds me I never should.

We’re pointing out planets when an alligator rumbles just beneath the boardwalk. Someone squeals, less surprise than awe, and we cease talking to listen to the night. There is a loud crack across the surface of the water—the gator’s slamming jaw—and another lengthy groan.

We lived on Florida’s Space Coast prior to hitting the road. When I first arrived in the sunshine state from midwestern roots, I couldn’t get over the marvel of palm trees and year-round flowers and small gators in every body of fresh water—but over time I habituated to my surroundings. I let the reptiles become commonplace.

Not tonight, though. I huddle with visitors from around the country, straining our eyes, hoping for another growl. “Alligators don’t actually have vocal chords,” Ashley tells us. “They make that noise by just vibrating their throats.” None of us can get our heads around that.

At the end of the trail we stumble upon a small bird. The group debates her feathered form: an Eastern whip-poor-will or a lesser nighthawk? Ranger Ashley sends a photo to two ornithology enthusiasts who each give a different answer, but I find I care little about knowing. Whip-poor-will, nighthawk, common robin, whatever. She’s wondrous.

Throughout the hour we spend together, some of our fellow hikers are consistently overwhelmed. “Wow!” whispers one woman—I never catch her name—to almost everything Ashley says. Though Sean and I bring the average group age down by at least a decade, there’s no shortage of childlike enthusiasm beneath this too-bright sky.

Subscribe now

I’m reminded of a man we saw in Yellowstone National Park our first summer traveling in our van. As I greedily scanned the riverbed for a fox or wolf or bear, a stranger gasped when he panned his binoculars over a tree. “I’ve never seen a bald eagle before!” he shouted. “How amazing!”

Growing up in central Wisconsin, I’d seen what felt like hundreds of bald eagles. To me they were cooler than a gray squirrel or white-tailed deer and not nearly as interesting as a canid or ursid—but for this man at a viewpoint in Montana, they were the coolest.

A few weeks prior Sean and I had been on a boat tour in Kenai Fjords National Park. There, too, we were chasing more “exciting” sights: I cried watching an otter carry an infant on her stomach and laughed at several seals’ inquisitive expressions and held my breath each time a group of orcas—two adults and a yearling—surfaced yards away. But when the captain stopped the ferry so everyone could observe an eagle on a rocky outcrop, I wondered if it was really necessary. Wouldn’t our time be better spent circling the colony of puffins we’d glimpsed earlier? Or sticking around the end of our route in hopes of witnessing another glacier calving?

Then I looked around and saw a different feeling on our fellow passengers’ faces. Old men with cameras trained on the bird’s brilliant head; young kids eagerly pointing from their mothers’ arms; even the teenager across the aisle with eyes glued to the window. I was the one missing something. And despite vowing in that moment not to gloss over amazement again, experience after experience loosened my grip.

Tonight, in the Everglades, I’m embarrassed that my capacity for wonder has been stunted. How small I feel next to these strangers who are more awash in the world. Even I—nature-loving joy-seeking van-life girl—fail, too often, to scream with awe.

Consider this my renewed pledge.

Haley Young (she/her) is a freelance writer and full-time traveller. She lives in a yellow campervan with her partner and blue heeler, always searching for the next small joy. Her work has been published by ROVA Magazine, Juniper Magazine, Kinship Pets, and others.

Actionable:

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, consider subscribing to Opposite of Nihilism. Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

By Adam Zemel, O/o/N Editor

Note: My dad, or abba, as my sisters and I call him, will retire at the end of June after 42 years as the rabbi of a reform congregation in Washington D.C. This past Yom Kippur, at a rabbinic q&a session meant to pass the time between services, a middle schooler asked him why he was stopping now. How did he know it was time?

“I didn’t like the idea of continuing this job having lost even a mile off my fastball,” he said, in the slightly-more-gentle but respectful tone he adopts with children who ask good questions in adult settings. And then, more vulnerably, “I’d never want it to get to where there are conversations about it happening in rooms I’m not in.”

This was bittersweet in the moment and even more so to remember now, but I am immensely proud of my father, 72 years old, demonstrating the grace to step away when he will be missed and remembered fondly. May he be a role model for those least likely to heed this particular wisdom. Our country, and our world, would benefit.

Tonight I am attending my synagogue’s celebration in honor of his leadership, at which my sisters and I have been invited to deliver a roast. We wrote some good jokes, which is always fun when you know your audience. Before that I’d like to share this essay, which is far more earnest, and adapted from earlier work:

My Father’s Sermons

I wrote about the link between my dad, Judaism, and my writing life in the personal statement I submitted with my MFA applications in the Fall of 2019:

“The more I write, the more profoundly I feel my father’s influence. He is a rabbi, and I have been listening to his sermons for my entire life. My father’s Judaism—my Judaism—is a struggle to understand what it means to be human. At the center of life there are things that are fundamentally unknowable and unsayable, but there is power in words that try to approximate them anyway. Whether I am writing about male friendship or siblings in childhood or the glorious messiness of adolescence, I am writing towards this contradiction.”

A few years ago I remarked to my dad about how emotional it is to hear him deliver his high holiday sermons. He speaks with plainspoken eloquence about why this season of introspection occupies the heart of the Jewish calendar. My sisters and I are often moved to tears. At some point in my twenties I learned to attend Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur with a few tissues in my pocket.

My dad, more comfortable conceiving and writing his sermons than delivering them, expressed a degree of surprise.

“Well, you’re my dad,” I said, or words to that effect. And still he did not seem to understand what I was saying. But I knew his father had enjoyed a long career as a civil rights lawyer in Chicago, so I asked him, “Did you ever get to see Grandpa Zemel argue in court?”

My dad was quiet for a moment. “Yes, I remember doing that once or twice,” he said. His tone softened further. “I remember how that made me feel. I think I understand.”

