fear of the unknown - existential crisis

has anyone experienced recurring existential crises? it's almost like an existential depression at this point.

i know it is entirely normal to fear death, but recently it has developed into almost an obsession for me. ultimately nothing will be of any real comfort, however if anyone has struggled with this i am very eager to learn how you manage to cope. unfortunately i am not very religious/spiritual.

I don't know if we are experiencing the exact same thing, but I do have an issue with.. Not being scared of death, but wanting it to smack me in the face in the near future. Life is just so routine and frustrating.. Just getting up in the morning.. I can't even do it. I didn't even get intoxicated last night and I slept til about 30 minutes ago after going to bed at midnight.

I'm never happy.. I was a few months ago, I remember an instance that lasted maybe a day. But its been this way since I was a teenager, and the only thing that seems to make me happy is either doing drugs all the time. Or not doing drugs hardly ever and reading books/going to classes.. Achievements make me happy, I wish I would have understood this at a younger age. The drugs just blind me. I don't even have fun on LSD anymore. Always depressing.. Drinking, depressing now.. Weed, makes me think I'm some fuckin twisted weirdo. Not a good time.. Maybe I am a twisted weirdo.. :/

I don't know dude, best of luck to you. My advice would be to go out and DO something, and be enthusiastic about it. I wish I could follow my own advice.

notoriouszig said:

has anyone experienced recurring existential crises? it's almost like an existential depression at this point.

i know it is entirely normal to fear death, but recently it has developed into almost an obsession for me. ultimately nothing will be of any real comfort, however if anyone has struggled with this i am very eager to learn how you manage to cope. unfortunately i am not very religious/spiritual.

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When I was first diagnosed with cancer I too became obsessed with death,I could hardly function during the day and couldn't sleep at night because of it,I would sit and plan my own funeral down to the last detail,I even asked my sister to take my dog as I feared it wouldn't be looked after properly by anyone else but her. I went through hell and nothing and no one could remove this thought from my head,I couldn't talk to my family about it because they would become upset, so I had to keep it to myself. Iam a Christian and I took comfort from my faith but even that couldn't take this terrible feeling I was experiencing away. Eventually I went to see my doctor and I talked to her she prescribed me antidepressants, it took a while but slowly I started to feel better and started to concentrate on living not dying. I still think about death especially when I don't feel so well some days, but it's more controllable now. Another thing that helped me was this site,the folks on here make me laugh,some make me mad and some sad, but when I'm feeling these emotions I'm not thinking about dying. You should speak to your doctor just telling someone helps,I hope like me you can overcome this it's a horrible thing to cope with and I wish you well

Hey, OP! I know exactly what you are going through, I've been there several times myself. I'm an atheist, too, so there's no comfort of an afterlife for us, and that is the greatest draw to religion imo. I'm now at a point where I rarely obsess about dying: I know that I'm lucky to have been born in the first place, out of the trillions of possible people that could have been here it is I that won the cosmic lottery. I'm grateful every week for what I have, and these two thoughts keep the fear at bay. The most effective cure I've found is to keep productive, thus keeping myself in the moment, in the now. Also, keep in mind you will never know that you've died or that you're dead. Even when you're dying, if conscious you may experience some pain (doubtful the worst you've ever felt) or discomfort, but you'll just black out, something you've probably done before. Only difference is, you won't wake up that time, but you'll never know it This Mark Twain quote always puts me at ease - "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

Here are two videos i think you should watch Zig, it helped me a lot when dealing with death without the help of comforting fairy tales. If you haven't seen all of his videos, you should check them out, they are amazing.

(For some reason whenever i try to insert a video when i paste the URL and click the ok button it doesn't do anything, can anyone help with that?)

Here are the links:

Death Part 1- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syNVg8V4EQU

Death Part 2- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RBEE8Yfr3AM

Seriously though, if you have any questions or concerns, doubts or worries, feel free to PM me anytime. I'd be more than happy to help someone see the positive side of existence, even if there is no point or no meaning to it at all.

Also, if you have the time you should read this. It makes a lot of sense to me and might hold relevance to the situation you are in.



In Philosophy "The Absurd" refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek value and meaning in life and the human inability to find any. In this context absurd does not mean "logically impossible," but rather "humanly impossible." The universe and the human mind do not each separately cause the Absurd, but rather, the Absurd arises by the contradictory nature of the two existing simultaneously. Absurdism, therefore, is a philosophical school of thought stating that the efforts of humanity to find inherent meaning will ultimately fail (and hence are absurd) because the sheer amount of information, including the vast unknown, makes certainty impossible.

As a philosophy, absurdism also explores the fundamental nature of the Absurd and how individuals, once becoming conscious of the Absurd, should react to it. The Absurd arises out of the fundamental disharmony between the individual's search for meaning and the apparent meaninglessness of the universe. As beings looking for meaning in a meaningless world, humans have three ways of resolving the dilemma.


