alt Hacker NewsYeah, I agree. I think we're deep into a spiritual crisis, a crisis of meaning. A lot of people are blind to the trend because those aren't easy things to measure.
But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.
The spiritual crisis also explains why people aren't having kids. If there's no point to anything, why go through all the work and hardship? Parents often want to bring more happiness into the world. But if you're deeply unhappy, the logic changes.
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> Everything has been stripped of its meaning.
A friend j got the epic ski pass, so he skied at 43 resorts this winter with his wife and kid all across the US. From Baltimore to Tahoe through about 25 states.
I thought it would be awesome, he said it was shit. Because one corporation owns all of it, they’re all identical. Same signs, same food, same rules. No adventure, nothing new at each resort . Giant monoculture.
That’s how I feel when I’m in the US.
> But if you're single, isolated, on dating apps -- or maybe caught in an unfulfilling marriage commuting from the suburbs to a job you resent -- there often doesn't seem much point to your own existence. Everything has been stripped of its meaning.
The scenario you paint is one where everything has been stripped of meaning. One option is to seek more meaningful work and social relationships, on an individual level, and/or on a societal movement level. Or one can seek some supernatural mental delusions, an opiate for the people, to anethisize oneself to being a miserable wage slave with a miserable life.
I don't know, I'm a die hard nihilist and atheist and I'm married, have kids, friends, and think life is beautiful and generally ok. I don't see why people need to believe in imaginary stuff and I don't really see how it makes people happy.
on your point about meaning... this is america: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Is_a_Force_That_Gives_Us_M... (book by Chris Hedges)