Anyone else feeling increasingly like 'what the hell is this' when you think about your life?
Anyone else feeling increasingly like 'what the hell is this' when you think about your life?
I stand up, I look out my window at the big city. I think 'how is any of this real, and why do I have to age and eventually die?'
I wake up in the morning in my weird little flat. I wonder to myself, 'so this is it, huh? I just do this until my body fails?'
I cook myself a meal. I find out how a museum works behind the scenes. I get a tour of an office. I see my friends go out. I book a movie ticket. I work out. I watch a comedian. I listen to a podcast. All of these things just make me ponder what the point of it all is. Am I doing it wrong? Am I doing it pretty well? Why should I accumulate all this knowledge if I'm just going to die? What's the point in watching my stupid obscure movies that I can't even talk to people about? Am I missing out on the human experience?
Realistically I'm a happy ape. All my needs are satisfied. But I am a sad human.
I think it's all linked to graduating. The pressures on to do well, the workload is racking up, and then once that's all done I just get thrown into the real world. That's it. Then it truly is just doing the same thing over and over. Then it really is a question of survival. Would it be better to just be a dumb neolithic huntsman who is grateful for his bed of fur in his cave? What the fuck did those guys even think of when they took psychedelics? Well, spirits, I know, but wow, the things in their head must've been so original. If I do them, most of my thoughts are just about the garbage I've watched, and my modern worries that are worrisome but relatively tame.
Is this just a normal thing to go through, and then you get on with it and accept that this is just how things are?
Maybe life is simply starting to get to me, and time will tell if I crack under pressure.
Im 44. It is just work, eat, sleep, work, eat, sleep for me. I make jokes, i laugh at jokes. I interact with other humans regularly, but im not happy. Im not suicidal, but im not happy either.
I am a plumber by trade. Ive been doing this a long time now. I hold a couple professional licenses in the state i reside in. This is what i will do until im buried. I have moments where i enjoy what i do, but those moments are more and more fleeting. Its mostly just frustration though. Frustration because something went wrong, or parts didnt arrive when they were supposed to, or because i have to squeeze just one more service call in on a Friday at 445pm. Frustration because i got a weekend emergency call and its going to end up tanking my whole Saturday or Sunday and then Monday is back on deck. I make ok money but it isnt enough to vacation, or do anything to break up the monotony. It isnt enough to retire on. I will work until the day im six feet under. It isnt professional burnout. It isnt a midlife crisis because im not trying to relive my youth, or fuck 20 year olds, or drive a red convertible or anything like that. Its life burnout.
Ive struggled with the thought of ‘This is it, Feinsteins_Ghost. This is your life. This is how its going to be forever.’ Also always struggled with why am i doing this? Why am i in YET ANOTHER continuing ed class? Why am i reading fucking plumbing code books? Why bother? I might not even wake up tomorrow, and if theres an afterlife, im going to look back and see that i wasted my last night on Earth looking thru manufacturer literature verifying the correct lockup pressure on a goddamned propane regulator.
The struggle is fucking real, and it slaps me in the face daily. Whats the point is a very valid question to ask.
the worst is I know that thousands of people in the global south died so this could happen and I don't want it, I want less, I can afford less, I don't need this much and they need more, but I can't do much myself to truly rectify the situation
No, in fact, I am very deliberately not thinking about this
I studied philosophy most of my life, graduated a relatively long time ago, have been involved in the Left for many years, am a reasonable but very religious person, and these thoughts still not only occur to me regularly but also still shake me to my core.
You may very well have these thoughts for the rest of your life.
But it's better to have them than to not. Just be forgiving to yourself.
Nope, I don't think about it. Thinking about it sucks and is unproductive and I've already determined that it's unanswerable.
... okay, I think about it a little.
Nope, I don't think about it. Thinking about it sucks and is unproductive and I've already determined that it's
unanswerable.full of answers I don't like.This is why I stuff it to the side: I do not like what it reveals!
We are on earth to love one another. It’s tough starting out, before you find your people. Hang in there it gets better:
True. But I don't know how capable I am of love in the way that other people are. Unless it's toward a dog.
