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
every day
would you mind me prodding you for where you’re at in life? Have you begun the ‘work, sleep, work, sleep, work, die’ cycle yet?
i’ve been doing it for a long time and it sucks. 40.
hahahahahaha fuck me
well if it means anything you don’t come off as a 40 year old at all
not kidding if you ever wrote up your thoughts about it all and how you’ve gotten this far I’d love to read them
no pressure of course I know that’s also potentially just an extra chore
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
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.
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.
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
That’s the nausea of realizing the malignant uselessness of the universe and more so specifically feeling and living inside the universe.
does it ever go away
positive nihilism
if what we see is what we get, then make it pleasant for ourselves and others as best we can
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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
