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Existence is futile

ColdNorth

ColdNorth

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Apr 21, 2011
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This is probably a cliche to many, but it has become a real problem to me lately. I'm suffering from some kind of existential crisis.

The last few years I've been spiritually/emotionally completely dead. I've been sitting at home in front of the computer, pretending to be giving up drugs, doing bupe and whatever fits the situation. I've always loved psychedelics and recently after a few nice trips of LSD I have seriously begun to question existence itself and what consciousness is. I feel so insanely frustrated when I am forced to watch what people do with their lives. I mean they achieve far more than I ever will, raising families, getting good salaries, becoming good at things and so forth. The problem is, I have never cared for any of that. I seem to exist simply for pleasure and exploring some warped view of reality.

When I say I don't care for any of that, I mean it. It doesn't make any sense to me that people pretend to know what their self-awareness is about. They follow their instincts, breed, and do whatever their masters tell them is fine to do. I don't mean that in a completely derogatory way. There are these government-approved ways of making yourself feel better, to withstand the harshness of existence, but everything else is taboo. Alcohol, pharmaceutics. It's all business. Anything that truly makes you think about the deep metaphysical questions is labeled as a drug that messes up your psyche and therefore not acceptable. I realize that label may be right, but I have my doubts.

Psychonautics (for a lack of a better description) is shunned. But it's the only thing that makes sense to me. I don't mean to sound egotistical in any way, but I have the talent to be a decent musician, philosopher or an explorer of the natural sciences. Yet none of that ever seem to take hold in a meaningful way. I don't see any value to gathering money or material possessions, to doing research even though it may advance human understanding, or working 8-4 everyday just to raise a child. I think the thing we need most right now is understanding the reason and the nature of our existence.

Am I just a lazy asshole trying to make excuses for not working towards a purpose he doesn't care for, or is there some point to what I am looking for? I would never post this kind of drunken nonsense anywhere else, but I have come to know the TDS and it's collective wisdom. The kind of life that society steers me towards doesn't make any sense to me. There has to be something else, and I'm sure others have been where I am right now.

If I am delusional, please tell me. I would be more than happy to burn myself out rather than fade away living the life I described earlier. It holds absolutely no interest to me. Existing just for the sake of existence is pointless and I would happily end it it in an instant. But if it's possible to find contentment somewhere, I'll do whatever it takes to reach it. Some of you must have been where I am at some point.

Also, I have had too much wine to be absolutely sure that what I'm writing makes any sense. It could all be bullshit. Still, I am going to hit 'submit new thread' and hope. Any input is welcome. <3 you all. =)
 
Yeah, the society expects us to have a job, get children and raise them as responsible parents. Most people have to do that anyway... We wouldn't even exist hadn't there been tens of generations of humans before us who were able to raise children. We wouldn't have computers to have this discussion through if there hadn't been countless people who were able to do hard work for the development of microprocessors and internet connections.

Most people rebel against the society's expectations when they're teenagers, but some continue doing that even when they're grown up.

I think the shunning of 'psychonautics' by society is a thing similar to the age-old shunning of homosexuality. Gay relationships and use of psychedelics just don't seem to be things that fit in the image of a responsible parent and member of society. The general attitude towards gay people has already changed to more positive, but it seems that it takes more time for people to accept exploration of conciousness through the use of psychoactive drugs.

I'm 29 years old and I've only been employed for two years of my adult life... I have difficulties doing hard work... I work as a physicist in the university and research is familiar to me. It took 10 years for me to graduate, though.

I never want to get children. I don't even like women who are in fertile age... When I go to a bar I try to hit on women who are like 50 years old. I've liked older women since I was in puberty.

I'm drunk right now, too, I'm drinking beer over here.
 
If you are so bored and dissatisfied, why don't you move or find a new adventure? There is alot more to explore than just what drugs can do to you, and just like a good acid trip, it doesn't have to have a purpose, it can just be adventure for adventures sake.

