Please help. I don't really care about humans anymore

[BojackHorseman]

Humans are weird. I'm weird. We're all petty, fighting for visions that we'll never be able to reconcile in a neverending fight of hate and egotism.
Everything's the same. There's variations but at past 40 now, I see how it's all the same, again and again, I have no idea how people keep having fun or feeling interested in this.
I just don't feel at my place anymore, everything is so pointless it hurts.
I don't have any children and I don't want them. I've tried forcing myself to think about it, but I instinctively don't like being with them that much (I don't hate them at all. I just don't really care. I feel like most people just have children to have a goal in life and feel like they can live again through them)
I feel like a ghost. A ghost full of regrets of what I didn't accomplish when I was younger and still cared about life (I know people will say you can still do things etc, but it's not the same. The flame is almost all gone and someone my age can't some things either) This is the worst fucking feeling.

I'm at a point where I'm thinking about everything to be "saved". I'm agnostic but thinking about religion so I can drown myself into something and maybe feel some kind of epiphany. I'm thinking about digging into extreme political views on the opposite of mine. I'm thinking about childish things like finding out anything that seems extreme in the occult. Like any of this would be a magic pill that could bring me back to life. I also fear this because I know this is how some desperate people do stupid things and turn from good people to people in hateful sects.

Sorry for the rambling. It's just getting worse every year now, and I have this gut feeling I don't want to be controlled by medication (I've also read a lot of stories where half the time, it doesn't turn out well for various reasons)

Edit : I also feel like despite the kind words people distribute to someone depressed, at some point, you can't be saved anymore. That sounds like an horrible truth no one wants to hear, but I feel like I'm getting there in a way. Something in my gut tells me "it's the end now. Stop trying. It's too late"

Edited Monday at 11:13 PM by BojackHorseman

[integral]

Breaking free from existential meaninglessness typically happens through several pathways, based on many people's experiences:

1. **Finding meaning through creation** - Many people discover that making something—art, music, writing, building—creates pockets of meaning. It's not about the outcome but the process of bringing something new into existence. As one person described it: "I couldn't find meaning in the world, so I started making things. The act of creation itself became meaningful before I even noticed."

2. **Shifting from meaning-seeking to engagement** - Some find relief when they stop searching for grand meaning and instead focus on moments of engagement. A recovering nihilist once noted: "I stopped asking 'what's the point?' and started asking 'what absorbs me completely?' Working with my hands gave me hours where the question of meaning simply didn't arise."

3. **Connection and service to others** - Meaningful relationships and helping others provides purpose that transcends personal emptiness. As one person put it: "When I focused on being useful to just one person, the question of whether life had meaning became irrelevant. The connection itself was enough."

4. **Embracing absurdity** - Some find freedom in accepting life's fundamental absurdity. A follower of Camus described: "Once I stopped expecting the universe to make sense, I could create my own meaning through rebellion against meaninglessness. My daily acts of kindness became my defiance."

5. **Radical acceptance** - Many report breakthrough moments when they stopped fighting against meaninglessness and simply acknowledged it without judgment. "When I stopped trying to escape the void and just sat with it, something shifted. The pressure lifted, and I could breathe again."

6. **Finding meaning in the mundane** - Simple daily rituals and appreciating ordinary moments often creates unexpected meaning. "The taste of morning coffee, the warmth of sunlight—I started treating these small pleasures as sacred. Over time, they added up to something that felt like purpose."

The path out usually isn't dramatic but gradual—built through small, consistent actions rather than a single transformative experience.

Claude-

 

——

[integral]

But the main issue I think is not that everything feels meaningless. It’s that you’re depressed. It feels like one is causing the other. but really it’s just depression, causing everything to feel meaningless. For example, if you took a drug suddenly everything feels great…. And meaningful.

The main cure for depression is daily intensive exercise, high-quality sleep, high quality nutrition, and your neurochemistry shall change enough for you start to enjoy things again.

Most of the time this is a body problem not a mind problem.

but in the situation where it’s a terrible worldview causing the trouble, then you gotta wake up and create a new world view

Edited Tuesday at 03:37 AM by integral

[Never_give_up]

I feel the same way about the meaningless thing and I am 30. I don't know if this will help you or will help me but I think I am going to engage in art (novel writing and some drawing mostly) and maybe this will give me the dopamine and serotonin I want and actually live a happy life. But I suspect it takes time to be good at it to achieve very good results that will make you happy.