1. Suicide (or, "escaping existence"): a solution in which a person simply ends one's own life. Both Kierkegaard and Camus dismiss the viability of this option. Camus states that it does not counter the Absurd, but only becomes more absurd, to end one's own existence. For Camus, suicide is a "confession" that life is not worth living; it is a choice implicitly declaring that life is "too much." Suicide offers the most basic "way out" of absurdity: the immediate termination of the self and its place in the universe.

2. The absurd encounter can also arouse a "leap of faith," a term derived from one of Kierkegaard's early pseudonyms (although the term was not used by Kierkegaard himself), where one believes that there is more than the rational life (aesthetic or ethical). To take a "leap of faith," one must act with the "virtue of the absurd" where a suspension of the ethical may need to exist. This faith has no expectations, but is a flexible power initiated by an ignoration of the absurd. (Although at some point, one recognizes or encounters the existence of the Absurd and, in response, actively ignores it.) Camus considers the leap of faith as "philosophical suicide," rejecting both this and physical suicide.

3. Lastly, a person can choose to embrace his or her own absurd condition. According to Camus, one's freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the recognition of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. "To live without appeal," as he puts it, is a philosophical move to define absolutes and universals subjectively, rather than objectively. The freedom of humans is thus established in a human's natural ability and opportunity to create his own meaning and purpose; to decide (or think) for him- or herself. The individual becomes the most precious unit of existence, as he or she represents a set of unique ideals which can be characterized as an entire universe in its own right. In acknowledging the absurdity of seeking any inherent meaning, but continuing this search regardless, one can be happy, gradually developing his or her own meaning from the search alone.

"Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide." "Revolt" here refers to the refusal of suicide and search for meaning despite the revelation of the Absurd; "Freedom" refers to the lack of imprisonment by religious devotion or others' moral codes; "Passion" refers to the most wholehearted experiencing of life, since hope has been rejected, and so it is concluded that every moment be lived fully." -Albert Camus

I think #3 is the wisest choice when dealing with the absurdity of existence.

notoriouszig said:

has anyone experienced recurring existential crises? it's almost like an existential depression at this point.

i know it is entirely normal to fear death, but recently it has developed into almost an obsession for me. ultimately nothing will be of any real comfort, however if anyone has struggled with this i am very eager to learn how you manage to cope. unfortunately i am not very religious/spiritual.

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your beliefs are based directly from your thoughts, which are negative. try and take your fear of death and convert it into a positive thought and gain a positive based belief. why not embrace the fact that you will apparently never exist after your death and use it to motivate you. while you decompose in the ground, your nutrients will help other life forms grow into beautiful organic structures. you're one in 7 billion so from my perspective you have two options: do what excites you and forget about the fear. simply let it go, it doesn't belong to you. now without the fear, live your life by following whatever it is that excites you. if you like reading, then read. if you like getting high, perhaps get into horticulture. there's many things to get excited about. it will help take your mind out of the negativity. the next option is to lock yourself up in your room with an automatic weapon and aim it at the door waiting for fear to show up until till you expire.

which one sounds better for you? these guys are saying they don't have a comfort of an afterlife. do we need one? embrace the fact that you exist now and you cannot "un-exist" during this duration. it only matters what your belief is, we all go through these emotions because we all have the thoughts running through our minds. the beliefs we form from our thoughts directly shapes our reality. let's say your dog dies; you can either be sad that you will supposedly never see him again or you can be happy and thankful for all the wonderful memories he has probably given you. the perspective is your choice. choose the positive my friend, it's a lot more fun.

ganja man23 said:

embrace the fact that you exist now and you cannot "un-exist" during this duration

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You are lying. This is not a fact, and this is something that you do not know with any amount of certainty.

This is merely part of the death denying coping mechanism for dealing with death... or should i say, refusing to.

Ganja man is in the #2 category of dealing with absurdity, which is probably why philosophies that do not intertwine with his leap of faith do not interest him.

Zaehet Strife said:

You are lying. This is not a fact, and this is something that you do not know with any amount of certainty.

This is merely part of the death denying coping mechanism for dealing with death... or should i say, refusing to.

Ganja man is in the #2 category of dealing with absurdity, which is probably why philosophies that do not intertwine with his leap of faith do not interest him.

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So you're telling me that i'm not certain that I exist at the moment? You're in what i like to call the #3 category. The one i call too fake smart for their own good. you're such a troll it's not funny any more. you only come along when you see something you can nit pick because that's what you rely on to make yourself seem smarter. does the fact that he cannot exist like you claim have any relevance with the OPs post? if yes then you can be the one to tell the op he is not real.

you put a guy smoking a pipe looking sophisticated and you find little details to bicker about because in reality you have no real insights or objectives in life than trying to project the smoke others exhale up your bumbum. well i for one don't like the smell here.

and looking forward to your irrelevant reply.

My mistake, i read it over again and i thought you stated that it was a fact, that when you die you don't really die. My bad, i apologize for the misunderstanding.

You see, I can live with doubt and uncertainty and not knowing. i think its much more interesting to live with with not knowing than to have answers which might be wrong.