I will just give you one example, there is this website called findacrew where people with boats barter lodging, food and transport on their boat for some help sailing their boat. Get picked up in new york or sf and end up in sydney or capetown, or seoul. And travel, cultural exchange, etc always blow my mind in a way drugs never could.

It is without a doubt one of the best lenses to examine the human condition through, which is what it sounds like you are trying to do.
 
You have the deepened view of life and existence that scientists the world over are looking to get answers to. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Who created us? Is there a god? Are we real of just some sort of sick and twisted reality game filled with all ones and zeros? All over the world people, Scientists, Physiologists, Physicists Professors, Doctors, you name it are trying answer these very questions. Do I think you are lazy or just writing some drunken blabber? Well maybe somewhat.. Are you being and introvert? Perhaps, most of the smartest minds were and are. So who cares really what any one thinks but yourself. If you could spent the rest of your existence living out side of someone else's norm, dreaming on someone else's phyco babble or living your life as you choose, looking for the answers to life and beyond then more power too you. I wish I could do that. Your views are very real questions and someone has to answer them, if not me then perhaps you? Who knows. I give you props for just deciding to do what make you happy and find the answers you seek, as I will bet that most of us have asked those questions and had similar thoughts, it is all part of the human experience. There is nothing wrong, your path in life is of your choosing. Hell you made me think a little just reading your post. :)
 
muvolution said:
I will just give you one example...
Click to expand...

Realllly cool idea, muv!!

ColdNorth said:
Psychonautics (for a lack of a better description) is shunned. But it's the only thing that makes sense to me. I don't mean to sound egotistical in any way, but I have the talent to be a decent musician, philosopher or an explorer of the natural sciences. Yet none of that ever seem to take hold in a meaningful way.
Click to expand...

Can I ask what avenues you have explored these very interesting and potentially meaningful areas of life? It sounds as though you may be someone who is intrinsically creative/explorative, yet lacks a realistic way to create and explore. I suggest this because it sounds like myself in a number of points in my life, each of which propelled its own existential crisis until the lack of an outlet was addressed...

~ vaya
 
Why not? (or is that reverse psychology?)

Existence is futile, yes. So, what does that mean to us? The way I see it, is that we are both forced and empowered to create our own meaning in life. The universe may not care if any of us lives or dies, or even if humanity is wiped out tomorrow; but at the same time, the fact that it has taken over 13 billion years for the right conditions to arise so that you, you have come to be, is also a bit amazing. In our society, if all goes well, we get 7 or so decades to play with, and that's it. It's up to us to make it memorable. Not for anyone else's sake, but for our own.
 
ColdNorth said:
This is probably a cliche to many, but it has become a real problem to me lately. I'm suffering from some kind of existential crisis.

The last few years I've been spiritually/emotionally completely dead. I've been sitting at home in front of the computer, pretending to be giving up drugs, doing bupe and whatever fits the situation. I've always loved psychedelics and recently after a few nice trips of LSD I have seriously begun to question existence itself and what consciousness is. I feel so insanely frustrated when I am forced to watch what people do with their lives. I mean they achieve far more than I ever will, raising families, getting good salaries, becoming good at things and so forth. The problem is, I have never cared for any of that. I seem to exist simply for pleasure and exploring some warped view of reality.

When I say I don't care for any of that, I mean it. It doesn't make any sense to me that people pretend to know what their self-awareness is about. They follow their instincts, breed, and do whatever their masters tell them is fine to do. I don't mean that in a completely derogatory way. There are these government-approved ways of making yourself feel better, to withstand the harshness of existence, but everything else is taboo. Alcohol, pharmaceutics. It's all business. Anything that truly makes you think about the deep metaphysical questions is labeled as a drug that messes up your psyche and therefore not acceptable. I realize that label may be right, but I have my doubts.

Psychonautics (for a lack of a better description) is shunned. But it's the only thing that makes sense to me. I don't mean to sound egotistical in any way, but I have the talent to be a decent musician, philosopher or an explorer of the natural sciences. Yet none of that ever seem to take hold in a meaningful way. I don't see any value to gathering money or material possessions, to doing research even though it may advance human understanding, or working 8-4 everyday just to raise a child. I think the thing we need most right now is understanding the reason and the nature of our existence.

