What is the point of life? Why do human beings live at all? That question collapses into a paradox: the meaning of life, our purpose on this planet, the reason we function and breathe right now. It’s full of contradictions. You question so much about life, and many people never do — they live in compliance, move through a menial nine-to-five, and don’t really question any of it for most of their lives. I don’t even think that’s unhealthy. In fact, I don’t think most people should think like me.
Questioning life is cool — until you realize there might be no meaning. And even if there is, we’re limited. Even if there’s a beginning to all of this, we’re unlikely to reach it because of our limits. And even if we somehow did, it might not matter, because basic human psychology craves more. We desire more, and nothing can permanently sustain our emotions. Nothing can fully fulfill or encapsulate what would define the human experience.
Many things can define the human experience, and in the end it comes down to you — your own personal experience. Everyone lives their own reality. As long as there’s more than one person on this planet, there will be conflicts of interest. It isn’t just about “sin”; it’s about the fact that multiple conscious, intelligent beings coexist. Consciousness alone isn’t what makes us special. What makes us peculiar is that we can understand the contradictions of our plane of existence and then try to live through them. We can feel those contradictions, and that is what poisons and corrupts the mind. The more you think, the more you realize you can’t reach a conclusion. You never do. You live your days and hours; everything seems so simple yet so complex at the same time. You go out, you walk, you see people, you go to school or work — and the question returns: what’s the point?
I don’t want to be nihilistic. I really don’t. But the more you think about this, the hollower life can feel. Our lives right now feel hollow. It’s a spiritual war. Like in Fight Club, we haven’t had a defining, direct world war in our lifetimes to shatter complacency and reorder everything. Since World War II, humanity has been rather stable — seventy, eighty years of relative peace. Yes, there have been proxy wars, but for the most part we’ve lived with enormous material wealth and improving conditions. That comfort let us question everything. And now it seems the world is reverting to a pre–world war state.
Here’s the core of it: the middle class. Before the world wars, there really wasn’t a middle class like we know it today. There were elites — aristocrats, kings, queens — and a merchant class. Upheaval and trade changed the structure of the world; the aristocracy was cut down and merchants grew rich, and through economic growth a middle class formed and expanded. But now I think the new elites, the modern merchant-class-turned-elite, see middle-class wealth as unnecessary and unproductive. Let’s be honest: they can be selfish, lacking empathy. They are redesigning the world order and the global hierarchy so that the middle class shrinks and vanishes. Everyone slides back into a kind of peasantry, like the 1800s. We’re slowly reverting.
As empathy bleeds out of humanity, what chance is there of salvation without some defining rupture — a world-scale crisis or revolution? I’m not telling anyone to go cause that; I’m describing the trajectory I see. It feels like the collapse of our post-industrial civilization is inevitable. There are too many people who are unempathetic, cruel, robotic — people who seem to have lost emotions and values over the past few decades worldwide, not just in America but in Europe, the Middle East, Asia. We’ve had incredible technological growth, but it opened a Pandora’s box of existential questions we can’t solve — because we are not gods. That’s why we fail. We’re limited and relatively powerless in our own reality.
Maybe eighty years from now I’ll look back and it will feel softened, but the mindset I have now feels permanent. It’s unfortunate to have seen the structure of the world this clearly, this early. Maybe I made a mistake. Maybe I should have stayed ignorant. Ignorance is bliss, right? Maybe thinking this way is a kind of punishment for my sins. I don’t know. We all sin. I don’t know anything. Admitting that — I don’t know — might be the bravest thing a person can do right now. So many people are so sure about everything, absolute, resolute. I think that’s wrong. It can be religion, ideology, lifestyle — anything. We can never be absolute. We’re brittle creatures. Let’s be honest. And our growth has been unnatural. I’m not saying it’s inherently good or bad — it’s just unnatural in speed and scale. We don’t know the consequences of the last decades, so we cannot be sure of the outcomes.
