What is the best way for one to extricate themself from an existential crisis?
Get out of thy head. Do something with your hands. Help someone in your immediate vicinity who you know needs something that you can help with, either in home, work, circle of friends, etc.Stop reading so many other people’s thoughts on “the big picture”. ie. My guess is not having information regarding how to think about things is NOT one of your problems.Cut the information consumption glut to a bare minimum and instead give yourself some time to “test and approve” what actually works for your own personal journey. Usually just a few principles, not entire systematic thought or idea frameworks. Anyways, test a few of the ones that are easy to understand out. See where your will vs your ever-transient desires vs your ever-transient emotions intersect. You might get some clues to practical things that make for a better time for you on the planet vs. not so great.Appreciate your times of ennui or boredom as what they really might be…space where not much is going on to allow you to truly embrace what it means to be at rest or at peace. Peace here not meaning the absence of issues, contradictions, pain, or problems, but more like a space where you can relish the base fact that you exist and to exist, even with all the issues, contradictions, pain, or problems…is actually a pretty neat thing that your best “answer” for, is you making the most of your little slice of it, along with the others sharing some of that slice too. ;-)p.s. pic is from Zach Snyder’s ‘Man of Steel’ movie from 2013.
Doesnt the existence of dinosaurs Contradict the Christian Religion?
Adam and eve apparently came first, then had all their children. But the people who wrote the bible forgot one thing, Dinosaurs. There is NO way that humans would have been capable of surviving through eras which were dominated by Reptiles. Food would be very difficult to find, and preadatory dinos would have wiped out inferior human bodys. And even if they did survive that, how would they have gone through the ice age? And why are there Dinosaur fossils yet no human fossils? The oldest human bones found are about 195,000 years old. Quite long, but not nearly as large as the numbers the dinosaurs racked up
What is your view on existential nihilism, and how many believe there is no point in purpose or ambition?
Existential nihilism is the absolute worst philosophy ever devised. There are exactly zero answers within this frame of thinking. Nihilism is nothing more than poison for the mind, I would know as I was an existential nihilist all throughout my teenage years. Guess who produced the bulk of nihilism’s popular work? Your boy Friedrich Nietzsche, a German (a people not known for their warmness, spontaneity or playful eccentricity. A people who have a very much serious approach to life. I am German by the way.) whose life was horrible only by the fault of his own. A man who never dared to look outside of himself. A man who never attempted to truly better his mortal condition. A man that could not uproot himself from his own bullshit, a man who did not challenge his own conclusions to find a potential alternative. Had he actually tried I am certain he would have found one and his nihilistic house of cards would have crumbled beneath him. A man who grew everso bitter and rotted himself to the core of his being because he absolutely refused to search and find meaning. And guess what happened to him? He went insane and died shortly after.
Existentialism identifies the problem but does not provide the solution (in my opinion). How can one "create" meaning?
Existentialism can’t offer a solution, if for no other reason than that Existentialism is a term used to refer to a discursive tradition, not a body of work itself. Individual thinkers within that discourse, however, have most certainly provided what they thought were “solutions.” They differ widely, and odds are you won’t find them wholly adequate. But you can certainly find them relatively easily. Schopenhauer would tell you to commit to a form of asceticism which rejects the will to life. Nietzsche would tell you, sort of, how to seek affirmation. Camus would tell you to sink into it and find happiness in the process, and through revolt (they’re not as contradictory as they sound, believe it or not). Kierkegaard would tell you that Christian love is the only solution. I have my own opinions on each of these positions, and all of them require a great deal more in-depth reading to really evaluate - they don’t lend themselves to this kind of summary.But I would also add, not speaking for any philosopher, that while meaninglessness is a valid realization, it is not a “problem” as such which could have a solution. What would a satisfactory answer look like to you? If there were an inescapable “plot” to your life, dictated by a divine entity or some such, would that make you feel better, or worse? In my experience, most people can’t articulate what they *mean by meaning* in this context. It’s pretty hard to find a satisfactory answer to a question which doesn’t really make sense.
To all Christians, I have a question about faith. Can any faithful Christian answer it truthfully?
Yes