So yes, his sermons affect me because I am his son, but not only for that. He has an incredible capacity to synthesize and distill dense texts into simple and relatable ideas–to perceive what is profound and communicate it within a Jewish context. Still, his sermons often include lengthy quotations from his reading, bouncing off each other in a sort of contemporary enactment of Talmudic intertextuality. In these moments, I sometimes wonder how congregants keep up–they have not had the advantage, as I have, of keeping track of the books piled on the little red bench in the front hallway of my parents’ home.

He reads voraciously. Historical and contemporary Jewish thinkers, continental and analytic philosophy, political theory and cultural anthropology, media and cultural studies, history and sociology. His favorite books open new vectors of thought and curiosity, and their bibliographies become his syllabi.

In my earliest memory of my dad reading, the book is Neil Postman’s Technopoly. He has referenced this text in sermons and synagogue newsletter columns for more than two decades, which is how I know its central thesis argues that technology has supplanted culture as the primary means of human exchange. At the time he first encountered it, when I was in third or fourth grade, I was aware of the book as a slim paperback with a cool title that my dad carried around even when he was reading other books.

A few years later, he read Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone, which analyzes the changing social structures and dissolving communal bonds of late twentieth century America. It made him pessimistic for a moment, but ultimately convinced him that the synagogue he’d been leading since 1983 would never function similarly to his childhood congregation in Chicago or other post-War Jewish communities. Moreover, attempting to preserve or recapture this earlier American Judaism would only lead to a faith that was creaky and gray.

Call the creaky gray stuff Nostalgia Judaism, and its encroachment is why my dad recognized the importance of Putnam’s book. The issues he discussed with colleagues at other synagogues–the crowdedness of congregants’ lives, their expectations shifting towards a more consumerist approach to participation–were not limited to the Jewish community. This was happening to communal institutions across scope and scale, a point Putnam drove home with his title: between 1980-1993, the percentage of people who had gone bowling in a given year had increased, while the percentage who had bowled as part of a league had plummeted precipitously.

Subscribe now

Putnam convinced my father that American society was reshaping itself. How might he lead his synagogue in response? This question led him to philosopher Charles Taylor, whose A Secular Age argues that a society reshaped by modernity and post-modernity in quick succession means not the end of religion but rather its proliferation and increased importance to being human in the world. In other words, we live in a world where it is possible to consider oneself spiritual without being religious–an idea that would have made no sense before the Enlightenment. We strive individually, with our mindfulness apps and conscious consumption and ecstatic workout classes, to address fundamental needs that once were addressed by organized religion. This revelation ushered in the “if it’s not broken, break it” model of innovation at my dad’s congregation. No one would ever revitalize the Ashkenazic-community-center model that was the midcentury synagogue, so my father devoted himself to imagining new ways a synagogue could be. And he did that by reading.

Apple, tree: I am very much preoccupied by the challenges and opportunities raised by Postman, Putnam, and Taylor. Culture, technology, community, faith. What it means to believe that we play a role in something bigger than ourselves. I learned to care about these things from my dad, and I believe they are vitally important to the questions that animate this newsletter: How do we build and imagine new things in 2025, in the face of all of this? Where will we find the strength and the leverage to shift our trajectory?

Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of this newsletter, Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert, and he works in the marketing department of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere

Coming soon

This month:

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

• A writer with wanderlust renews her capacity for wonder in the heartfelt awe of fresh-eyed strangers.

Actionable:

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, consider subscribing to Opposite of Nihilism. Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

Hello faithful readers of Opposite of Nihilism. I am still learning a lot about running this newsletter, and one of the things I’m working on is not allowing it to tumble down my list of priorities when either A) other areas of my life get busy, like my real pay-the-bills job, or B) I feel too nihilistic about the country to feel like this is important. The past couple of weeks have been a mixture of both. While I take this week to reset (and continue collaborating with contributors who are waiting to hear from me), I thought I would share this op-Ed with you from former foreign Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes, published today in the New York Times. “Trump Has Destroyed What Made America Great. It Only Took 100 Days.” (This is a gift link and does not requires a subscription to read in full.)

This column clarified for me a major goal of what I’m doing in this newsletter. Quoting from the final line: “If we recover our sense of agency, we can re-engage the world.” Opposite of Nihilism exists, in part, to celebrate our agency and the parts of this country we must fight to preserve and evolve, even at great cost. Below, I am sharing a longer excerpt from the column. It is worth reading in full, and any leftist readers who are skeptical of American power will find more nuance in the piece than what I am sharing here:

In the short term, treating international relations like a protection racket could yield some bilateral transactions. Yet something more fundamental is being lost: trust. An America that, for all its mistakes abroad, guaranteed the security of its allies. An America that, for all its nativism, took in refugees and educated countless world leaders through its universities and exchange programs. An America that, for all its hubris, responded to humanitarian crises and showcased an appealing cultural openness. An America that people around the world liked more than its government.

The destruction of that trust will hurt us more than the rest of the world…After 250 years of growing more diverse and more connected to the world, Mr. Trump and his cohort are imposing the staid insularity of self-imposed decline. The draining of democratic values from our national identity will leave America defined by its size, power and quixotic lust for profit: a place, not an idea…

Here is the good news: A nation’s relationship with the world is not defined solely by its government, particularly one as big and multifaceted as the United States.

…Our institutions also have a choice. Part of what has shocked the world about their capitulation to the Trump administration is the failure to grasp that the moral choice is the best path to self-preservation. Law firms can choose to care more about the law than whether a callous competitor will pick up some of their business. Universities can build credibility within an interconnected world instead of validating the lie that a few students chanting “Free Palestine” is more dangerous than a far-right takeover of academic freedom. The entertainment sector can tell compelling stories about a consequential era instead of algorithmically designed superhero junk. Billionaires can spend money on STEM education for girls instead of financing celebrity trips into a higher part of the atmosphere…

The wrong way to respond to our current emergency is to promise, as President Joe Biden did, that America will be “back.” That ignores the enormous mistakes elites made over the last three decades and the political context that allowed Mr. Trump to return to power with the mind-set of an arsonist. We’re not coming back, and that’s OK. Indeed, it’s an opportunity.

Our intention should be to return to the world as a different country.