Am I just a lazy asshole trying to make excuses for not working towards a purpose he doesn't care for, or is there some point to what I am looking for? I would never post this kind of drunken nonsense anywhere else, but I have come to know the TDS and it's collective wisdom. The kind of life that society steers me towards doesn't make any sense to me. There has to be something else, and I'm sure others have been where I am right now.

If I am delusional, please tell me. I would be more than happy to burn myself out rather than fade away living the life I described earlier. It holds absolutely no interest to me. Existing just for the sake of existence is pointless and I would happily end it it in an instant. But if it's possible to find contentment somewhere, I'll do whatever it takes to reach it. Some of you must have been where I am at some point.

Also, I have had too much wine to be absolutely sure that what I'm writing makes any sense. It could all be bullshit. Still, I am going to hit 'submit new thread' and hope. Any input is welcome. <3 you all. =)
Click to expand...

You need to find your true calling, i.e. "a purpose". Perhaps a motivational speaker to those that used to be in your situation? I'll leave it at that. Use your imagination.

PS - you are not delusional, just currently misguided.
 
Basically what the OP wrote could have been written by me. It's almost exactly like my thoughts and I have a feeling none of the previous posters truly grasped the meaning of that post, atleast the answers were quite unsatisfactory to me. The problem is that life, existance or anything in this universe for that matter doesn't have a purpose unless we give it a purpose. So we give it purpose and meaning through religions, sciences, philosophy, you name it. They're all equally artificial however, completely man-made meanings and purposes. Worthless. It's like asking a question and when you don't know the answer, you just think of something random and say that is the answer, and because there is no 'true' answer you're technically not wrong either, but are you right? Like he said, "existing just for the sake of existence is pointless" which means adventuring for adventures sake is also pointless. Doing stuff just because it's fun and you enjoy it is pretty hedonistic in my eyes and I don't find it really that purposeful, sure it can be fun for a while, but eventually you ALWAYS get bored.

Now, I do think this is sort of a dead end we are staring at here. We want something transcendenly meaningful, something that is quite all-defining. I'm not sure a human can even come up with such an answer... Perhaps the quest to find a purpose for life and existance could be the purpose of existance? It sounds weird and sketchy I know, but we have to remember our knowledge as human beings is rather limited at the moment, in fact perhaps we are so inexperienced and stupid on a cosmic scale that we have only just begun to realize that things have purposes and started to question our own existance, maybe the answer is out of our reach at this point but we are definately headed that way? Our minds, as complex and beautiful as they are, still have a ridiculously big territory they can expand into. Psychedelics work within our minds limit, they use our brains and their receptors to achieve their effect. With psychedelics, you can only go so far as the brain allows you to...

That's my only hope sort of. The fact that we don't know that is. If we don't know for sure, we can't say for sure life doesn't ultimately have a purpose. Just like a prehistoric man who looked around him and saw meaningless rocks, we see useful metals with different qualities and handy purposes. Dark matter constitutes 83% of all matter in the universe, maybe eventually we'll find a purpose somewhere there where we can't see right now, though we have begun to realize it's affecting us nevertheless.
 
Having had to deal with this feeling of existential despair for a few years.. i've noticed this sliver of freedom woven in amongst it, if existence is futile then each and every moment of every day is the entire meaning of your existence, and whatever you choose to do in those moments is your purpose. Your free from imagined ideals of what life is meant to be, or what you should be doing.. because you know none of it matters.. and this seems like an invitation to just do nothing because there's no point to any of it; and you can if you want which is what can make this so hard.

