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Originally Posted by Nxious
I feel like I am in a prison in this life. I was put in it involuntarily because my parents decided to have me and wanted to be happy by all of this natural feelings that come with a new born or have a meaning for their lives, and then was asked to accept its misery and until you die. I see my death as a liberation, but also too scared of it if that makes sense.
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Nxious, have you read the
Nihilists?
I vacillate between
Nihilism, Absurdism, and Existentialism and I'm nearly 50. I knew from a young age, that I was a non-conformist and trying to find my place in the world as someone who doesn't like to conform has been a painful experience only because I kept trying to "fit in" to systems that I don't believe in, rather than embrace my non-conformity and flourish.
I see the same thing happening to you. I highly recommend reading up on those three philosophy types until you find the one that resonates with your life the best. Then, embrace it, and try to find outlets that also embrace the philosophy that informs your life. Albert Camus is one of my favorite writers.
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Existentialism is the belief that through a combination of awareness, free will, and personal responsibility, one can construct their own meaning within a world that intrinsically has none of its own.
Nihilism is the belief that not only is there no intrinsic meaning in the universe, but that it’s pointless to try to construct our own as a substitute.
Absurdism is the belief that a search for meaning is inherently in conflict with the actual lack of meaning, but that one should both accept this and simultaneously rebel against it by embracing what life has to offer.
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And...
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The religious believe that meaning was imbued into the universe by a supreme being, that this knowledge is available to us via one or more texts, and that it’s our responsibility to go learn about it.
Existentialists may or may not agree that religions speak to real/discoverable meaning, but they believe that people can make their own meaning that wouldn’t be any less real than what religion offers.
Nihilists believe/know not just that religion is false—i.e., that there is no built-in meaning in the universe waiting to be discovered—but that any meaning we try to build for ourselves will not be “real” either. It’ll just be a construct of our own minds that we pretend has the gravity of religious meaning.
Absurdism is the unifier: it accepts that we seem to function best with some sort of religious belief in our lives, but that science has shown the nihilists are right about both revealed meaning and constructed meaning. As a result, many choose to use some parts of a meaning structure—either borrowed or constructed—to get the human benefits thereof, but without relaxing so far that they start believing it’s true.
Knowing where one stands among—or perhaps outside—these options is a crucial part of self-understanding.
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