"I'd appreciate it if you could keep your complexes and nihilistic bull**** to yourself' Can somebody clarify? complexes? Doesn't 'complex' mean something that's difficult? And Nihilistic? I don't understand even the slightest..
Well, nihilistic refers to someone who believes that human life has no objective - in essence, we live, we die, that's it. Complexes could just mean the difficulties and difficult to understand things about whomever this sentence is referring to... I don't know whether this was what you are looking for, but that's the barebones...
Hmm.. Thanks I suppose. That helped slightly but I'm still having trouble understanding what complexes are..
'complex' can be a noun or an adjective. e.g. He has a lot of complexes = noun. This is in frequent idiomatic use in the UK, so I would not class this use of 'complex' to describe psychological symptoms as 'archaic' in the slightest. The machine is complex (i.e. 'difficult to understand/operate') = adjective.
You lost me at archaic :/. So.. Complexes are difficulties?... But what did the person try to say by using 'complexes'? Keep your difficulties to yourself? I don't understand what that means.
A complex is like a psychological condition, like a neurosis. You've probably heard of things like having a God complex, or an Oedipal complex...it's referring to some state of mind, some neurosis, something like that. And nihilism is basically the belief that life is pointless, everything is worthless.
The chap is pretty much saying: 'Don'y try and explain this situation ( or my situation) by resorting to fancy, intellectual talk. Shut up.' People still talk of 'having a complex' about something in Britain. What they mean by this is that a person has a set of feeling and thoughts about a certain subject that are considered abnormal (and that lead to dysfunctional behaviours). Usually it is used in a joking context. Strictly speaking, a complex - with reference to Freudian theory - is something that to a small or large degree affects pretty much all of us. eg All of us are - to some extent - driven by an Oedipus complex. It is not unlikely that your chap was taking exception to this sort of use and understanding of complex rather than the looser, modern use of complex.
A "complex" is technically a combination of things, as opposed to a single things. So, for example, in mathematics a complex number is one that is a combination of real and imaginary parts, rather than just a single (real or imaginary) part. "Complex" shouldn't really be used as a synonym for "complicated", although it often is. Some emotional and psychological difficulties are the result of multiple factors and so are referred to as "complexes" and in popular use the term has come to mean any emotional or psychological difficulty.
As other posters have said, complex doesn't only mean complicated. The most common phrase I have encountered using 'complex' in a psychological sense is "having an inferiority complex".
a translation of the sentence that you may be able to understand better: '...keep your personal problems and defeatist attitude to yourself.'
'complexes' is another word for issues and nihilism is (I just googled) an extreme skeptic, according to which nothing in the world has any exsistence and the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. So, the sentence is saying keep your 'effd up issues away from me. I think we've all been a little nihilistic at one time or another. I know I can be and I didn't even know there was a word for it! Yay, you learn a new word everyday!
I'd [I would] appreciate [like] it [this moment] if you could keep your complexes [problems] and nihilistic [read posts above] bull**** to yourself' In this particular sentence, the word complexes is refering to problems. It could be argued that the word coukld translate better as something to the affect: "unrational thinking." Although, I broke the sentence down in the manner above, this is how I'd write the sentence for a better understanding: "I'd appreciate this moment if you could keep your problems, which pertain to your beliefs that human life has no objective, to yourself. Because I'm not listening." or "I'd appreciate it if you could keep your irrational thinking and negative philosophical views to yourself, because I think all of which you speak is bull****.