I don't know if it'll help, but this short article helped me better understand what i was going through (and still am).

http://www.emotional-times.com/2011/07/existential-despair.html
 
malakaix said:
Having had to deal with this feeling of existential despair for a few years.. i've noticed this sliver of freedom woven in amongst it, if existence is futile then each and every moment of every day is the entire meaning of your existence, and whatever you choose to do in those moments is your purpose. Your free from imagined ideals of what life is meant to be, or what you should be doing.. because you know none of it matters.. and this seems like an invitation to just do nothing because there's no point to any of it; and you can if you want which is what can make this so hard.

I don't know if it'll help, but this short article helped me better understand what i was going through (and still am).

http://www.emotional-times.com/2011/07/existential-despair.html
Click to expand...

Hmm nope, no answers there for me atleast, only more questions. Basically the message of that text to me was "don't worry, you too can make up an artificial, meaningless meaning for existance if you try hard enough!".

So he talks about stripping away "everything" he can, thoughts feelings beliefs attitude only to state that what he found/was left with was some kind of values. Well, values and value systems are part of the ego. I believe that in a sense, everything is equal, there truly is no good or evil. If no thing can be truly said to be better than other, assuming we aren't comparing them in any context, how can any values we give them be truthful? You've gotta strip down all the values and caring too. All that talk about people needing to open their eyes leads me to believe the one who wrote that blog hasn't truly opened his eyes.

Just like arguing wether heaven and hell exist and how to live your life. Group A believes that they exist and that you should live a life full of virtue to avoid hell and to get to heaven. Group B believes there is no such thing and that they can do anything they ever want to anybody and so on, because there are no consequences afterwards. Group C realizes that the existance or non-existance of heaven or hell can not be adequetely proven at this point, so they discard the whole thought and live their lives without ever thinking about heaven or hell.

Now obviously, one of A or B is wrong and the other one is right, but all they have to prove that they're right is their own faith. Tricky, so I'd say the agnostics from group C definately take the most practical route when it comes to this matter.

Meh, screw all that religious stuff anyway. As long as we are primitive enough to use our brains to think with words, symbols and such, I don't believe we can find true answers about the universe. This whole issue is a bit like trying to solve the paradoxic "this sentence is not true" and then ending up killing yourself. Syntax error, so try not to think about it...
 
FnX said:
I don't believe we can find true answers about the universe. This whole issue is a bit like trying to solve the paradoxic "this sentence is not true" and then ending up killing yourself. Syntax error, so try not to think about it...
Click to expand...

I'm probably going off-topic a bit here, but your right. It can't be resolved because its paradoxical, no answer could ever be satisfactory because it would always lead to another question infinitely, so as a result an existential crisis arises, and perhaps during this it's realized that there's no meaning apart from what you create yourself, that's the ultimate liberation.. but i digress.

ColdNorth: I wouldn't say your delusional, i'd imagine many people go through an existential crisis at some stage.. i'm not sure if anything said here will help, it's definitely a deep personal experience, but as this thread has shown there's alot of us who can relate to your post.

<3
 
Op, I spent many years working hard for part of each year to make just enough money to travel. The giant expectation of modern western culture still exists but it doesn't mean you have to buy into it. Having an existential crisis in my book is called growing up. It is the foundation for the realization that you and only you are responsible for creating any meaning your life will have.

Recently I was exposed to a whole group of people that work 6 months of every year in order to spend the other 6 months hiking the Pacific Crest Trail. I usually look to foreign travel but here is a population that seeks to simply exist in the wilderness--and found many ways to do it. The point is that you do have to work at getting the life that suits your needs. If waiting tables is the best way to make money for your lifestyle then make peace with waiting tables. Many people have attitudes about work (careers) that they have internalized that prevent this kind of freedom. I think that rooting out the societal expectations that you do not want to subscribe to will help you to move from depression to action. I think it is great that you are questioning and feeling. Those two things are the only thing you will ever need in life really.<3
 
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DexterMeth said:
Oh wow. I need to look into that.
Click to expand...

Me too, that certainly caught my attention... I was just talking with a friend and telling her that someone at work said that at least in my company we get around 5 work weeks worth of time off per year, which seems like a lot, but I argued that I'd rather work a steady schedule and get 2-3 weeks off rather than pit the 5 weeks against the overwhelming rate of burnout in my field.