I feel the same as about the novelty. One amazing film is Agora for example, I don't think I will ever see a film like that again, or video game Assasin's Creed Odyssey, such an immersive artistic video game, I don't think I will ever feel the same feelings at anything ever again although I hope.... Could art be the answer? I don't know, give it a try.

For the last 30 years I used to philosophize a lot, but now I no longer find it enjoyable, it seems I no longer discover insights about life that make me feel amazing like I used to. And when I think some people have way worse than me it feels so hopeless. Whatever, consume and create art, that's the next thing I try and hope it works and it helps and hope if you try the same that it works and it helps.

[Twentyfirst]

 

[Flowerfaeiry]

Do you have anything you enjoy doing?

[UnbornTao]

You need to see that this is something you're doing, and how you're doing it. Essentially, it is based on what you create with your mind (what you "think"). 

Stop generating those expectations, ideations, and demands, and the subsequent negative feelings that result from them won't occur. 

Catch your own conceptual activity at the beginning of these dysfunctional thinking loops.

Edited yesterday at 06:22 AM by UnbornTao

[Letho]

@BojackHorseman apathy is not a dead end. It’s a door.

Your reframing of apathy is actually from one perspective brilliant, because it disrupts a fundamental illusion. Look, most people fear stagnation because they’ve been conditioned to see life as a vertical hierarchy where they're climbing, progressing, avoiding the void. But what if that’s the wrong dimension entirely? What if apathy isn’t the opposite of meaning, but a parallel axis? What if the highest frequencies were closer to the lowest than to the mediocre, middle-of-the-road existence?

Just take this perspective you have objectively, there's no need to give emotional weight to it outside of anchoring yourself in the depth of who you are, you don't need to judge it as negative because you’re standing at the edge of something most never perceive; most write books about fearing the void rather than jumping into it, thus for now, there's just an opportunity for learning staring back at you. Given when taken with the god gift of your intelligence apathy isn’t going to be suffering or arguably nor is any emotion, instead it’s going to be its own freedom in disguise. Where instead, the real trap is actually going to be in the belief that meaningless is the problem when its the other side of the coin that all humans must find peace with. When people tell the apathetic to "find meaning," they miss the point. If meaning itself feels like an illusion, searching for it only deepens the void. So don’t. Instead of forcing significance, engage in creation, not for meaning, not for fulfillment, but simply because you can. Apathy only feels like suffering when you think it’s a trap. But what if it’s an unlocked door?

If nothing matters, you are untouchably free.
If everything matters, you are overflowing with love.
The space between these two isn’t a void, it’s waiting for you to step into it.
What if... You took that vertical staircase most of the population in a capitalistic society are caught in the illusion of and instead... you stepped sideways instead of just forward? Where instead of fighting apathy, you lean into it. Instead of treating it like quicksand, you use it as a launchpad, a launchpad that you get to design.

Apathy, seen clearly, is not a suffocating hole. It’s the space between piano notes, the pause before impact. And yet, modern society pathologizes stillness, scrambling for shallow fixes instead of embracing the rhythm of experience; Tinder, Hollywood, TikTok, Twitter, even political and religious debates, they're all secret escapes for the very people that struggle with authentic communication between one another while pretending to wear the clothes of those addictions as their sovereign identity. This is why people push out yet another flimsy pop record instead of embracing silence, tension, and discord as part of something greater. And that’s the real illusion, this blind pursuit of “more experiences,” while most never even read the terms and conditions of the reality they’re subscribing to.

Let's look at a radical example of being thrown amidst the trauma and chaos of war that demands the order of your existential aptitude that was meant for the re-designing of existence upon your birth to be flattened solely against the objectives of its torment. 

Over 178,000 soldiers have died in the Ukraine-Russia war. Over 500,000 more have been wounded. Now, imagine yourself in that war. Not as an observer but as a soldier. One moment, you are numb. The next, you are forced into an ancient reality, kill or be killed. Your apathy or any contradictory emotion is shattered, not by meaning, but by something older than you... tribe, war, survival, belonging. Which is why so many soldiers struggle after the war sometimes much more than what they struggled while in the war, as they haven't educated themselves enough on the contrast of their experiences there weighed against the evolutionary code that supplants most of the existential dichotomies that put us in these binds we find difficult to resolve. 

