A Brief Look at Disillusionment
An email correspondence adapted to a consortium of various thoughts.
Statue of Hemingway: King (in my opinion, at least) of The Lost Generation.
At the beginning of this year I was dealing with various hardships, including but not limited to severe back pain, depression, and, worst of all, a lack of meaning. I want to write another essay specifically about my experiences from being injured, but this post will highlight an email correspondence I had with a graduate student who is investigating one of the questions that we should all routinely ask oursevles—that is: what is the meaning of life?
If you would like to take a look at his profile yourself, I have linked it here. To maintain a level of privacy, I have paraphrased the content of his email and his questions. Without further introduction, here are my thoughts on disillusionment, as related to modern technological progress, depression, and modern life in general.
The main questions guiding my thoughts are:
Does our disillusionment (that is, feeling lost, with no sense of purpose) feel like something historically-specific, or perhaps a more general feature of human life?
It feels difficult to cope with that fact that there doesn't seem to be some larger societal project that is worth contributing to, and the future of our society indicates that the human species may be toast—impending climate catastrophe and all. The speed of technological change and the scale of global human society seems to have something to do with this as well. What are your thoughts?
I don’t believe human life is inherently meaningless, simply because we all have the ability to create meaning. That is, everyone has great potential to provide value for society. Thus I don’t think meaning comes from a divine power or is inherently planted within us. If that were the case, and everyone adhered to some religious dogma, we would live in a stagnant world indeed: one where everyone thinks their mission is to get to heaven, or some higher plane of existence, or so on—a world where people stop believing in themselves and uniformity in meaning pervades. Feeling lost, on the other hand, is certainly a feature of human life. It’s not new, but perhaps it has been exacerbated in the modern era by various factors. Let me go into why I think this has happened from a historical and personal point of view.
From a historical perspective I see this question as related to the rise and fall of empires. As such, I’m greatly concerned about the future of American (and Western in general) culture—especially tribalism: the “woke” radical left and Trumpism on the radical right. I think we’re seeing a degradation of culture and a renouncement of the values that made America unique in the first place: freedom of speech, dialogue, respect. And to make things worse, it seems that we’ve returned to a 1920s-esque period where people pursue wealth just for the sake of it. Many of my peers want to work a high paying job in finance or engineering. They don’t really care about the philosophical meaning of life, nor do they ask themselves introspective questions at all. This is not to say bankers and engineers cannot be philosophical in nature—many startup founders are. But in my experience, liberal arts have been cast aside as useless by many of my classmates. For parents, this seems like a no-brainer: why major in philosophy when you can major in software engineering and make more money? This is the modern expectation for youth in America, and I think it is flawed. (I’m working on an article articulating these thoughts in a more nuanced fashion.)
Perhaps I’m making a statistical error by relying on a convenience sample to generalize all young Americans—and I certainly hope I am—but I believe it’s clear—and you may disagree with me—that American culture has shifted from an ideology based on the American dream—the idea that hard work and taking risks will bring you happiness and success—to a trend of dangerous consumerism and conformism: wanting to consume and buy luxury goods and work a prestigious job or go to a selective school instead of creating value for mankind. Academia, and indeed modern society in general, seems to invoke a deep-seeded fear of being different, of being opinionated—and, in some cases, of the very act of caring itself. Many kids around me don’t seem to care about…well…anything except for making money and going to a good college. America is toast if this continues.
Part of the reason why this is happening, I think, is what you said: there isn’t an “official” larger societal project that exists—like WW2 or the space race—though I disagree that there are no “unofficial” projects worth contributing to. There are so many problems—too many to choose from, in fact—that are worth dedicating one’s life to addressing: global hunger, wars, famines, climate to name a few. It’s just that most Americans (including me) are privileged enough not to face the existential threat imposed by many of these issues, which gives us the illusion that they aren’t important. Wars, hunger, famines—these aren’t new, and quite frankly, they will never get old because they are results of nature. And they happen in places like Sudan, which is across the globe. These conflicts therefore doesn’t directly affect us so we don’t really do anything about it. This is grossly unfair. I intend to join this project somehow. The climate issue is unique in that it is a huge existential threat to all nations. It’s quite new and human-induced, and the fact that nothing gets done about it is scary. I intend to join this project somehow, too. AI is another potential threat to humanity. I intend to join this project somehow, too. There are indeed so many problems that must be solved for homo sapiens to endure. Otherwise, you’re right: the future is unpredictable; the only thing I can predict is that it will be grim, unless we address these problems—which, if we do, and do it properly, the future may actually look quite good!
The flip side—shutting down our modern way of life—is equally scary, if not even scarier. Humanity cannot risk stagnation—especially technological stagnation. In fact, technology alone has the ability to save the human race from extinction. (Read Peter Thiel’s Zero to One.) The notion that our only way of surviving climate catastrophe is by immediately hopping off fossil fuels is nonsensical and would be devastating for everyone who isn’t a billionaire or politician. We need more, not less, technical innovation. We need more, not less, dialogue and conversation and deep thinking. But more than all, we need more learning, more caring, more creating; that is, we need more PHILOSOPHY.
As I said earlier, you’re right that the future of our society seems grim and difficult to predict. But there are so many ways one can provide value to their fellow man that, for me at least, it’s hard to choose! I have faced Foucault’s dilemma of man’s meaning: I want to do it all. I have so much freedom that I feel lost. And the college application process does not account for people like me who have so many interests. I want to study physics and engineering and start a climate company; I want to join politics and save America from what I see as a preventable suicide; I want to work with Elon to get us to Mars; I want to stop the killing in the Middle East, in Sudan, in Nigeria. I know this is naive, but I am convinced that caring about all these issues is better than not caring about anything at all.
But I digress. Please let me know what you think of my points. I’m excited to hear back!!!
