Having an existential crisis

Noodleface_sl said:

I was going to give you the benefit of the doubt here in this thread.

To some people, existential depression CAN indeed have to do with career or achievements, it's not all some metaphysical garbage-ass tranny-dick-stroking-but-not-sucking struggle. If indeed that is all it is, then I've never had a crisis.

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Actually... a real existential crisis has to do with finding a meaning of life in an inherently meaningless life. Go read about existentialism.

Had a roommate once who had one, I guess. We're on the couch watching TV, and he just turns to me and says "What are we doing, man?"

"Umm, you wanna go to a bar?"

"No," he replies, "WHAT ARE WE DOING?!?" then took off his shoes and threw them across the room, then started to question the meaning of his life.

When I was much younger and came to believe Christianity and then all religion and spiritual belief were fairy tales, I definitely went through an existential crisis. It still happens to small degrees now and then but now I accept there is no inherent meaning to anything, it's only whatever value I place on it. There's some comfort in the absurdity of life.

I think a number of people who lose a strongly held belief that once informed the majority of their world view are apt to experience an existential crisis.

Also:

http://www.theonion.com/articles/i-d...view:1efault

Noodleface_sl said:

I had one in my mid-twenties when I was working a part-time job and living in my parents basement. I went back to school, have a good job now, and about to graduate. I was in a shitty place and realized that my life truly did not have any meaning. I feel better now.

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Pretty much the same case for me. I had one when I was 21. At the time I was working full-time as an IT Desktop Support Tech living essentially paycheck-to-paycheck, saving maybe $100 each pay period. Realized I hated my job and lifestyle at the time, and that I was undermining my own intelligence and potential for a better career, so I quit and went back to school.

Much happier now. Working through an Engineering degree at the moment and working part time at a laboratory were I do entry level work and Im loving it.

i question our existence everyday am i going through crisis constantly? i dont believe in god, because i dont believe that someone so powerful could also be so helpless i went to religion class made my conformation for my grandmother but i never paid attention to religion, but now that im older i question what i know everyday cause it does not make sense, sins god, the devil good evil what the fuck!?!

You need to make less sense to be considered to be in a state of crisis.

you do shit cuz doing nothing is boring

people over think shit sometimes

The Dauntless One_sl said:

Actually... a real existential crisis has to do with finding a meaning of life in an inherently meaningless life. Go read about existentialism.

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No thanks, already took enough Philosophy to realize it's a bullshit study.

I'll just say I found out the meaning of life was 42 when I read through Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

an existential crisis can be caused by numerous things. while the actual crisis itself revolves around finding meaning in a (perceived) meaningless life, as well as whether or not someone even SHOULD find meaning where there seemingly isn't any. you can have an existential crisis because you are unappreciated at work. you can have an existential crisis because you're a 50 year old "loser" living in his parents basement. you can have an existential crisis because you are bill gates and with all your money and trophy wives, you still are only making superficial changes in the world.

an existential crisis transcends social class, job type and achievement in the sense that anyone from any one of those places in life can have one. it does NOT transcend those things in the sense that they can't CAUSE the crisis.

i've had a few... or more accurately... i had one really long one. started when i was 18 and lasted till about 25 or so. a very big part of it was transitioning from being a christian because my family was and that's what i grew up with, to being a christian because that's what i found to be the truth. i'll spare you the story, but i grew up with a lot of people from church that i had a lot of respect for and put on pedestals. the one day i woke up and looked at the newspaper to see that they were all in it for embezzlement. i thought, these are all the people who i grew up learning my morals from... wtf.

after some time and self-exploration i just... it occured to me that THIS is why we need "religion." we're all screwed up and broken and being a "christian" or "buddhist' or whatever else faith you may or may not have doesn't change the fact that we are screwed up and broken.

the reason i bring it up, is because someone mentioned something about people having these crises finding religion. people hate on religious nutcases a lot. and a good chunk of them deserve it, but people find religion because they see things that don't make sense to them and religion helps them make sense of it. and to be clear, i use the term "religion" incredibly loosely. someone can be religiously fanatical about islam just as easily as someone can be religiously fanatical about science.