And here’s the terrifying part, many of those soldiers started exactly where you are now.

Lost. Insignificant. Seeking.

War gave them a structure, a cause, an identity.
Because evolutionarily, war + tribe + belonging = satisfaction.

But at what cost?

You're unknowingly ahead of most people Bojack.

Most never escape this loop. They run toward ideology, toward war, toward any system that will tell them who they are.The fact that you haven’t blindly thrown yourself into something extreme just to feel alive means you’re already ahead of them. The fact that you can see the illusion means you’re ready for something deeper.

Two Roads Diverged in a Wood (Robert Frost)…

This is where most people let society rub the geni that is the bottle of their own consciousness to distort the magic everyone is capable of, replacing everyone's inherent magical potential for the meaning they have pre-installed into a capitalistic (or worse) structure that pays for them to be killed by its war machine only after they failed in their promise to educate them on the true nature of their consciousness and the purpose they were going to give them. Sneaky, don't you think?

But you don’t have to. Whether its war or just being a stupified Netflix chip to mouth feeding, ego arms up in the air behind every Spielberg creak in the episode of whatever "horror-flick" designed to preoccupy the attention of people that have momentarily rejected existence because they struggle to connect with it. Or what's worse, scrolling the next TikTok video? Wow, talk about a shallow existence right? You're leagues ahead of the people that look forward to their morning TikTok scroll for their dopamine fix because they replace authentic dopamine, serotonin and experiences that bond the social fortitude of oxytocin for the momentary contemplative realm of a "surf's life". 

This isn’t about “finding an answer.”

This is about realizing you were never lost.

Rather, the only question is...

Not - "Did I do enough?" or worse, "Did I watch enough pretend smiling faces on TikTok and, pretend because they're just fishing for validation?" 
But - "Did I get the physics of my own consciousness right?"

Because at the end of all this, your heartbeat will slow. Your neurons will quiet. Your body will cease, and your consciousness will move into whatever comes next. 

And none of the illusions will matter.

Only this...

Did you learn how to play this experience with your own rhythm? Did you dance to the beat of your own drum?

For you, is this 'meaningless', inside, outside or both and what sense of self-worth can you bring to your own recognition of discerning the differences there and reconciling yourself within them? Beyond too? You don't have to, you can just sit with your experiences if you like, its your reality resolution you're finding peace with, as I said, for one day the destruction its better for you to find peace with now for growth rather than later, is that the brains lights will be taken out one way or another eventually, so what light can we at least give to that neural and heart firing that at least makes it feel heard and understood that what its seeing, feeling and experiencing, isn't something to ignore but find internal unity with?

So, now what?

Do something.

Not because it has meaning.
But because you are free to do it, and that next note in the song of your own design is waiting for you to do so. 

Write something absurd and meaningless given your take on humans merely being "weird", parody it, find another lens for it and merge the juxtapositions into interesting creative syntheses and watch your consciousness create itself for itself in those moments as they work naturally, in remedying the depth of what you're struggling with, which isn't apathy, its in being unsure with how to anchor your consciousness creativity within it. Further, destroy something you’ve created. Walk somewhere unfamiliar with no goal. Be ridiculous just to see how it feels. Your natural consciousness intelligence will fill in the blanks for you, slowly teach itself its own answers.

So for the soldiers in Ukraine and Russia right now, the weird humans scrolling TikTok and robotically renouncing their sovereignty over their remote controls as they unconsciously click for the next episode on Netflix, or the thousands of fat americans that have struggled with their own disillusions on the shallowness of their existence and have had the determination to will themselves to the treadmill, or the peace that awaits the civilians of both Russia, Ukraine and neighboring countries and the rebuilding of meaning that was taken away, replaced and or destroyed from their essence in some way, what is going to be the metamorphosis that is unique to you? And too, not only beyond the remote control of the causality of biological programs but even, if only a little, in mature unification with it?

Apathy is not the end. It's just a door most people never realize is there.

And you?

You're standing in front of it.

Knock, knock.