Here’s that gift link again if you want to read the whole thing. Thank you for subscribing, back to regular programming next week!

Subscribe now

Actionable:

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, consider subscribing to Opposite of Nihilism. Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

By Betty-Jo Tilley

I wake up to a stream of texts. “My house is gone. What about yours?” They keep coming. On group chats, many simply respond, “Mine too,” with a broken heart emoji. Each one feels like a death and dims my hope.

I live, or lived, until the Santa Ana winds-driven wildfires of January 7th, in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles. “It takes a village,” we locals liked to say. Ours is a town where neighbors gift soup or flowers to one another, and parents leave their kids in the care of friends at the park while they run errands. I’ve worked in the heart of this village for over three decades, inspired by our bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean, protected by the Santa Monica Mountains that cradle us, and held in awe by the flocks of green parrots that nest in our trees. Now, there are more homes burnt to the ground than standing.

When my husband and I were house hunting over 30 years ago, there were few affordable options in the neighborhood we wanted to live. When we drove up to a garland of pink roses atop a vibrant, white-painted wood picket fence, I knew we were home.

We had a 3-year-old and I was six months pregnant when we bought the little house with the picket fence. Its two bedrooms and one bath worked for us because of the space provided by the small front yard and the safety within the confines of the fence. For years we invited the entire class to every birthday party. We played old-fashioned relay race games while parents chatted on blankets, freed from watching their kids every second because our picket fence kept them from the street. We hoisted the biggest pinata we could find from the eaves, and lined kids up along the fence a safe distance from the batter.

A neighbor manages to get into the still-smoldering fire zone and sends me a photo. My heart jumps a beat. Our picket fence is perfectly intact. She seems prettier and perkier than ever, but behind her is no longer a home. I think it must be the angle, the house must be there, can’t be gone, this can’t be true, it must be the angle, over and over again. Another friend sends a video. She opens the entry gate flanked by our picket fence, as if she’s just popping by, but nothing else is the same. There are no rose bushes, no tireless perennials, no surprise resurgence of annuals, no front porch chairs, no welcoming yellow front door. The dread sinks in. Mine too. Our house is gone. And bizarrely, our sweet little picket fence is still there.

Mine is not the only burn site with inexplicable remains in the rubble of ash, fallen steel, and massive sheets of broken, charred drywall. Burnt out trees, their limbs blackened and ravaged, seem to scream as they reach for the sky. I wonder if they shouted for help, or in anger, or both. A neighbor’s cardboard box, hand-painted, “free lemons”, still hangs precariously on a fire-mangled wrought iron fence. Is it a sign of generosity, or loss? Amidst the ashen detritus of our yard, my Easter Lilies are coming up, their own insistence on resurrection. One property has an undamaged cement Buddha, another a St. Francis statue. Did they watch it all, accepting they could do nothing?

I am a real estate agent. I’ve sold and leased homes and condominiums in every price range in Pacific Palisades and the greater Los Angeles area for 37 years. My dearest friends are the clients I’ve had, the people I’ve raised my children with, the ones I’ve helped during difficult times. I’ve been there through celebrations and successes, sadness and loss. Now we are all hurting in a way we’ve never experienced. Our community of homes is nearly all gone, and our village is spread across southern California in hotels, rental homes and apartments that are little to nothing like the homes we’ve lost.

A sturdy copper angel weathervane topped our roof. She didn’t make it. Like the mutilated trees, standing even in destruction, I want to raise my arms to the heavens and screech and wail in rage and despair. I tell myself it is okay to feel pillaged and gutted by a firestorm our mayor and our bureaucrats failed to mitigate -- and all the prophets we look to, the shepherds we rely on, the saints we believe in, all the angels real and imagined, could not stop.

Most of us evacuated quickly, with not much more than the clothes we wore, and we are all navigating the complex matrix of insurance, FEMA and the SBA, solutions to rebuild, and more. We fear for our beaches, our drinking water, and our garden soil. We fret about plastic and poisonous particulates that cannot be eradicated. Many want retribution for the mismanagement, even though justice cannot save what we had. Most just want to go back, which of course, is impossible.

Visitors could always find our home. “It’s the one with the picket fence,” we’d tell them. When our daughter was 9 and our son 12, we were able to add a second story. During our remodel, we disassembled the fence and stacked it in the corner of the front yard, where occasional passersby asked if we wanted to sell it. We declined the offers. “We love our little fence,” we’d say. “Don’t blame you,” they’d respond.

Now it is the only thing remaining of the home our children grew up in. Our beloved neighborhood is a burn zone, surrounded by National Guard, law enforcement blocking entry. There will be a toxic cleanup by the EPA, followed by an Army Corp of Engineers’ debris removal. We don’t yet know if our little picket fence will be allowed to stay. If not, and we can retrieve her, we’ll take her apart and stack her up again. We’ll relocate her until we rebuild, and she, like us, can go home.

Betty-Jo Tilley is a Los Angeles based writer and 2023 graduate of the UCR Low Residency MFA Program in fiction and nonfiction. Her critical work and interviews have appeared in Kelp Literary Journal and The Coachella Review, and her flash fiction in Scavengers Literary Journal.

Coming soon

Next week:

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

Later this month:

• A writer with wanderlust renews her capacity for wonder in the heartfelt awe of fresh-eyed strangers.

  Subscribe now

Actionable:

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, consider subscribing to Opposite of Nihilism. Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

by Adam Zemel

Next Saturday evening Jews all over the world will sit down for Seder, the ritual meal that begins the weeklong holiday of Passover, celebrating the Exodus from Egypt. Passover is my favorite holiday, rich with rituals and customs and prayers that work together to position the Exodus from Egypt at the heart of Jewish identity while simultaneously emphasizing it as a metaphor for the human condition. The Haggadah (book that accompanies Seder), translated and paraphrased, obliges all Jews to see themselves as having been present for the Exodus from Egypt, and to retell its story every year at this season.

