Why is this cropped so poorly?
As a late 30s, shit like this stop being funny, because hits too close to home.
Yeah happened to me too in the late 30s. This is the real midlife crisis, trying to come to terms with existential nihilism, it’s not buying a fucking red convertible…
I was dealing with some pretty intense nihilism after my beloved dog passed away. I had thoughts like “Why put effort into anything when in 100/1000/10000 years everything I love and care about will be dead, gone, and forgotten?” It’s a terrible philosophy to have and live with, incredibly depressing. I was able to escape mine through meditation with some chemical assistance. Realized that just because things don’t last forever doesn’t mean they don’t have meaning. The fact that we’re alive and conscious, experiencing things everyday, means our lives have value. The cosmic odds of us existing here and now are staggering, we’re so lucky to be alive! So, to me the value is in the experiences, in the day to day.
(early 30s, also bought sports car)
I have gone through the same thought process, and I like to think of it as positive nihilism. The fact that everything is temporary and nothing really matters means that meaning & importance are created in our minds. That can help to give yourself permission to spend your limited time on things that (for whatever reason) matter to YOU.
Edit: early 40s here. I got a fun fast car in my mid 20s. I plan to get another one in a few years, but my mid life crisis involved building a koi pond in my back yard and getting more family pets in general. It helps that I turned 40 in 2020 when there was a lot of time to spend around the house. It’s totally a “me” thing, and I love it every day.
Why put effort into anything when in 100/1000/10000 years everything I love and care about will be dead, gone, and forgotten?
I had a slightly different question: what’s the point of doing anything if it’ll end? In other words: anything achievable is not worth doing.
I haven’t really found an answer to this, it just stopped bothering me, though one potential answer was: happiness and wisdom. Wisdom is unachievable because there’s always more to understand, and happiness is not a stable state since we’re hardwired not to be perpetually happy because we wouldn’t do anything if we were. Thus those two things can be chased always, they don’t end, and then you die. After that you have no more problems.
(Mid 20s, don’t like driving)
The hot take I’ve heard is that our ancient ancestors had a much higher chance of being killed by predators, so being on edge was an evolutionary advantage. According to this idea, the fear and dread of today is a remnant of our past.
Nah, I think that overstates the extent to which our ancestors were the hunter more than the hunted and ignores the social dimension. An early human might have been at risk for predators when they were out alone hunting or gathering but when you’re with the group I’d think that’s a much smaller threat. Having to deal with social threats from within the group, now, that’s ever-present. And still present today!
Also, after reading a book about the evolution of agency that suggests the evolutionary innovation of humans is that we’re a goal-seeking system that’s able to function as a part of a larger goal-seeking system (collective action)… I wonder how much that can account for existential dread. We have a diffuse drive to be part of something greater than ourselves but it’s not always clear what that should be.
I wouldn’t read too much into that, evolutionary psychology is a pseudoscience: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_evolutionary_psychology
Psychology is already a field full of rough concepts, bad statistics, and low certainties, we mostly have no clue why we’re doing things right now. Adding millions of years and unprovable speculation surely doesn’t help.
If evolutionary psychology is pseudoscience (which is debatable to begin with), it’s that way not because our evolutionary history doesn’t inform our psychology but because our understanding of both those things is too immature for the questions most people are are trying to answer. But that in itself depends on the questions and the level of answer one finds acceptable. I’ve found Michael Tomasello’s book “The Evolution of Agency” perfectly proportionate in the kinds of questions it seeks to answer given the information it has, and I think the wild speculations I extrapolate from it are totally fine to share in random internet conversations.
Climate change is going to kill us all reasonably slowly, but it’s OK because we’re in the brink of nuclear war which will kill us quickly… Unfortunately, where I live isn’t a historic nuclear target, but areas around me are, so I’ll not be vaporised, and have to endure the chaos…
But… It’s pizza day tomorrow so there’s that.
Damn dude…
It’s pizza day for me today! About to go pick it up right now actually. Stay strong 💪 thru the wait!!
If there actually is nuclear war the fallout will affect the whole world. Even if you aren’t near the blast you’ll get a nice dose of radiation on the wind.
I live an hour from an a facility used in the Manhattan project. Wish me luck
