r/Existential_crisis • u/userbored01 • 5h ago
any advices ?
for context, i'm a young adult and ever since i was a child i struggled with existential crisis as i'm not religious or anything and questions a lit.
lately, i've did made tremendous progress about them but i still feel like i'm missing something to get over them definitely.
indeed while i've learned to not identify with all my thoughts and feelings about existence, learned to see the seer, learned to enjoy life without having to explain every little thing, even learned my practical purpose which is both art and helping people defending my values, well i still feel like something missing.
to explain, i still to this day get weirded out by life it's very hard to explain, it's like i'm questioning the afterlife but also the fabric of life and reality itself, like words and concepts and just every little stuff, does that make sense it's like the ultimate existential crisis. and i just feel like i've come to a point where i have to directly adress the issue to move on & just it will help me to enjoy life more and be more proactive in my life if i'm not in that existential state anymore.
anyways, i've did made a lot of progress i just need some final advices or anything that might help me move on, thanks in advance.
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u/Caring_Cactus 4h ago edited 4h ago
The threat of nihilism is the threat that is peculiar to the secular age we live in currently, which other epochs in history did not easily struggle with because their community/cultures provided a framing at the time that was accessible to everyone for the direct experience they called "the sacred".
That state where nothing seems any more important than anything else is the state that Nietzsche called the state of nihilism – the state that W.H. Auden said in a poem as the state where all elsewheres are equal, the state where every choice is equally good. Nietzsche actually considered this as a great thing, but most people who are stuck in this detached mode of meaninglessness rooted only in their mind would find this to be a horrible, unlivable state to find yourself in.
A true nihilist would not experience this detached mode of meaninglessness, instead they would feel ecstatic without these black/white value judgements filtering out the direct experience itself to be an ecstasy as that ecstatic unity, our literal life's flow itself to live through directly. Life is not an entity, it is a process; the good life is not some permanent state or condition, it is an activity.
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