For me, thinking about my relationship with Judaism and the Jewish people, this obligation has two central meanings. The first is the more apparent–the Exodus obligation pulls me into a narrative. As I wrote recently in a blog post at my day job:

I love being Jewish because it teaches me that I am part of a narrative. A cycle of stories. A single story, stretching back through the generations for thousands of years, unfolding still. I am me, distinct, individual, and I am also playing a role in the grand Jewish narrative. There is no greater feeling of belonging than that of belonging to a story with the power to tell you who you are and why you matter. This is the great inheritance of the Jewish people passed down the generations. We stood at Mount Sinai.

The second meaning is tougher, something I wrestle with more than embrace. By pulling me into a narrative, the Exodus obligation expands my context–sometimes past the parameters of my own comfort. All the Jews were there, even those with whom I don’t get along. Who I oppose. Who do things in the name of Judaism that I oppose.

These Jews, too, feel themselves living that obligation. All of us is all of us. And even in my strong disagreement, I need to respect that. I might not admire or approve of how they interpret their obligation, but I need to respect it. First, because that obligation is the source of my own convictions, so diminishing the value of their conviction diminishes my own. Second, because it is pragmatic to recognize the strength of that conviction. It is useful to remember that the people I oppose feel just as passionate and motivated by our shared narrative as I do.

Why is this important?

Subscribe now

I care about the narrative. It gives me purpose and identity and a sense of belonging to something bigger than myself. I cannot explain how we ended up with such contrasting understandings of our shared narrative, but I’m not willing to reject it for the sake of distancing myself from people I oppose, thereby leaving it entirely to those very people. What’s more, I don’t even know that it would be possible even if I wanted to.

Knowing I will never reject it, a temptation arises to conduct my Jewish self in a way that primarily disavows and negates the elements I oppose. This is a trap. There are no moral commitments, or political beliefs, or consumer choices I can adopt that would sever my connection with people I oppose who share my narrative. In my limited experience, attempting to build an understanding of Judaism for the primary purpose of indemnifying myself of its messier, more regressive elements leads to a brittle, inhospitable way of relating to what it means to be Jewish. And if I am making decisions based on a desire not to feel complicit, then my measure of the world narrows in on the axis between purity and complicity, at the expense of all else. This is its own doorway to nihilism

Here I will make explicit what has hopefully been operating to nuanced effect in the subtext: for me, this whole phenomenon is comparable to some of the wrestling that comes with being American–although I would venture that our shared narrative is at a 150 year low in terms of relevance or potency, which is a separate but related problem.

There are things in life we cannot reject. We did not opt in to them, and it is not really possible to opt out. Instead we wrestle with them, we accommodate ourselves to them until the discomfort grows unbearable, and we wrestle with them anew. Along the way together, we make fitful, scrappy progress toward that better world of dignity we promise to ourselves.

Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert, and he works in the marketing department of Hebrew College in Newton, MA. His work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.

Coming soon

Next week:

• Notes on the meaning of home from a writer who lost her house, but not her picket fence, in the Pacific Palisades

Later this month:

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

• A writer with wanderlust renews her capacity for wonder in the heartfelt awe of fresh-eyed strangers.

Subscribe now

Actionable:

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, consider subscribing to Opposite of Nihilism. Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same. Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

Editor’s note:

O/o/N is looking for submissions! Searching for ideas about what to write? Check out our pre-approved pitch list. Example: A cooking essay disguised as a family essay or a family essay disguised as a cooking essay. Also, have you ever wondered how it feels in 2025 to make jokes about America to an audience of non-Americans? Find out below. -AZ

Follow us on IG

Joke’s on US

By Elizabeth Leff

I have three older brothers. “You must have grown up tough,” people say, assuming I rolled with the punches, name-calling, and other youngest sibling requisites. When we weren’t at home, however, my brothers were my fiercest advocates. Seeing them in the "real world" (the hallways at school) was always a relief. Terrorizing me was their job and their job only. I knew that if anyone else tried to push me around, they wouldn't allow it.

Being an American living in the United Kingdom can feel like being that older sibling.

I've done a lot of cool things since moving a year and a half ago. I’ve traveled to multiple countries, offended people with my bad English accent, and gone to the doctor without fear of bankruptcy. It’s been amazing.

When talking to Brits about my move to London, they inevitably joke, “Did you move here to flee the political landscape of the U.S.?” I respond, “If that was the reason, do you really think I’d choose the UK?” Their keenness to laugh at (not with) Americans for what’s happening back home rubs me the wrong way. When I use humor to cut through the tragedy of our current events, it feels okay, but when they do it, it feels dangerous. Plus, the reason I moved to England is the food.

Don’t worry, it’s not the food.

I’ve moved many times in adulthood. My therapist tells me it’s because I’m highly motivated and have an innate wanderlust. I tell her it’s because I’m incapable of feeling content and as soon as I feel comfortable, I run. We agree to disagree. She’s great, and I pay her a lot of money.

In my many moves, I’ve discovered the best way to make friends and to be in community is to take a comedy class and start performing. As the youngest of four, I’m scientifically the funniest sibling. I’ve always used humor as a tool to express myself and cope. It has also helped me understand my “place” as an American living outside the U.S. I joked before about medical bankruptcy, just one of many issues I make sense of by pointing out its absurdity.

Here’s one from my standup. After I sheepishly acknowledge my nationality, I say:

I moved to London relatively recently, and there are still times when I experience a real language barrier. Like how we have different words and phrases for things. For example, you say trousers, we say pants. You say chips, we say fries. You call it an arms deal, we call it back to school shopping.

This joke is sad and heavy and for some people probably crosses the line, and that’s fair. There are days when I think it crosses a line. But this is the stuff I write jokes about because I believe two things: 1) I, an American and someone who knows personally how destructive guns are, am uniquely situated to make that joke here in the UK and 2) I’m incapable of processing the shittiness of the world without comedy.