FnX said:
They're all equally artificial however, completely man-made meanings and purposes. Worthless.
Click to expand...

May I ask, then, what your definition of "worth" or "value" is?

~ vaya
 
Vaya said:
May I ask, then, what your definition of "worth" or "value" is?
Click to expand...

I'd humbly like to thank you for asking this question, because the first answer that came up in my head was "I don't know?". Depending on context, a small ball could be pretty valuable if you wanted to play baseball but at the same time of very little value if you wanted to reach from place A to B as fast as possible.

I think I'd just go with a dictionary definition of "Worth in usefulness or importance to the possessor; utility or merit" (for value).

I just can't find any solid intrinsic value in life. It seems to be completely dependant on the views and values of the one looking at it and this is what is turning me into a nihilist because I ask the question why? almost ad infinitum. Why should one enjoy themselves? Why should one explore? Why should one exist? Why should one seek knowledge? If there was a finite amount of knowledge in the universe, why should one seek to know it all? Then what, did you just render yourself useless while becoming all-knowing? Why should I do anything at all? Just can't find any satisfying answers to questions like these so the only logical outcome seems to be ceasing existance. There's a big difference between killing yourself and ceasing to exist, one is an action and the other is absence of all action. It's a bit like when you do too much drugs and question why were you doing drugs anyway, realize that you don't have ANY reason to do them so you quit doing them.
 
I believe the answer to all your questions, depending on your personality type, is either "why not?" Or "because it is there."

Have you no desire to challenge yourself, to see what you are made of? Have you no desire to change the system or contribute knowledge and thoughts which could help many young people avoid what you yourself are going through?

Most importantly, have you no desire to have fun?
 
I didn't read the last few posts.

If existence i.e. everything, is futile then it in turn also has a point, even if the point is pointless.Points and meaning are also human invention. 'Existence' is a man made thing, it doesn't exist, we might not exist. We as humans created existence to define what we see and think and basically anything that goes through our brain our body. Existence does not have to exist if you get what I mean, it is just a mindstate. Science might not be right, how the fuck do we know? Maybe something has the power or some computer has the specs to generate it all infront of us, it could lie or tell the truth. We do not know, and wont really ever know what everything is, if it is real, if what your seeing is real or if your thoughts are your own. If the computer software generating us turned off would we even know?

You could ask yourself why and how to everything in the world and get 0 answers. There isn't goals or points there isn't anything really, just whatever the fuck is in the exact present moment which you can never really be in as it is so short and your brain cannot process information fast enough to live in it properly. So if theres no point and theres nothing and nothing is real thats pretty depressing isn't it? Make your own goals, points and meanings. In the end its your own that matters, you dont even know your friends or family really, you never will.

Having fun, is good it makes you happy and the point of life to me anyway at this time is to be happy. Fun, drugs and easy things aren't the only things that make you happy. People are happy when they get a job, get a promotion, have a child, fall in love. Theres a difference between fun and happienes/feeling good. So just do whatever. Do whatever the fuck you want but please dont hurt anyone else as then you will ruin there perception of existence and they will no longer be able to pretend to exist. Getting married, having children doesn't have to be in a fucking perfect suburban home living the american dream. As soon as im sorted financially and got a place for us both to live thats our own then me and my fiancee are getting married. Fuck a white wedding, probably wont even have any friends or family there, we'll probably be tripping or something. You can still do these conventional suposedly programmed into us tasks, and trust me, they do provide happinies to me at least but maybe not you you will have to see. Just add your own sick twist as you put it, as long as your not hurting other people and try to help others on there own little journey trying to figure all of this shit out and have a good bit of fun/adventure/experiences, life well spent.

I ahve no idea if this makes any sense I am very very very high haha

EDIT: It also sounds like you have to get heavily motivated, find something your passionate about that isn't taking drugs and pursue it. Even if its fucking synthesising drugs just have soemthing thats a passion and thats real, goodluck in your existence. Im sure you'll make it :)
 
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