Don't worry. Other people aren't actually capable of love, either. :rust-dark:
People always say this. They always say that “don’t worry, you’re still young! You’ll find a girlfriend and friends in no time!” What useless nonsense. I would much rather them tell me it’s over than give pointless platitudes
talking to my parents and grandparents has made me realize how profoundly boring modern life is. my granddad can talk for hours about his life and the things he did when he was my age and all i'll have for my kids is "uhh i posted on a communist forum and looked at tiktoks."
the best thing you can do is get offline and talk to people
on the other hand my grandparents were uneducated and grew up in poverty with bombing raids a fact of life in some ways life is better now
Same, I guess, but the way they lived just doesn't exist in the same way anymore. You could go to another country, pick up a job, and realistically imagining owning a home. On their holidays there's all of these amazing cultural experiences and an authentic world much more untouched by the filthy grip of neoliberalism.
Nowadays I go out and try to experience the world. I don't have the money to go on holiday, so I'm restricted to my city. The fun stuff my parents and grandparents speak of - going out, popping songs on the jukebox, having a real dance, all of your friends are there - well, I've tried it many times. Mostly it's expensive and unsatisfying. People barely even dance anymore. A drink at a club will set you back half your nights budget. All the songs are algorithm created shite (and I'm not some modern music hater, I love the stuff, but 'pop' is in an absolutely dire state - thanks capitalism) and whatever songs tiktok has made popular. You can get a big night out of friends, but these clubs and pubs don't feel like hubs of community, just modes of extraction. Sometimes you find a niche little bar that's fun to go to, and then someone posts it online and the entry price goes up and it becomes full of hipster nauses.
So I'd rather just stay at home, work out to keep my body healthy, cook a nice meal and enjoy my creature comforts.
What sorta stuff did your grandfather do?
both my grandparents were teachers who moved around a lot for work. they did a lot of odd jobs over the years too; forestry work, commercial fishing in Alaska, etc.
Realistically I'm a happy ape. All my needs are satisfied. But I am a sad human.
The hollowness of it all kills me too.
You guys aren’t alone. I ponder this kind of thing almost every single day
Me too.
Good post, right before therapy.
I don't like this
I know it looks like one dude spends his entire life wishing for a revolution that never happens, but for me it shows (or should show) a bunch of different people who are all thinking the same thing—as in, everyone these days is desperate for revolution. I didn’t mean for it to be a doomer meme.
It's the soul sucking nature of capitalism turning us into homo economicus that accelerates these feelings. Existential dread has always been around, I'd wager, but it seems to be very intense in these times. Working in agriculture helped my mental health immensely. At least I am outdoors, I observe the seasons, I watch my little green buddies grow with satisfaction. It has its ups and downs and I still have depression but it's better now.
9 years of retail was killing me. Quite literally. I was drinking half a bottle of cheap whiskey nightly just to numb the pain. Smoking like a chimney. Eating fast food to soak up the alcohol then passing out in bed for another night of drunken dreamless sleep so I could do it again the next day. Don't uh... don't do that.
Thanks. I'll have a listen some time.
Welcome.
I found YouTube links in your comment. Here are links to the same videos on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Link 1:
Link 2:
need to get involved in organizing. helping my queers out is what keeps me going
Yes, it's an ancient anxiety that has birthed many religions and philosophies over the ages. Everyone is susceptible to this, but thankfully there are ways to cope with it out there, just take your pick.
It's also probably related to hitting certain milestones in life. Physically, emotionally, and socially there is a turning point in your 20s or so, and you will probably also find someone you love and care for to settle down with. If things work out, life itself will distract you for a while. Otherwise, you might make a decision like young Siddhartha Gautama or Che Guevara to set out into the world and figure out why everything seems to suck and how to fix it.
This might be really sad to some people, but it's interesting to me. Sometimes I go over to my cat's urn and just stare at it, and I feel some kind of primitive, ancient voice talking to me, urging me to get into ancestor worship. Some part of my brain really wants my cat to still be around somehow, but he's not, so the psychological coping conclusion seems to be that I should venerate his memory for the rest of my life. I should believe he's somehow still around.
I'm not exaggerating when I say I loved that cat more than anything else I've ever had, or anyone else. And that's tugging at some vestigial impulse to go become a shaman.
I don't think there's anything sad or weird about it. It depends on how you approach the topic of why humans behave in what some people might call "irrational" ways.
For example an atheist might still say "thank god!" when they feel relief, even though it doesn't imply anything more than that they feel relief. It's more an expressive or descriptive matter for me.
People and society are complicated, and it reflects in the older "irrational" religious and spiritual worldviews. But even "objective, rational" modern science and philosophical frameworks like Marxism hesitatingly admit that there is complexity in human behavior that shouldn't be dismissed so quickly.