Sure, it would be cool if instead of telling jokes on stage about how gender affirming care is only accessible to cis men who are balding or can’t maintain an erection, I could tell jokes about, I don’t know, anything else. But I’ve sat down hundreds of times at my computer to write material, and the dark humor keeps coming out. And the darker the joke, the bigger the laughs. Comedy isn’t an accessory as the film and television industry would imply, with comedies lumped into a category with musicals at some award shows and drama often held in higher esteem. Comedy is a necessity. Not only does it allow for a collective cathartic experience, it’s also how we take power away from people who aim to control and subdue us. As an American living in the UK, I can use comedy as a tool to poke holes in the logic of fascists, critique the structures that underpin American society, and give people permission to laugh through (not at) the fuckery.

Subscribe now

Like many after the 2024 election, I visited the stages of grief and almost took up residence in denial. I pictured a whole life there. When inauguration day came around, I became violently ill, which felt like a reasonable response. Convinced it was psychosomatic, I didn’t go to the doctor for a week. I was sure the trauma from round one was back to haunt me in the most trite way – stomach issues. I told my therapist and, after a classic quarrel, she told me to go to a medical doctor. I listened because it’s her job to look out for me or whatever. I tested negative for all the big, infamous illnesses and just got better on my own after two weeks of uncontrollable [redacted to comply with Opposite of Nihilism’s journalistic standards].

Recently I’ve felt unable to do comedy. Everything just feels so raw. (See above.) I don’t want to make jokes about gun violence or the systematic stripping away of rights. My therapist tells me there’s no rush to get back into it, and of course I disagree. The only thing worse than me telling these jokes is someone else telling them. I don’t want to gatekeep joking about the U.S.; a diversity of opinions means more robust discourse, and I understand that the actions of this government affect everyone. What I am saying is, like an older sibling, if people are going to talk shit about the U.S., I want to be first in line.

Maybe one day I’ll get to stand on stage and tell stories about how we ended poverty or do impressions of our first several woman presidents. But what happens between now and then will be dark, painful, and scary. Comedy is the weapon we’ll wield to cut through it all to avoid the scariest thing to anyone who seeks validation in the laughter of strangers: oblivion.

Elizabeth Leff is an American comedy writer, performer, and filmmaker based in London, UK and a public policy professional formerly based in Washington, DC. She has an MA in Filmmaking and is completing an MSc in Global Health, Social Justice and Public Policy. linktr.ee/leffingoutloud

Coming soon

Next week:

• Editor’s notes on Passover

Later next month:

• Notes on the meaning of home from a writer who lost her house, but not her picket fence, in the Pacific Palisades

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

Subscribe now

To-do list

1. Forward this newsletter! Help grow our audience and build a community for which contributors are excited to write.

2. If you’re not already, please subscribe to Opposite of Nihilism! Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same! Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

Thank you for reading Opposite of Nihilism, we appreciate your time and attention. O/o/N is in its first month of publishing, and we invite you to subscribe. And if you’d like to contribute to the conversation, submit to be published!

In these early months of the second Trump administration, we are looking to publish personal accounts, rooted in a specific context and compelling point of view, of how this administration’s authoritarian push is reshaping life at work, at home, and in the public square. And in the case of the essay below, getting your kids ready for bed. Thanks for reading. -AZ

By John Houston

Most nights I stand under a shower of lukewarm water. Anything hotter and both my 3½ year old and my 22-month-old complain. They otherwise spend bathtime yammering on in elevated gibberish, haphazardly tossing toys, and playing with the soap dispenser like its whack-a-mole, creating a slip-n-slide while I attempt to clean us. They march around me like a maypole, bumping me, jostling me, and finally, intentionally shoving me when I restrict their parade route by getting too close to one wall or another. It starts off really cute and then I would like to get the soap out of my eyes, please. Sometimes patience and I are not partners, so tonight I stand outside the shower, watching them play.

While they are bashing, thrashing, and trashing, my mind wanders. There’s a lot to wander to; I can’t finish thinking a thought before some other worse news is on the news.

My kids live in a different world than the one I grew up in. I don’t know if it’s worse, but it’s certainly new. And while I’m over here worrying about how to raise them in this new world, my kids are out there loving it. They don’t know anything about it, but they love it. They smile big and eat fistfuls of cheese and strawberries and cuddle with our dog and ask a lot of questions about where the moon happens to be at any given moment. Instead of spiraling into existential dread like dad, they enjoy every bit of living. I’m not sure if their joviality is born of privilege or because they are barely sentient, but when I hear them giggle at bubbles, I’m not sure it matters. I want to keep them happy for as long as possible because I look out and I see a short horizon.

My son has started noticing when I’m lost in thought and asks me if I’m doing alright. I usually make something up because I don’t want to say I’m ruminating on why the world feels broken and why people suffer. He isn’t capable at his age of understanding and I pray by the time he can, he learns it as history and not the news. How do you tell a 3 ½ year-old you’re worried he won’t be able to remain awestruck for much longer? At what age do you explain there are little boys like him and little girls like his sister whose sense of awe was stripped away for no good reason because of some mean, greedy grown-ups?

O/o/N on IG

In this new world fast approaching, I cannot see what lies just over the short horizon. But I have these two wonderful little kids and my whole heart just wants to bundle them up, to shield them from whatever is coming. My mind knows differently, that doing so would do them no favors. They need to be prepared, not protected. I need to find the balance of my heart and head, to shield them from the slings and arrows of the world until I have taught them how to wield a sword, to thrust, parry, and riposte. Self-doubt creeps in about my own strength and skill but I know, ultimately, they’ll have to fight the battles on their own, no dad to shield them. And what will that moment be like, for both of us, when we have to acknowledge that I’ve taken them as far as I can, it’s their turn now? That they are on their own, me in their corner instead of their cover.

Yet, easier said than done. I am overwhelmed by the task at hand. How do I teach them to be good people when everything feels hopeless? When the government is full of spineless blowhards. When faith is co-opted for power. When no good deed goes unpunished. When it seems like the bullies have the pulpit and the underdog gets shot. When there isn’t a value or ruling that can’t be bought. How do I teach them to stand up for what is right, even when no one is watching? To be a bulwark against hate and tyranny? To fight for the little guy? To find a moral center amidst the fray?