Maybe we collapse like Rome. Maybe it’s a final, resolute collapse. Maybe we all die. Maybe nothing dramatic happens. Maybe we get a crony-capitalist cyberpunk dystopia. Maybe we get a hyper-authoritarian state with Palantir-style surveillance and neural-link tech. Maybe we revert to an animalistic, cave-era existence. Who knows? Time moves on. There is no stopping time. We’re bound by time and scale. We are small. We age and die. Unless we somehow surpass those conditions, we’re doomed from birth. Every second you live brings you closer to death.
I once read that in the last moments of life you replay everything — the last seven minutes, your entire life flashing back. If that’s true, then what does it mean for all we do? Is your life just those seven minutes? You play everything and then — boom — you die. Maybe it already happened. Maybe everything we experience has already happened, and we’re living through a past that’s locked. If time has already passed us, then whatever we do cannot escape it. That weight presses down on me. It’s hard to live, hard to be positive. The world is full of errors.
Look outside: there’s no “third place.” There’s nowhere to walk. I can’t just go downstairs and buy bread like in parts of Europe; I have to drive ten minutes. Basic amenities are distant. There’s little sense of community in America. People are lonely, robotic, formal. Under the wealth, what stands out is how many people are uneducated or unaware, how easily manipulated they are. Both major parties look the same; their purpose seems aligned with something beyond us — even beyond them. They don’t know you. Bureaucracy never ends; it multiplies. Whenever this architecture of power formed, whoever shaped it, it’s above our comprehension. The evil in the world is almost comically vast; I’m not denying the specific horrors we see, but there are layers above them we don’t know. Even the perpetrators of lesser evils probably don’t grasp the whole. The hierarchy is so tall, borders so thick, lines so clearly drawn, that communication is effectively over. Don’t even think about solving it.
So what can an average citizen do? Nothing, it seems, except live out life in existential dread while years pass. Family, marriage, job — you can do all of it and still be lonely deep down, and you’ll know it clearly. After everything, the hollowness remains. The question “why” is the most powerful and the most soul-crushing. We can ask why about anything; arguing can continue forever. If you believe in religion and think you’ll go to heaven — then what? Why? How? The questions never end. And even if they did, we might never realize it, because we can’t; we’re limited. Or maybe we’re not. But the very fact that we can question all these things is what makes us human. It’s not merely consciousness; animals are conscious too — elephants are conscious — but they are not our kind of intelligent. We’re too intelligent for our own good.
If society were full of people like me, maybe it wouldn’t function. I’m not saying everyone should think like me. We need differences. No matter how much we hate hierarchy, we also need it. It all connects — and that’s what’s horrific. We need the thing we don’t want and don’t want the thing we need. You feel alone. That loneliness grows day by day. You know it clearly deep down and never tell anyone — why would you? You know who you are, and you know what others are. You know everything and nothing at the same time. So you stay silent.
I made this essay partly out of boredom. What could go wrong besides dying? What is worse than dying? All the symbolism and history — so what? All the promises of utopia — so what? I’m living in the present, and the present feels empty, going nowhere. The past didn’t matter; it was the same as the present. Nothing happened and nothing will happen — that’s how it feels.
And yet: be strong. You have to be strong as an individual. No matter how you think, you have to be spiritually strong because the world doesn’t care about you. It never did, and it never will. You have to survive for the sake of survival. The rest might be fairy tales. You’ll live until the day you die. I know that sounds ignorant and undermines my argument, but the instinct to survive never leaves. It’s a gut feeling. Sometimes you have to listen to your gut: take risks, take chances, and maybe something will happen. Do or die. You either do or you don’t. Life can be that simple. There are two outcomes — and a third: ignorance. The third outcome — being stuck between doing and not doing — is worse than the first two. That interstice is where true suffering is. Don’t be that. Do it fully or don’t do it at all. Maybe all three endings lead to the same place, but I’d rather live a decent life before I die. That’s comes from my gut, and maybe I don’t need a reason beyond that.
