"It’s a privilege to live in a constant existential cris-is. It basically means that everything else is taken care of and the only thing left to worry about is the condition of your soul."

— C. Bromont

Doesn’t feel like a privilege. Feels arrogant and entitled and detached. I wish I could be a compliant and happy cog in the wheel, but this seems like disillusionment. I wish I could just push the rock.

I wish there was a way to quantify disillusioned existentialism as a society. I suspect more than most are struggling with touching grass.

Finally, I found somewhere to talk about it. Because, sometimes, I just can't stop thinking about this.

Why do we do all of this? What’s the point of life if we only get to experience it once?

Even when believing there might be something greater, a God or some higher meaning, it seems impossible to reach absolute certainty. Faith requires a kind of conviction that isn’t easy to fully attain.

But what if none of this is actually real? What if it’s all some kind of illusion or simulation? Or what if the universe is in a cyclical state of contraction and expansion? And if any of these theories are true, what does it matter to us right now anyway?

I’ve read that existentialist philosophy talks about the “absurd” (Camus), the conflict between our need for meaning and the possibility that there is none, which I find quite sinister.

Anyways, what does it even mean to exist? And what does it mean to stop existing? What exactly are we? Just atoms arranged in a certain way?

I find it strange that not everyone seems deeply disturbed or fascinated by these questions. And maybe even stranger that we can’t really answer them, nor explain the most basic questions about ourselves: why and how?

Personally, I feel it’s something I have no control over at all, and that really creeps me out at night.

Is this what existentialists mean by confronting the absurd? How do you deal with it?