I believe we have two jobs: repair the world bit by bit and raise our kids to be good people. One is daunting and the other feels like a mystery.

My son knocks my daughter over. She cries. This happens often in our house. Who has time for lessons about character when you have toddlers? He is a wrecking ball with no sense of space or boundaries and she loves being near him, doing whatever he does, but her balance is iffy at best. I try to soothe her but he is still bouncing off the walls.

“Hey. Knock it off.” My tone startles him. “She is your little sister. She’s smaller than you. Look. You hurt her.” I snap at him.

It’s all coming at me so fast; the whole broken world, fatherhood, paying bills, responding to text messages, making dinner, finding clothes that aren't stained or too small, Where is your other mitten? I remind myself to breathe.

Both kids stand there, water dripping off of them, waiting for what I will say next. Tears well in my daughter’s eyes. My son, embarrassed and sad; he hates when I’m upset with him. They are so innocent, barely beyond babies, not warriors, and yet, I realize, you become a master swordsman one moment at a time. I take the edge out of my voice, but not the sincerity.

“In our house, we protect the people who are littler than us.”

John Houston is a writer on a jour­ney of self dis­cov­ery that has tak­en him across all fifty states, through law school, the US navy, the sound stages of Los Ange­les, a farm in Ver­mont, and back home to Wash­ing­ton, DC where he gets to learn about life from and along­side his two kids.

Subscribe now

Coming soon

Next week:

• Thoughts from an American living abroad on observing Trump 2.0 from a distance, by comedian Elizabeth Leff

Next month:

• Passover vibes from the editor

• Notes on the meaning of home from a writer who lost her house, but not her picket fence, in the Pacific Palisades

• One millennial grapples with truth and belief in the post-enlightenment age

To-do list

1. Forward this newsletter! Let’s grow our audience for and build a community contributors are excited to write for.

2. If you’re not already, please subscribe to Opposite of Nihilism! Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same! Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

Last week:

By Lisa Loop

You might be exhausted and hopeless right now. Makes sense. Watching the world burn is super depressing. But if you have oppositional defiance, as I do, the idea of letting them rob us of our personal sovereignty is deeply infuriating. I say, nah. We’re not going out like that.

As a lifelong Coastal Elite™, I’ve been around a couple of billionaires. Cliché as it sounds, life is not easy for them. It is almost impossible for a super-rich man to feel settled. Hypercompetitive and wrecked by hedonistic treadmilling, everyone around him is hyping the good snake oil, the sweetest cuts. Great wealth, which as we all can see can equate to unfathomable power, is a soul destroyer. Perspective dissolves for all but the most grounded. I maintain that the fancy survivalist compounds are less to escape the apocalypse, more about hiding from the guillotine.

Subscribe now

We are the lucky ones. No one is trying to race us to Mars. What we have cannot be purchased with any amount of cryptocurrency, the priceless commodities of unconditional love, well-earned respect, and sincere interdependence. So, we have an assignment to understand. I offer four thoughts:

1. Fight an honest fight

I keep thinking about the Terrence Malick film, The Thin Red Line, (based on the James Jones 1962 novel) about soldiers in the Pacific during World War II. The character of Private Bell, (Ben Chaplin,) gets through the sticky jungle horrors by dreaming of his wife. Unlike some of his buddies, he behaves honorably and survives. But she is unable to withstand the strain and leaves him for another man. In the end, you know he still came out okay, because he is a good man, and she didn’t deserve him. His reward is dodging the bullet.

We can behave in a way that bears out for us, when the battle is over. They deal in corruption and cruelty. We deal in an honest fight. In the end, they do not stand a chance.

2. Create, organize, disrupt.

This is the moment to let fear melt into the larger imperative, to be devious, resourceful, and determined. They have wealth, power and technical prowess, but we have numbers and conviction. Look at what happened with TikTok. (I am referring to the chilling effect of millions of users choosing to voluntarily donate their information to another Chinese company, Red Note, rather than let Zuck force them onto his platforms. The virtual meeting of human beings put the lie to familiar, hostile caricatures. Plus, the Chinese Spy meme was hilarious, an irreverent joke shared while they tried to regain control of the classroom. You know what happened, complete capitulation. They hate being laughed at.)

We have capabilities we are only beginning to discover. They cannot stop us from sharing our notes and working together.

3. Tolerate imperfections

This is a time of estrangement from those who flirt with taking our rights. Fair enough. I have limited sympathy for a bunch of craven losers telling themselves they’re righteous.

But having said that, we need to rethink cancel culture. It permeates the side that cares about doing harm, not the side that desperately wants to. It has become performative. It irritates the groups it purports to defend. There are exceptions, obviously. But consider this.

I know three regular young people who have had their lives ruined by accusations they had no means to refute. Did they say or do something unacceptable? No one will ever know for sure. But the current moral panic has reared up to demonize them.

Watching someone you love be shunned, not only locally but on the internet, is horrible. Suicide was on the table. These were regular, possibly misbehaving but not criminal kids, now adults with a deep wound to carry around, a lesson in stoning.

What I mean to say is, we would be better off with Al Franken.

4. Know what you are opposing.

During the time of ACAB, I was forced to un-friend my longtime mentor and teacher. He was power-posting obviously Russian-made propaganda portraying the police as benign helpers. Cute vignettes of uniformed officers tying the shoes of little brown children, stopping traffic for ducklings, etc. Though he is Native American and a lifelong radical, his personal experience with cops, as a rancher in rural Oregon, was positive. He felt called to defend them. I could not stand to watch him carry Putin’s water. It felt like elder abuse. It broke my heart. How many people have been unknowingly influenced by similar means?

