No, nihilism does not lead to anhedonia, depression, and suicidal ideation

The problem - a peculiar correlation

This is a strange article, in Psychology Today, that seeks to claim that there may be a causative link from nihilism to anhedonia.

The specific reference it relies on is a study of people with bipolar disorder and depression, which does not suggest such a causative direction at all, though it does look at links between depression, anhedonia, and nihilism: 

"
Specifically, for those with MDE/bipolar disorder, increases in positive affect/current pleasure were less effectively predictive of subsequent MIL as compared with healthy controls, albeit those with MDE/bipolar disorder were less likely to be upshifted in cognitive appraisals (MIL) in response to emotional experiences (positive affect/current pleasure) in daily life.

This finding highlights the weaker temporal pairing of cognitive and affective symptom constructs in those with MDE/bipolar disorder, which could be elucidated using a biopsychosocial model. Biologically, those with MDE/bipolar disorder tended to exhibit less cognitive-affective synchrony, Reference Batmaz, Kaymak, Soygur, Ozalp and Turkcapar diminishing their ability to integrate previous positive emotional experiences into a cohesive sense of self and life purposes

"
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/bjpsych-open/article/bidirectional-associations-among-positive-affect-anhedonia-and-meaning-in-life-during-major-depressive-episode-ecological-momentary-assessment-study-in-unipolar-and-bipolar-individuals-and-healthy-controls/18ABC677C332419B24B5E1A64F47B37D

It looks like scaremongering, but I'm not sure to what end.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/home-base/202604/are-you-a-nihilist-or-anhedonic

Where the problem comes from

I think I've found the problem.

It turns out that there's a scale, for measuring 'existential nihilism' , the ENS ( https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10862-023-10052-w).

It is based on this highly flawed definition of 'existential nihilism':

1. An understanding that there is no essential meaning - the perfectly normal, reasonable position, known generally as 'nihilism', that recognises that 'meaning' is a purely linguistic construction and does not exist as any sort of free-floating part of the world.

And, this being the problematic part:

2. The belief that: "any attempt to change or rectify this, with the goal of establishing meaning, is futile."

The second part is certainly not part of normal philosophical nihilism. Camus even says 'we must imagine Sisyphus happy'. Rather this is a clinical symptom of anhedonia, usually part of depression. It's part of a diagnosis of 'helplessness'.

Obviously, conflating these entirely different things will lead to a spurious link between 'nihilism' and 'depression', 'suicidality' and so forth. It's built into the false definition!
I'm not sure what the motivation was for this deeply misleading definition, that begs the question. I imagine that it must have been some researcher or researchers who had some objection to nihilism.

It seems unlikely that any scientist would produce such a conflation as a definition.
The propaganda has worked. LLMs push the notion that nihilism is linked to anhedonia and suicidal ideation without the qualification that this is inevitable as part of the definition. I had to go and find the original papers and read them, then come back and press the LLM (grok as it happens), before it would sheepishly admit that it knew this all along.

Grease - "Summer Nights" and modern repression in the US and Iran

Listening to "Summer Nights" from Grease, I was struck not by its innocence but by its anthropological clarity. The song is a perfect fossil of a pre-contraceptive sexual economy.

The humour and tension derive from a biological reality that held throughout human history: the high stakes of female sexuality, where a single encounter could produce a life-altering pregnancy. The boys' braggadocio and the shaming of Sandy functioned as social enforcement mechanisms for that ancient order.

The reliable contraception that emerged shortly after the era the musical depicts shattered that anthropological economy. It decoupled sex from procreation for women, enabling a profound social revolution. The modern discomfort with the song's double standard is not merely moral progress or contemporary exceptionalism triumphing over a benighted past. It reflects the sensibility of generations shaped by technological liberation. The old jokes no longer land because the underlying terror that gave them force has been medically and socially mitigated.

Which makes the deliberate project to revoke that liberation all the more chilling. In theocratic states like Iran, in Catholic-dominated Poland and parts of Latin America, and in the exceptionalist, antediluvian patriarchy of the United States where religious fundamentalists have captured the judiciary, movements led largely by reactionary men wielding religious and traditionalist doctrine are using state power to make contraception and abortion unreliable or inaccessible once more. This is not preservation of tradition - it is conscious re-imposition of biological coercion.

In the main, the reactionary men are so because they were born, or shaped by, the period where 'Grease' is set - they are stuck in a time-warp, unable to comprehend the anthropological tsunami the humanity is reeling from, that is leading to, inter alia, depopulation.

The world is experiencing a demographic transformation of enormous scale, with consequences (like depopulation) that challenge received assumptions about social organisation, but the response to this needs to be a carefully thought through adaptation to reality, not a knee-jerk attempt to put the genie back into the bottle, to regain the,  unpleasant, status quo ante.

Whether framed through theocratic decree, confessional politics, or the quasi-religious nationalism that cloaks corporate oligarchy, the mechanism is identical: using law to re-anchor female lives to compulsory biology. It represents forced regression, condemning a generation raised with the promise of bodily autonomy to the high-stakes world of "Summer Nights" - not by historical accident, but by political design.

The song, in this light, is no longer merely a period piece. It has become a blueprint of the social logic that reactionary movements across the globe are actively working to resurrect. A deeply offensive, orchestrated attack on the dignity and human rights of the young, particularly young women.