In the 2000s, I spent three years conducting research with unemployed youth in north India. I came to understand the depth of young people’s frustration with government and “development”. The inability of local educational systems to prepare people for work was another key finding. 

But there was another topic that stood out – I became interested in the issue of “nothing”.

Unemployed young people often told me that they were “doing nothing”.

“What are you doing?” I’d ask.

“Nothing,” they’d reply.

“Nothing?”

“Absolutely nothing,” they’d deadpan back.

Indeed, “nothing” and “nothingness” were among the most important topics of everyday conversation.

Some young people said they were not only doing nothing, they had become nothing. “We are zeroes,” one young man said. “Empty,” said another.

Being “nothing” meant also being lost in time and space. Many young people described their lives as “timepass” – just passing time. One group had started a club called “Generation Nowhere”.

Government and universities tried to police this “nothing”. A sign in one university read: “If you have nothing to do, please do not do it here.” But nothing and timepass was everywhere in the mid-2000s in Uttar Pradesh.

It was not just Uttar Pradesh. The anthropologist Martin Frederiksen has studied young people “doing nothing” in the former Soviet state of Georgia. He argues that the Georgian youth became preoccupied with nothing and nihilism in the 2000s.

But this nothing was not actually nothing. Frederiksen shows that young people’s pursuit of nothing was a way of building friendships and instilling meaning in the world.

Similarly, in Uttar Pradesh unemployed youth used the idea of themselves as people “doing nothing” to build social links and activity. The claim to be “doing nothing” became a way of forming bonds between Hindus and Muslims, low castes and high castes, men and women.

Far from doing nothing, young people used their time to campaign for improvements in local education systems. They also critiqued local corruption. “Nothing” was not nothing – it had value. And nothing led to agency and action.

Since completing my work I’ve been drawn to other humanities and social science writing on “nothing”. Scholars have recently discussed the significance of nothing in work on mindfulness, loss, travel and migration, for example.

Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions foreground nothing as a crucial element of life. In these literatures, as in my own work, I find the basic theme replayed – nothing is not nothing; it often has value and it can lead to significant meaning and action.

These arguments have their equivalents in the STEM disciplines. Physicists now insist that vacuums are full of stuff. Many mathematicians will tell you that zero is crucial for their work. Musicologists discuss the significance of silence. And for many medical practitioners “nothing” – for example the decision not to intervene – is a key form of treatment.

The somethingness of “nothing” is also a topic that is important in society. Nothing is crucial to art. It’s critical to how many people are currently thinking about wellbeing. And it’s part of how people experience and cope with life’s struggles.

Cultural organisations in Australia have built on these points. In 2017, I participated in an Evening of Nothing in Melbourne organised by the Naomi Milgrom Foundation. In 2025, I was part of a Festival of Nothing organised by the Australian Chamber Orchestra at the Adelaide Festival. 

Next week at Monash we pick up on these points at a symposium covering how astrophysicists think about nothing in the night sky, how economists reflect on nothing in business, how Indigenous populations have challenged notions of Australia as “terra nullius”, how medical professionals have been reflecting on nothing in their work, and how architects engage with empty space – among many other topics.

Shakepeare’s King Lear said that “nothing will come of nothing”. Many academics disagree.

Explore the intellectual, cultural and philosophical significance of nothing at Nothing Matters: A Conference, hosted by Professor James Whisstock and Professor Craig Jeffrey, on 3 March, 10am-2pm at The Chancellery, Monash Clayton campus. You can register for the event here.