You're good comrade, whatever your beliefs/practices end up being, your cat left his mark on the world and yourself in a form, and that's all the truth of the matter you should keep in mind whenever you remember him. RIP your good boy
The point of life is itself, it is to be and to experience the full breadth of possibility contained therein. Yet you are confined, only free to experience what limited possibilities you are structurally coerced into pursuing. And those are not random, they are those pursuits which enrich a remote and disinterested ruling class.
I have had this feeling you describe, and continue to have it. The best thing you can do for yourself, I believe, is to begin to deeply understand that what you feel you must do is every moment being manipulated to make you useful, even to your own detriment.
Every moment you manage to resist this death drive, this ghostly dog at your ankles, every moment you manage to steal rest, comfort, ease, each moment you manage to do something for yourself even if you are expected to be performing labor, or performing the appearance of labor, you get back some little sliver of yourself. Steal every second you can, every day.
I look at it as: we create the reality we live in. Around me, I can have strong control over this. How I dress, art on walls, how to spend time, I create a sensory world. But I share this reality with other people, billions, huge spherical globe. Sometimes they try to force their stuff on me. But I love meeting artists, eccentrics, they make the shared reality more fun, interesting.
I dont look at things as, will I be judged, am I passing a test, etc. I have a limited amount of time, and it's my responsibility to make my own rules, have my own beliefs, values. Life seems to be about changing what you can, accept what you can't.
I found meaning in my life through several hobbies that I can use to make other people happy.
Holy shit same.
My degree is useless and I'm unemployable. I've been stuck in rural Texas for all my life and I can't even afford rent on mimimum wage. My only hope is to go back to college, rack up more debt and force myself to get a STEM degree and MAYBE...just maybe someone will hire me. Not likely though because every job gets thousands of applicants. Why do we make life so hard, who are we trying to impress? How can we brag about our work ethic, when there are a whole bunch of people where work is denied to them?
As for finding community, maybe my best bet is to settle for a city here in Texas or something. The one good thing about republicans is that they keep property values low. I know there's Austin but for any Texan comrades here, is DFW a decent enclave for "undesirables"?
Comrade, if you can, just get out of Texas entirely
The community college in Dallas has a really cheap teaching bachelor's program now. Last year you get a job at school district so you get paid too. Teaching can be hell but the state keeps raising wages bc there are not enough teachers.
Totally valid. I go through the same shit a lot. Doing art has been helpful for me
Yeah, there is no ultimate point to anything. Never was or ever will be. You have to decide for yourself what the point is.
Lately I've been dealing with this existential crisis by getting high and watching youtube videos about mysteries of the universe, and what's beyond it. Just like, embracing how weird all this shit is, you know?
It'll be weird until it is normal. Then it gets depressing. Maybe it's possible to consume yourself out of an existential crisis, but I haven't figured it out yet.
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No, but I probably should. One of my best friends read it this week and said he cried at the end.
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i feel the exact same. the responsibilities imposed upon me by modern capitalism are too much to bear. i hate my life and i dread waking up every morning and continuing the meaningless cycles of days until the last breath i take. it’s what capitalism wants us to feel. i would recommend getting organized anyways. it’s the only thing that i’ve found that gives me some semblance of hope, of meaning.
It is normal, yeah. I have often thought "so this is it, huh?"
At the end of the day, you just have to find yourself something that interests you, something exhilarating. I'm currently playing Street Fighter 6 because I've always wanted to be good at those games, so I finally stopped worrying about how much work it would be and just went into it.
Maybe there's something like that for you, something you want to do, but the effort is putting you off?
I find that the machinations of being a slave of capital are what really drive the sense of pointlessness and disinterest, and the more time you can spend pursuing genuine interests, the more you'll feel like being alive is worth it.
Hi Goadstool! I think you personally have fulfilled something really special in your life, you've made a wonderful game that me and several of my friends have really enjoyed. This is gonna sound corny, but you're a true artist and I'm excited to see what else you might make. I kinda believe a big point of life is to resonate with other people somehow, through art or just being social or enjoying stuff communally, and you've managed to do that
And maybe that doesn't mean a lot to you but it's actually very surreal to me that you're a person I can just observe and interact with like this. I hope that gives you a little bit of self-worth
Oh, well thank you very much. It does mean something, I assure you. I do have a hard time really believing people when they tell me things like this, because of the very small scope of Kor's reach, but no one's ever quite put it to me like this before.