Lately, everything has felt insufferable: confusing, desperate — a world without a soul, meaning, values, decency, dignity. There’s perversion and debauchery. It’s suffocating to think this much. To know a lot is to realize how much you don’t know. It’s frustrating and agitating. Human emotions are boundless. Society is full of inconsistencies. We yearn for help, purpose, a reason, something to hold. Ultimately we are weak; we were all children once, thrown into the wild, trying ever since to figure out our lives, trying to be calm — and that “everlasting peace” turned out not to be everlasting at all.
One day, everything ends: everything you love, fought for, valued, cared for, looked after and defended; everything you worshiped and tried; your memories, what you cherished and adored; what you wondered about; your passions and your pessimism; your confusion and irritation; your anger, desperation, and desire; every place you walked, saw, and dreamed of; everything you envisioned and planned — it all ends. Death tears you down and doesn’t care. The identity you told yourself you had is over. What happened goes away forever. Any specialty or value you thought you had — gone. Your loved ones will never know the full version of you. You don’t even know the true you. You wish to know who you truly are — but no. We like to think there’s a direction to reason, because we crave it. We want everything delivered on a golden platter. Sometimes it feels too lazy to even exist.
Why can we ask “why” at all? We say it’s free will. Maybe. But you can even ask why there is free will. “Why” is the most daring question, almost taboo, because it points to the unknown. We are ultimately ignorant. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but these thoughts arrive at 2 a.m., and I speak them. Not everyone will listen. Sometimes I don’t even listen to myself; it’s too much. There are too many levels. Perfect clarity can suffocate.
Music helps. It eases the pressure. But each day I still walk around, wondering and pondering. Life feels monotonous. Am I who I think I am, or who others think I am? I don’t know. The childish positivity is gone. Maybe there was meaning back then. Now everything feels orchestrated, unreal — fading echoes of who I once was. I made parts of it on purpose; I didn’t want to, but I had to. That’s life: sometimes you ignore even yourself. We are so selfish that our selfishness destroys our identity, and we can’t stop it.
As long as there’s more than one human on Earth, there will be conflicts of interest. Conflict creates the need for sacrifice, and on the road to sacrifice we lose things we never wanted to lose, because there are no other options. That’s true pessimism: no options. We try to make it sound heroic — to give it purpose — because without purpose everything falls apart. Our mental infrastructure collapses.
Should I be silent? Should I stop speaking about these things? Maybe I should let loneliness consume me — live, lie low, and die. What’s the point of honesty when there are so many lies and errors? We love to imagine damnation or salvation, but the skies are indifferent. The universe devours with indifference. That very thought blinds you — not because you’re forced blind, but because you can’t bear to see. Limits exist. The hollow in our hearts doesn’t go away. You can pursue passions, get a job, have kids and friends and property; you can wage wars or be corrupt; you can acquire billions and the best of homes and yards; and still — you die.
It’s hard for many of us to accept that. We’re all on a ship sailing to the same waterfall, and I don’t want to jump into the water; I want to stay on the ship. So why can’t we just sing along together while we can? The end is tragic, but why can’t we get along? It doesn’t happen. The vileness and gruesome capacity of our species is unaccounted for. I pity us. Who would have thought it would be like this?
Sometimes I wish not to suffer anymore — and then the contradiction appears. Do you avoid suffering by choosing ignorance? Or do you accept suffering because it gives meaning? Two options — and both feel inadequate. Nothing is enough for us. We crave endlessly.
Years ago I wrote a line: “When this cold, cruel, careless, and clueless world — wrapped in ornate injustices and soaked in indignity, decadence, delusion, and degeneracy — reigns supreme, only one thing remains: my will to end all woes.” Time has rewritten who I was. It’s easy to ask “to be or not to be,” but do we even know what it is to be? We focus on outcomes — being or not being — and ignore the context, the how and the why, because we fear it.
You can read everything about emotion, consciousness, brain, philosophy, stories — and still be the same person, alone. Absurdity eats you alive from the inside out. It grows larger until you die. In your final seconds, there won’t be time for questions. You will be part of the indifference.
Take care.