 

Edited yesterday at 04:37 AM by Letho

[A Fellow Lighter]

On 18/03/2025 at 1:05 AM, BojackHorseman said:

Humans are weird. I'm weird. We're all petty, fighting for visions that we'll never be able to reconcile in a neverending fight of hate and egotism.
Everything's the same. There's variations but at past 40 now, I see how it's all the same, again and again, I have no idea how people keep having fun or feeling interested in this.
I just don't feel at my place anymore, everything is so pointless it hurts.
I don't have any children and I don't want them. I've tried forcing myself to think about it, but I instinctively don't like being with them that much (I don't hate them at all. I just don't really care. I feel like most people just have children to have a goal in life and feel like they can live again through them)
I feel like a ghost. A ghost full of regrets of what I didn't accomplish when I was younger and still cared about life (I know people will say you can still do things etc, but it's not the same. The flame is almost all gone and someone my age can't some things either) This is the worst fucking feeling.

I'm at a point where I'm thinking about everything to be "saved". I'm agnostic but thinking about religion so I can drown myself into something and maybe feel some kind of epiphany. I'm thinking about digging into extreme political views on the opposite of mine. I'm thinking about childish things like finding out anything that seems extreme in the occult. Like any of this would be a magic pill that could bring me back to life. I also fear this because I know this is how some desperate people do stupid things and turn from good people to people in hateful sects.

Sorry for the rambling. It's just getting worse every year now, and I have this gut feeling I don't want to be controlled by medication (I've also read a lot of stories where half the time, it doesn't turn out well for various reasons)

Edit : I also feel like despite the kind words people distribute to someone depressed, at some point, you can't be saved anymore. That sounds like an horrible truth no one wants to hear, but I feel like I'm getting there in a way. Something in my gut tells me "it's the end now. Stop trying. It's too late"

Good. Feel it. Feel it all. 👌

[The Renaissance Man]

On 3/18/2025 at 4:31 AM, integral said:

Breaking free from existential meaninglessness typically happens through several pathways, based on many people's experiences:

1. **Finding meaning through creation** - Many people discover that making something—art, music, writing, building—creates pockets of meaning. It's not about the outcome but the process of bringing something new into existence. As one person described it: "I couldn't find meaning in the world, so I started making things. The act of creation itself became meaningful before I even noticed."

2. **Shifting from meaning-seeking to engagement** - Some find relief when they stop searching for grand meaning and instead focus on moments of engagement. A recovering nihilist once noted: "I stopped asking 'what's the point?' and started asking 'what absorbs me completely?' Working with my hands gave me hours where the question of meaning simply didn't arise."

3. **Connection and service to others** - Meaningful relationships and helping others provides purpose that transcends personal emptiness. As one person put it: "When I focused on being useful to just one person, the question of whether life had meaning became irrelevant. The connection itself was enough."

4. **Embracing absurdity** - Some find freedom in accepting life's fundamental absurdity. A follower of Camus described: "Once I stopped expecting the universe to make sense, I could create my own meaning through rebellion against meaninglessness. My daily acts of kindness became my defiance."

5. **Radical acceptance** - Many report breakthrough moments when they stopped fighting against meaninglessness and simply acknowledged it without judgment. "When I stopped trying to escape the void and just sat with it, something shifted. The pressure lifted, and I could breathe again."

6. **Finding meaning in the mundane** - Simple daily rituals and appreciating ordinary moments often creates unexpected meaning. "The taste of morning coffee, the warmth of sunlight—I started treating these small pleasures as sacred. Over time, they added up to something that felt like purpose."

The path out usually isn't dramatic but gradual—built through small, consistent actions rather than a single transformative experience.

Claude-

Solid!

21 hours ago, UnbornTao said:

You need to see that this is something you're doing, and how you're doing it. Essentially, it is based on what you create with your mind (what you "think"). 

Stop generating those expectations, ideations, and demands, and the subsequent negative feelings that result from them won't occur. 

Catch your own conceptual activity at the beginning of these dysfunctional thinking loops.

And this too, seems really great advice that goes to the core of the problem. I don't know how feasible this is or how much work this could take though. @UnbornTao

 

 

Edited 23 hours ago by The Renaissance Man

[ted73104]

22 hours ago, Letho said:

@BojackHorseman apathy is not a dead end. It’s a door.