Of course, some are true believers, who imagine themselves walking a path of destiny. But their project has nothing to do with their stated narratives. It is rooted in a desire to prove the masculine energy they crow about. (See: Curtis Yarvin, J.D. Vance, Peter Thiel, et al.) It has nothing to do with us. It is the latest fetish object for men too convinced of their own brilliance to understand that they will never hold back our tide. Their joy comes from attention-seeking, and thus they can be pushed back on in devious ways. Gray-rocking (i.e. acting bland, refusing to feed their dopamine addiction by engaging in drama) is more effective than slamming the door in their face. It takes strength to be non-reactive when they try to enrage you. But isn’t it satisfying?

Refusing to get into a slappy fight makes it easier for cultists to rejoin reality when they realize that they are not the beneficiaries of this scam. A great America! But not for thee, silly.

The opposite of depression is vitality. Let’s move into the part of this story where our superpower is revealed, meaning our humanity, our connectedness, and our joy. This is a time to shine a light, if not on the world we want, then on a disco ball that refracts and distorts the one they are trying to force onto us. A sparkling moon made of our collective will.

In the words of David Bowie, who performatively sold the “rights to his soul”, possibly the first and best crypto currency—let’s sway. For fear your grace should fall. For fear tonight is all. You could look into my eyes. Under the moonlight, this serious moonlight.

Let’s dance.

Lisa Loop (MFA UCR/PD) has published in NBC.com/THINK, The Coachella Review, Kelp, Ballast, 34th Parallel, HerStry, 805 Literary, Gastropoda, and other places. A former Hollywood creative exec originally from Seattle, she lives in Los Angeles with her husband and their elderly Aussie Shephard mix. Links to work at Lisaloop.com

Subscribe now

Coming soon

Next week:

• A meditation on the surreality of getting young kids ready for bed while worrying about the fate of American democracy. From writer John Houston.

Later this month:

• Thoughts from an American living abroad on observing Trump 2.0 from a distance

To-do list

1. Forward this newsletter! Let’s grow our audience for and build a community contributors are excited to write for.

2. If you’re not already, please subscribe to Opposite of Nihilism! Publishing weekly on Sundays.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same! Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

by Adam Zemel

This newsletter was born on Inauguration Day on a drive to Boston from Washington D.C., where I had just celebrated my nephew’s second birthday. I was glad to get out before the noontime transfer of power. I listened to movie podcasts and avoided the news. On the New Jersey Turnpike I hopped on the phone with a friend. We discussed our shared sense of beckoning nihilism. Moving backwards. We agreed that hope seems falser now. This time feels worse. Maybe that’s just how it feels when you hit the back half of your 30s, we speculated, which passed for a bright side.

Somewhere near the Connecticut-Massachusetts state line I exhausted the movie podcasts and chose to subject myself to politics. I selected a podcast from the never-Trumpers at the Bulwark. These former Republicans set fire to their careers and spent three presidential cycles articulating the threat posed by Donald Trump and proclaiming a civic obligation to support the Democratic ticket. Even they were struggling with the impulse to let cynicism yield to nihilism: “Make the case to believe in something,” host Tim Miller pleaded. Bulwark co-Founder Bill Kristol replied, “Trump wants you to believe that none of it matters…Authoritarians want to make everyone a nihilist. Because then it’s all up for grabs.”

Subscribe now

Sliding into meaninglessness can feel so tempting these days. Believing things might turn a corner feels like opting-in to a foolish heartache over humanity’s collective capacity for self-sabotage.

I spent the rest of that drive imagining a newsletter that might be able to push back on the forces of nihilism. Because it’s not just Trumpism. It’s our economic security, eroded by technological transformation, corporate consolidation, and unfettered greed; our sense of shared identity as Americans, worn down over decades of increasingly fractured and profit-motivated information distribution; our attention, commodified and degraded by a hoodie and quarter-zip cartel of venture capitalists and digital technology companies; our laws and rights, stacked in favor of the powerful at every opportunity by our highest courts.

The forces behind these and associated trends work to convince us the chaos and friction of our era cannot be anything other than a punishment for charting an alternative path. They present themselves as inevitable so that we lose the will to imagine differently. They would prefer we abandon individuality, consider ourselves nothing more than units in a market, bits in an algorithm, subjects in a neo-feudal politics. They want us to give up living to exist in an unending again-ness of their design.

We ought to refuse to make that easy. In this, of all things, they can only succeed if we decide to let them. If we allow nihilism to rise like a flood. Instead, we must turn this tide. We must have the courage to stand for this broader, messier, more beautiful truth. There is a complicated, painful, brilliant vastness beyond life’s transactional dimensions. Whatever it is in this world that chafes at your open wounds, that tore them open in the first place, that makes you wish with childish insistence things should be somehow different than what they are–all of this must become our strength. Our capacity to feel is our capacity to grow.

This is what they most want to kill in us: our love for the world as it could be. On this single front in the fight, we won’t give even an inch. There’s a better world for all of us out there and we will never stop building it. I am launching this newsletter to honor that conviction. To know I’m doing something to turn the tide, if only inside my own heart. Please, join me.

Opposite of Nihilism will feature a different contributor each week covering the topic in the name. So what will you be reading if you subscribe? Think “Modern Love”, but the title/theme/subject is how to celebrate humanity and believe in a world of possibility at a time when nihilism beckons and the future feels increasingly foreclosed.

Here’s what to expect: short personal essays, brief meditations, art criticism, and more. Although this newsletter is in one sense politically motivated, our mission is not to provide political punditry or news analysis. (Our submission guidelines go into greater detail about how political writing fits into O/o/N’s scope of interest.)

Instead, Opposite of Nihilism will bolster, champion, and examine the parts of life that precede politics, that fundamentally inform how we think about ourselves and the world and our positioning in it. The way to resist nihilism is to nourish the human resources necessary for sustaining a long-term movement to build the world as it could be:

Belief. We shouldn’t fake optimism, and we cannot conjure hope when it is in rare supply. But we can hold on to what we believe.

Passion. Passion is that force of feeling which makes us feel most alive. Passion channels our vitality and creativity out into the world, where it is needed.

Laughter. Laughing at the absurd is a way of telling the truth. Laughing at the powerful is a way of claiming power. We deserve to laugh.

Love. Love abides.