Traveled to Asia and lived there a while, saw 'special economic zones' in practice and just that brief look into the horrifying lives of slaves sent me into the blackest of depressions. All those years of taking shit for granted only to find it was all off the backs of people deliberately kept out of sight kept churning in my head.

Returning to U.S. life made it all the worse. Each day the senseless misery of those people juxtaposed with the senseless consumption that embodies life here ate away at me, I felt something had to be done. Rage swept me as I knew I was too small a player to do anything to change this terrible machine. What could one man do?' I often asked myself. But still I knew SOMETHINGhad to be done. I had to act.

When I finally got my boob job done my god it was glorious, I was finally on the outside who I always was on the inside. Since then I've felt super.

JVIRUS_sl said:

Traveled to Asia and lived there a while, saw 'special economic zones' in practice and just that brief look into the horrifying lives of slaves sent me into the blackest of depressions. All those years of taking shit for granted only to find it was all off the backs of people deliberately kept out of sight kept churning in my head.

Returning to U.S. life made it all the worse. Each day the senseless misery of those people juxtaposed with the senseless consumption that embodies life here ate away at me, I felt something had to be done. Rage swept me as I knew I was too small a player to do anything to change this terrible machine. What could one man do?' I often asked myself. But still I knew SOMETHINGhad to be done. I had to act.

When I finally got my boob job done my god it was glorious, I was finally on the outside who I always was on the inside. Since then I've felt super.

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JVIRUS_sl said:

Traveled to Asia and lived there a while...

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I lol'd.

j00t_sl said:

someone can be religiously fanatical about islam just as easily as someone can be religiously fanatical about science.

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Cad_sl said:

Actually religion is just a cop out for people who need order imposed on their life and meaning rather than create said meaning themselves through being interesting, complete people who love each other without the man in the sky telling them so.

But hey, whatever works for you. And people aren't "religious" about science. They believe in the results of science because those results can be proven. While religion has been proven time and time again to be made up fucking bullshit.

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thank you for proving my point better than i ever could.

Yeah, man. Being all fanatical about things that are proven be or likely to be true.

you're missing the point. fanatacism isn't about believing in something that doesn't exist. it's about attacking anyone who doesn't agree with you just on principle. in this context? it's about attacking someone who said they were religious just because he said he was religious and assuming that means he CAN'T or WON'T think scientifically.

protip: i never said any of that. if you're asking, (which i'm sure you're not) i believe very strongly that science isn't designed to disprove God's existance. i believe that it's used to show how God works. you can agree with me, or disagree with me and that's perfectly fine. you are allowed to have your opinion and i respect that whether or not we agree with each other.

just because someone is religious doesn't mean he's a fanatic. and just because someone is an athiest doesn't mean he can't be a fanatic.

I think you have the wrong dictionary. Here is webster - as I pointed out to you in pm
www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/fanatical

Definition of FANATIC
: marked by excessive enthusiasm and oftenintense uncritical devotion<they're fanatic about politics>
- fanatic noun
- fa?nat?i?cal?ly adverb
- fa?nat?i?cal?ness noun
See fanatic defined for kids ?
Variants of FANATIC
fa?nat?ic or fa?nat?i?cal
Examples of FANATIC

<because of her fanatical views, her friends know better than to discuss religion with her>

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Science is going by reason, critical thinking and experiments - > forming the best possible description of the world we live in.
Religion is gullibility - faith -> precisely not the above.
Stating they're equally valid or equally able to be 'fanatical about' is asinine.

j00t_sl said:

just because someone is religious doesn't mean he's a fanatic. and just because someone is an athiest doesn't mean he can't be a fanatic.

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You're making an equivocation fallacy and also shifting the subject of discussion. Being a scientist is not the same as being an atheist. Being a scientist means you go about science in precisely a non-fanatical way - you get your finding peer reviewed and don't take your findings on faith - non-gullibility and non-fanatical. Else you're not a scientist, you're just someone asserting your opinion and personal findings as science. We call those creationists around here
Being an atheist is simply rejecting theistic claims. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Thanks to this thread I googled the girl I was in love with in kindergarten more than 30 years ago!

Actually, we were in kindergarten together, but it's a couple years later than she bite my hand after I confessed my love to her (the kind of stuff that makes analysts rich!).

Anyway, thanks for nothing Supertouch!