Your reframing of apathy is actually from one perspective brilliant, because it disrupts a fundamental illusion. Look, most people fear stagnation because they’ve been conditioned to see life as a vertical hierarchy where they're climbing, progressing, avoiding the void. But what if that’s the wrong dimension entirely? What if apathy isn’t the opposite of meaning, but a parallel axis? What if the highest frequencies were closer to the lowest than to the mediocre, middle-of-the-road existence?

Just take this perspective you have objectively, there's no need to give emotional weight to it outside of anchoring yourself in the depth of who you are, you don't need to judge it as negative because you’re standing at the edge of something most never perceive; most write books about fearing the void rather than jumping into it, thus for now, there's just an opportunity for learning staring back at you. Given when taken with the god gift of your intelligence apathy isn’t going to be suffering or arguably nor is any emotion, instead it’s going to be its own freedom in disguise. Where instead, the real trap is actually going to be in the belief that meaningless is the problem when its the other side of the coin that all humans must find peace with. When people tell the apathetic to "find meaning," they miss the point. If meaning itself feels like an illusion, searching for it only deepens the void. So don’t. Instead of forcing significance, engage in creation, not for meaning, not for fulfillment, but simply because you can. Apathy only feels like suffering when you think it’s a trap. But what if it’s an unlocked door?

For you, is this 'meaningless', inside, outside or both and what sense of self-worth can you bring to your own recognition of discerning the differences there and reconciling yourself within them? Beyond too? You don't have to, you can just sit with your experiences if you like, its your reality resolution you're finding peace with, as I said, for one day the destruction its better for you to find peace with now for growth rather than later, is that the brains lights will be taken out one way or another eventually, so what light can we at least give to that neural and heart firing that at least makes it feel heard and understood that what its seeing, feeling and experiencing, isn't something to ignore but find internal unity with?

So, now what?

Do something.

Not because it has meaning.
But because you are free to do it, and that next note in the song of your own design is waiting for you to do so. 

Apathy is not the end. It's just a door most people never realize is there.

And you?

You're standing in front of it.

Knock, knock.

 

I wish we could have upvoting on this platform. This comment needs to have its upvote button smashed.

[Letho]

3 hours ago, ted73104 said:

I wish we could have upvoting on this platform. This comment needs to have its upvote button smashed.

Glad it resonated. The real upvote is what you do with it.

 

[LastThursday]

@BojackHorseman as soon as you said past 40, I was like uh-huh. 

It doesn't get talked about so much anywhere but this is Mid-life Crisis territory. Although I think that name is overly-dramatic and has certain negative connotations attached it: fast cars and being impulsive.

A better way to see it is as a maturation process. There are stages you go through as you age, like walking, puberty, brain maturation at 25 and so on. For some people they begin a process of seeing life more clearly around the age of 40, an awakening if you like. And it can really shake the foundations of your life. Essentially it's a process of re-organisation in your identity.

For me personally it come on very unexpectedly and was a living hell for a good number of years, I was about 38. I become intensely emotional, everything became meaningless and I disliked who I was intensely: it was nearly like a second puberty, but very different. I also wanted to run away from everything in my life and start again, and I wanted everything to fit into what I wanted fuck everyone else (that's how I felt at the time). Contrasted to how I'd been before 38, it was like day and night, I has always been optimistic, upbeat and well-adjusted.

But I would say everyone's experience of a mid-life crisis (if you do experience it), is different and personal.

In my experience it is just a phase, it has a beginning and an end. You may end up being a very different person through the other end, and in my case it was worth the pain (mostly). It may last some years.

If you think you're depressed, then get help, there's no shame in that. Otherwise, just take one day at a time, and listen very carefully to your deepest needs small or large and try and cater for those. Do all the right things to keep your mood up: exercise, sunlight, socialise, decent diet, sleep well - even if you don't want to. But also take action on whatever arises, even if it feels difficult or alien to you.

[UnbornTao]

21 hours ago, The Renaissance Man said:

And this too, seems really great advice that goes to the core of the problem. I don't know how feasible this is or how much work this could take though. @UnbornTao

 

Are you defending suffering?  

It is as feasible as generating it. 

Edited 1 hour ago by UnbornTao