Adam Zemel is the founder and editor of Opposite of Nihilism. He has an MFA in fiction from UCRiverside Palm Desert, and his work has appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Daily Beast, and elsewhere.

Subscribe now

Coming soon

Next week:

Notes from the trenches of the Reagan era art-punk scene. What we might learn from a post-boomer/pre-x micro-generation’s legacy of resistance? From writer Lisa Loop.

Later this month:

• A meditation on the surreality of getting young kids ready for bed while worrying about the fate of American democracy

• Thoughts on observing Trump 2.0 at a distance from an American living abroad

To-do list

1. Forward this newsletter! I’d like to grow our audience for and build a community people are excited to write for.

2. If you’re not already, please subscribe to Opposite of Nihilism! Each week you will receive a new post in your inbox meant to bolster your spirit and provoke interesting thinking.

3. Submit to be published, or encourage a writer you know to do the same! Read our submission guidelines here.

4. Follow O/o/N on instagram

Editor’s note

Thank you for reading Opposite of Nihilism’s inaugural post! I appreciate the support. I’m setting two goals here at the beginning: get to 1000 subscribers, and make it to the end of the calendar year without skipping a week. Let’s see where this goes -az

Opposite of Nihilism officially launches on March 9th!

To mark the occasion, I (newsletter editor and community radio host Adam Zemel) made us a playlist, 20 tracks to fit the O/o/N launch week vibe. I came of age during the mix CD-to-iPod transition, and I derive a lot of joy from curating a good sub-80 minute playlist. This one is pretty solid if you are driving, cooking, or doing creative work (and don’t mind music with lyrics).

I invite you to subscribe to the newsletter if you’ve not yet done so. And to join in on the fun, consider submitting to be published in the newsletter.

Listen

on Spotify:

Track list

1. My Oh My - Punch Brothers

2. O-o-h Child - The Five Stairsteps

3. Pray Enough - The Wood Brothers

4. Battle Hymn of the Republic - Jon Batiste

5. I’ve Got A Feeling - The Beatles

6. Can’t Let Go - Lucinda Williams

7. Wild Mountain Nation - Blitzen Trapper

8. Can’t Stand It - Wilco

9. Icarus Smicarus - Punch Brothers

10. Hurricane Season - Trombone Shorty

11. The Shape I’m In - The Band

12. Always Alright - Alabama Shakes

13. Hospital - Madison Cunningham

14. Holding Pattern - Nickel Creek

15. How Far We’ve Come - Dawes

16. Closer to the Bone - Kris Kristofferson

17. Come On Up To The House - Sara Jarosz (orig. by Tom Waits)

18. No Hard Feelings - The Avett Brothers

19. My Rights Versus Yours - The New Pornographers

20. Feels Like Rain - John Hiatt

    Subscribe now

Hello readers! This newsletter will officially launch with an inaugural post in the first half of March. Until then this site is in public beta mode while I build familiarity with the site and tinker with the layout. While I do that, I’m also sharing this reflection about Garth Hudson, The Band’s organ player and multi-instrumantlist, who passed away last month. This was originally written to introduce my community radio show (“Covered Bridges”, Tuesdays at 7 p.m. , 96.5 WFVR-LP South Royalton) on February 4, 2025, an hour of programming in tribute to Hudson and The Band.

Subscribe now

A Night for Garth

Here’s how it works, I think, for a lot of people from my generation who love The Band. First you find Dylan, and you learn the mythology that was just covered in the recent movie: he went electric and shocked the world, alienated a portion of his fans and finally kicked off the 60s as they exist in the American imagination. And The Band is a crucial part of this mythology, because although they didn’t cut the records, or take the stage with him at Newport Folk, they were his backing band for the first tour, joining Dylan for the second set, the electric half of the show. Enduring the jeers in Britain, the vague condescension of the press, the moody turns of their temporary frontman. And then they all moved to Woodstock, Dylan and the Band, and the work began in earnest. The Band’s first album is named after their house in town, “Music from Big Pink”, so you get your hands on that and it’s good. It’s exactly what it needs to be.

And that Dylan mythology looms large in your head because the man was a force. He imposed himself on the world and the world purred and pushed back in strange, alternating turns. But you’re also curious about The Band, who weren’t called The Band until they were associated with Dylan, but had been playing together already for years.

You hear there’s a Scorsese documentary about their final concert. You liked that Big Pink album, maybe you should check it out. Especially because—get this—everyone shows up in this documentary. Dylan, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Dr. John, Muddy Waters, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton, the list of musicians who sat in for this concert goes on and on. And you weren’t there for any of this, so what a joy that you can watch them all play in the space of a 2 hour run time. Filmed by Scorsese, no less.

And then you want to watch it again, and you realize as you watch it that second time that you’re keyed in on The Band, not the guests. And you begin to fall in love.

The Band, in so many ways, is the opposite of Dylan, who you also love. Dylan, singular, the lone burning genius; The Band, collaborative, glowing in their alchemy. The soul of the sound living not inside the five musicians but the spaces between them. The space between the notes. How else to make sense of this band where the rhythm section split the vocals, the players swapped instruments with delightful abandon, the lyricist rarely sang? That could back any singer or instrumentalist on either side of the Mississippi?

The Band achieved what they did by playing as a collective, by laying down ego and playing for the sake of the sound, for each other. No one represents this ethic better than Garth Hudson, the band’s organ player and multi-instrumentalist—organ, pianos, accordion, saxophone...He sat hidden behind his fortress of keyboards, laying down rhythms and ripping off solos, making everyone sound better in the process. He was soft spoken, appearing only briefly in the interview segments that break up the concert footage in the Last Waltz. But he didn’t need to speak, he knew how to express himself.

It’s fitting, in a way, that he would be the last member of the Band to leave us; although he was older than his band mates, he was the last to join. And it was clear, even as a follower born 30 years too late, that he didn’t live as hard as the rest of them. So tonight is his night, and these songs are for him. We will miss you Garth Hudson, whose memory is a blessing.

Subscribe now

Listen to the playlist on Spotify: