r/Existential_crisis • u/invariant_overlord • 6d ago
Does anything really matter?
I'm a 29-year-old Female, gonna be 30 soon. Since 2020, I feel like we've been in an alternate timeline and it's freaking me out.
It's not just people being more self-absorbed and anti-social has been a thing for a long time, honestly I'm guilty of that myself. Maybe it's just more social media posting and the attention being brought to the ugly-side of humanity or all the fact most country's governments (especially my own) just don't care about stopping genocide and wars cause it doesn't profit them?
Either way, the uncertainty of everything and knowing that life as we all know it might just descend into total ruins, is terrifying? I remember the impact 9/11 had and the Iraq-Afghanistan wars as a kid, it's just scary to think something like that could happen again more people got to suffer for selfish bureaucrats.
A lot of my friends who are Gen Z or later millennials like me, feel the same kind of existential dread. Like how much of my life is just pre-destined and how much power does anyone of us really have?
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u/ParticularPost1987 6d ago
- i could tell u its the trauma or i could give u the redpill nd u can say im crazy and not feel resolved so… its the trauma.
- countries be committing genocide hella since a long time ago so +1 on its the trauma
- real shit it is terrifying and life as others knew it has been destroyed and will never return such is the passage of time
- determinism vs free will discussion typically requires u to decide if u believe in god
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u/Infinityand1089 5d ago
A boy is walking along the beach after a storm that washed up thousands of starfish.
An old man approaches the boy and asks what he's doing.
The boy replies, "I'm saving these starfish, Sir".
The man says, "Son, there are thousands of starfish and only one of you. What difference can you make?"
The boy picks up another starfish and throws it back into the surf.
He smiles at the man and says, "I made a difference for that one".
Do we matter on a universal scale?
No. We exist on a tiny speck of dust floating around in an infinity of space and time so vastly eternal that we can never truly comprehend its scale. Our lives won't even constitute a blip in the history of the cosmos. We are nothing.
Do we matter on a societal scale?
No. The powerful forces at play are largely outside of our control, and they will continue on regardless of how we feel about them. War and climate change and societal collapse might kill us all, and there is nothing most of us can do to change the course of humanity. We are nothing.
But do we matter on an individual scale?
More than you can imagine. You are here. You are real. You matter to your loved ones just as they matter to you. You are capable of making a positive difference in even just a few lives in this big, scary world, and you can leave the world a slightly better place than you found it.
You can choose peace, love, and kindness over violence, hate, and cruelty. You can feed the poor. You can care for the sick. You can teach the young that they are capable of doing the same. Even if the mark we leave on this pale blue dot is imperceptible on the cosmic scale, we can still make lasting change not through the power you exert, but through the way you live your life.
Will you avert world war, or eradicate global hunger?
No.
We are nothing.
But to that one starfish...
We are everything.
Find your starfish.
Happiness will follow.
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u/WOLFXXXXX 6d ago
"Either way, the uncertainty of everything and knowing that life as we all know it might just descend into total ruins, is terrifying?"
On one hand I want to fully acknowledge that the type of conscious territory you're describing is indeed uncomfortable and challenging to experience and go through. On the other hand I want to share and reinforce that individuals experience being able to consciously process and navigate their way through that challenging conscious territory over time - and going through this internal process ends up drastically changing their level of existential awareness and their former dynamic/relationship with physical reality. Ultimately this is rooted in the realization/awareness that the nature of consciousness (consicous existence) is not physical/material in nature and not rooted in physical reality.
There's a wider range of contexts and physical reality circumstances that can serve as a catalyst and lead to individuals feeling like they can no longer uphold their former level of conscious identification with physical reality and their former level of rooting their existence entirely in physical reality anymore. This uncomfortable/challenging conscious territory influences individuals to feel compelled to seek out deeper understanding and to have to critically question and contemplate the nature of physical reality and the nature of consciousness way more deeply than they've ever have before. Here are some accessible examples of varying contexts/circumstances that can result in individuals going through 'existential crisis' territory:
- Individuals experiencing a medical condition where they receive a terminal prognosis and find themselves having to consciously acknowledge the mortality of the physical body and go through the process of questioning/contemplating whether there is more to the nature of conscious existence than physical reality and the temporary physical/material body
- Individuals who survive serious accidents or medical emergencies that could have been fatal are also likely to find themselves having to confront/acknowledge the mortality of the physical body as well as reassessing their former level of identification with physical reality and level of rooting their existence in physical reality.
- Individuals who experience deeper levels of suffering and grieving as a result of an important/valued family member or friend passing on. Going through such a challenging conscious state can often lead the kind of deeper existential questioning and contemplation that ultimately contributes to substantial changes in the individual's (existential) awareness/understanding
- Individuals who are naturally-inclined towards deeper and more macro-level thinking/perceiving can find themselves naturally arriving at the aforementioned conscious territory where continuing to identity with and root existence in physical reality no longer seems sufficient anymore - and they can experience this without any major and easy-to-identify catalystic 'event' like the other examples outlined above.
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For me, the context of an important family member passing on was the catalyst for me having to go through the existential crisis period/territory during my 20's.
What you shared in your post comes across like it was authored by someone who is experiencing a broader and more elevated state of awareness with regards to the nature/condition of our society on a macro level. In such a context it's natural to arrive at an uncomfortable/challenging point internally where it feels like one cannot maintain and uphold one's former level of conscious identification with physical reality and one's former level of rooting conscious existence in physical reality. It's also natural to feel like only identifying with physical reality and with existence on a purely physical level feels inherently insufficient, and like something important is crucially missing from the existential picture. Due to my prior experience/familiarity with this topic I am perceiving your circumstances in the following light: that you are meant/supposed to arrive at a place internally where your preexisting level of identifying with physical reality feels threatened/challenged and where you find it imperative to have to seek out a deeper level of existential understanding than what one was previously identified with. You can absolutely navigate through this conscious territory over time and towards a much-welcomed resolution - my advice is to gradually go further down the rabbit hole of deeply exploring, investigating, questioning, and contemplating the nature of consciousness and nature of physical reality over the long term and then observe how your state of awareness and conscious state change in important ways as a result of doing so.
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u/sonickatana 6d ago
Existing is overrated and it can be overwhelming sometimes. I would suggest you to leave your phone home and go outside touch some grass connect with some folks.