I have approximate answers and possible beliefs and different degrees of certainty about different things. But i'm not absolutely sure about anything and there are many things i don't even know anything about.

Hey, OP! I know exactly what you are going through, I've been there several times myself. I'm an atheist, too, so there's no comfort of an afterlife for us, and that is the greatest draw to religion imo. I'm now at a point where I rarely obsess about dying: I know that I'm lucky to have been born in the first place, out of the trillions of possible people that could have been here it is I that won the cosmic lottery. I'm grateful every week for what I have, and these two thoughts keep the fear at bay. The most effective cure I've found is to keep productive, thus keeping myself in the moment, in the now. Also, keep in mind you will never know that you've died or that you're dead. Even when you're dying, if conscious you may experience some pain (doubtful the worst you've ever felt) or discomfort, but you'll just black out, something you've probably done before. Only difference is, you won't wake up that time, but you'll never know it

This Mark Twain quote always puts me at ease - "I do not fear death. I had been dead for billions and billions of years before I was born, and had not suffered the slightest inconvenience from it."

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Me likey that quote.

So what do you believe as an atheist? Do you believe in something incomprehensible after life, or do you think we simply lose our existence again? Mixture of both?

I like to think theres a nice afterlife waiting for us, but recently it just makes the most sense that we simply do not exist anymore, and thats the beauty of it. Theres an epicurian quote, “Death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist”
Near death experiences cause people to believe in afterlives, I've had one. But I think possibly.. I mean because the whole light at the end of the tunnel thing. Your part of your brain that senses light is the last to shut down. Thus you see light vaguely, maybe seeing hallucinations of 'future' or present beings. But your in a state of delirium. On deleriants I have seen people that are dead. Well that only happened once and it was my grandfather that I never met, he was making a model airplane on my desk. He liked airplanes... Ahh diphenhydramine..

high|hgih said:

Me likey that quote.

So what do you believe as an atheist? Do you believe in something incomprehensible after life, or do you think we simply lose our existence again? Mixture of both?

I like to think theres a nice afterlife waiting for us, but recently it just makes the most sense that we simply do not exist anymore, and thats the beauty of it. Theres an epicurian quote, “Death, the most frightening of bad things, is nothing to us; since when we exist death is not yet present, and when death is present, then we do not exist”
Near death experiences cause people to believe in afterlives, I've had one. But I think possibly.. I mean because the whole light at the end of the tunnel thing. Your part of your brain that senses light is the last to shut down. Thus you see light vaguely, maybe seeing hallucinations of 'future' or present beings. But your in a state of delirium. On deleriants I have seen people that are dead. Well that only happened once and it was my grandfather that I never met, he was making a model airplane on my desk. He liked airplanes... Ahh diphenhydramine..

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I believe that we simply lose our existence. I like to think that individual sentient beings are so very rare and valuable in the universe that there are civilizations with technology advanced enough to somehow save our individual consciousness (and sense of I-ness that accompanies it) and our existence doesn't really end but instead grows in value by continuing to gain experience and acquiring knowledge. But that is pure speculation with no evidence to back it up, so it is not worthy of much more consideration than any other form of wishful thinking...

Here I throw this article around a lot, but you should read it. Its pretty long, but its really interesting and relevant. Possibly happening in the near future with this exponential technology leap? I dunno, would you live forever if you could? I feel like if you lived forever, youd wanna die after so long, or would you? No one knows, but there should still be a self destruct button if you so chose to die.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2thbak/www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/values.html/

"Of course you’re there. Death is always there. So why was I afraid? Your leap is swift. Your claws are sharp and merciful. What can you take from me which is not already yours? . . . Everything I have done until now has been fruitless. It has led to nothing. There was no other path except that it led to nothing — and before me now there is only one real fact — Death. The truth I have been seeking — this truth is Death. Yet Death is also a seeker. Forever seeking me. So — we have met at last. And I am prepared. I am at peace. Because I will conquer death with death."
-Bruce Lee ... (spoken by Cord, the protagonist of the unproduced film The Silent Flute)

notoriouszig said:

has anyone experienced recurring existential crises? it's almost like an existential depression at this point.

i know it is entirely normal to fear death, but recently it has developed into almost an obsession for me. ultimately nothing will be of any real comfort, however if anyone has struggled with this i am very eager to learn how you manage to cope. unfortunately i am not very religious/spiritual.

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One thing I remember when thinking about this very rumination,Is simple or at least relatively simple,though there appears to be nothingness after we die,I still do not know this as an absolute actuality, we see the physical within its objective limitation and perceive it in the empyrical sense to be the rule of existence,if it can be measured then it is deemed as real, yet we still know so surprisingly little of what is inherently rendered in this "reality of objectivity",though death and what occurs thereafter has yet to be fully understood in its entirety,,death is more of a transition than a means to the end of all ends in my own phylosophical outlook,it brings me to one question,what dose the Universe waste or discard as useless?,,,I have yet to find an answer on this question.