Making a game was also something I had always wanted to do, and in fact it's because I have made one that I feel able to tackle other interests... but I also still want to continue work on my next project... I have a framework laid out, a mock-up, some assets pixeled and animated... it's just hard to find the time with the increasing pressures of capitalism driving me to spend more and more time under strain, and then seeking ways to vent that strain.
But I agree with you as well, resonating with other people and having them enjoy a work of your own creation is an important reason to exist. And for me, video games have been an invaluable means of escapism from the general sense of powerlessness I feel in being unable to overpower the overwhelming forces of greed that smother those of us who live to be exploited. So if I can give that escapism to others, it's very validating. You know, until the vanguard party starts recruiting.
simplistic religions and other capitalist and mechanistic belief systems have stripped the soul out of life. it is all reduced to consumerism and individualistic 'self expression' via consumption. try to learn something from the world around you, it is ripe with meaning waiting to be percieved and created and discovered. read weird books. think about things from perspectives you would never consider before. let yourself be intentionally irrational and unintentionally rational in all the ways that humans must be. you are more than just your ego-consciousness, it is an integral part of your self but your mind encompasses much you will never be aware of. there is only so much information that is comprehensible in the traditional human format of linear-time sequential narrative experience.
That's just life tbh. I have tried to make it so that early retirement is viable so I can get a few good years of freedom before I'm completely infirm and/or dead.
I think David Byrne said it best when he said
And you may ask yourself, "Well, how did I get here?"
dumb neolithic huntsman who is grateful for his bed of fur in his cave
misconception of life in the neolithic. neolithic lived experience would be more like communal living on a (likely matriarchal) vineyard with a bunch of vegetarians
Sounds pretty sweet to me.
So I can really only answer in my own limited sense - I haven't read much philosophy, just dabbled and lived.
For my own encounter with those doldrums, what I encountered that resonated with me was essentially Nietzsche's own exploration of the loss of the justifications for passionate living that we are given by our environment, parents, religion, culture, etc - nihilism. It isn't a happy desert to wander through, but it's one that has potential. And then, of course, it's okay that whatever answers you find you may grow beyond and reveal to be another illusion. Nishitani's The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism was a good companion on that.
Also, The Illuminatus! Trilogy and Robert Anton Wilson's later books were a very important part of me acquiring a sense of humour about the collapse of my expectations.
Recently, reading Daoist philosophy, the notion of harmony with the vast systemic gyre of the universe and a similar dynamic ignorance of there being any particular, static, understanding seem to fit with this. But that's easy to say and hard to feel.
Damn, do these sentiments echo with me. The top few stages of the hierarchy of needs seem to keep being unmet no matter what I throw at them. On top of being extremely unfulfilled with my work and hobbies, I’m also thoroughly alienated from everyone around me due to a combination of early-life ostracisation and mild agoraphobia. I’m starting to feel I’m skilled enough to identify what’s wrong with me (and the world to some extent), but not enough to actually change things.
Hahaha, well I can't help, but I wonder if you also feel the same as me that:
The more left wing I become, the more I feel alienated. The less I am able to enjoy the things that most people around me enjoy and talk about. And yet, I can't unlearn my leftism, nor can I stop myself become more and more left wing now that I have the left wing framework to analyse life with.
Yeah, most def. I find myself unable to consume most english-language content because of how deeply they are intertwined with the ideological underpinnings of Empire and capitalism. This, in turn, means that I have no capacity to contribute in conversations surrounding media consumption, alienating me even further
In case you've forgotten, here's how things work: I order the food, you cook the food, then the customer gets the food. We do that for 40 years, and then we die
I found a YouTube link in your comment. Here are links to the same video on alternative frontends that protect your privacy:
Realistically I'm a happy ape. All my needs are satisfied. But I am a sad human.
I suspect this is the core of the problem. All my cat does is eat, shit, play, groom, sleep, and she's happy as a clam. You have to really shut up the default mode network with enough meditation or psychedelics or flow states so you can just vibe without existential angst.
Like, I'm pretty sure you're watching obscure movies because you really enjoy them. And there's some anxious ego part in your skull that is worried there's some other "more important" reason out there, some end goal, but there isn't. And if you can get it quiet long enough you can learn that truth experientially.
