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Quite rightly. If it is true that life has no meaning, then there is no point in fighting the experience of meaninglessness.
I will allow myself a quote:
“The great melancholy that started it all has not gone away. It started to weaken, but then the second wave began. However, everyone slowly adapted to it and somehow got along. So many people even decided that the meaning is not really needed — and you can do without it. And if it's really hard for someone without meaning, then you can do reenactment. That is, to pretend that they have meaning, as in the past times, and play out whole scenes with meaning, including mass ones, and then return to the usual meaningless life. Excellent psychotherapy came out. Psychologists, by the way, also joined in and explained in detail that the meaning is unscientific, that it is a completely artificial construct, that it is only an excess growth in the course of evolution, that there was really no meaning at all, that this is all just an illusion for self-entertainment and an attempt to avoid a courageous encounter face to face with the faceless emptiness of being. In general, a mental disorder”” From here.
From the point of view of psychology, an existential crisis is not a denial of the meaning of life, which philosophers talk about, but a loss of meaningfulness of life for a particular person in a particular life situation.. In existential psychology, this concept appeared after the work of the Austrian psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was in a German concentration camp during the war. He survived and described the events of that time in the book “Say yes to life”. After the war, Frankl created a well-known school in psychology, which is called “logotherapy” (one of the meanings of the ancient Greek word “logos” – meaning). He has written several books, of which the most famous in Russia is the book “Man in Search of Meaning”. From Frankl's point of view, if we consider the well-known “Maslow pyramid”, it turns out that the rigid hierarchy of this pyramid does not stand up to criticism. A similar position was formulated even before Frankl's work by the founder of humanistic psychoanalysis Fromm, who developed his theory on the basis of Marxist philosophy. It is from the point of view of Marxism that man is not reducible to his biological components. A hypothetical discussion between a Marxist and his supposed opponent is known. The Marxist says: man does everything as a social being. We heat-treat our food, not eat it raw like animals. We sleep in houses on bed linen, and do not dig holes for ourselves, etc. The opponent answers: try not to give a person food for a few days, and you will see how he will tear raw meat and eat it like an animal. No, the Marxist replies, man is not an animal, but when he does not receive food or is in a situation of mortal danger, the light veil that makes a man a man is destroyed, and we can indeed discover the animal that man has become. But this is not a person who has lost his essence, but a biological being. This Marxist logic (without being a Marxist) was confirmed by Frankl's experience of being in a Nazi concentration camp. Frankl, describing the people who spent several years in the camp next to him and lost their human form, claims that he himself was saved from plunging into an animal state by the hope of seeing his family. Hope, which gave meaning to his life (he did not know that his family had already been destroyed by the Nazis). Another important reason for its existence was to create records, which after the war became a book. These notes he made at night on dirty scraps of paper with found pieces of lead. One day the guards found his manuscript and destroyed it, but Frankl started writing again.
Almost everyone who went to the concentration camp was destroyed by the “lower” levels of human needs (to use Maslow's terminology). Prisoners were close to death from malnutrition, and the level of security is not necessary to speak – every minute they could be sent to the gas chamber. There is no place for love or respect in a concentration camp – rather, this “technology” itself was created as a terrible mechanism for destroying everything human, turning a person into a beast. And, indeed, most turned into animals-they betrayed their comrades for a piece of dirty bread crust covered with mold. But some, like Frankl himself, were able to avoid this fate. It was the presence of a concrete meaning to further existence, Frankl recalled, that saved him. Those prisoners who lost the semantic basis of their existence (the overwhelming majority of them were), sooner or later died.
Frankl considers meaning to be the subject on which the psychotherapist's activity should be directed. According to Frankl, the task of a psychotherapist is to help the client find a specific meaning in the near future. Of course, this is not the meaning of life that philosophers talk about. Frankl talks about the meanings that enliven our lives with a vision of prospects for the coming years: to get a higher education diploma, start a family, find a new job, etc. A person who has a lack of such meanings experiences an existential vacuum, an inner void, i.e., a person who has a lack of such meanings. he loses the ability to understand his place in the world and the meaning of his existence in this world. As a result, such a person begins to show symptoms of the so-called nusogenic neurosis. Many modern people, says Frankl, suffer from this disease. And the task of a psychotherapist, says Frankl, is not to philosophize about the meaning of life, but to help the client find such promising tasks for the next few years that would help a person make their existence meaningful.
As a believer,the meaning of life seems to me to be different,i.e. a person is given a soul at birth,and the whole meaning of life is to raise it from infancy to extreme old age and with a formed soul in all respects,i.e. wisdom,kindness,simplicity,and so on, to appear before God…For me personally, such a semblance of the meaning of life, and for me the education of my soul takes up my whole life, and not money, position, things, rags…
This is not an awareness of its absence, it is a problem associated with finding it. But the problem itself is a purely subjective point. For example, Buddhists believe that the meaning of life/an infinitely long string of lives and rebirths is just to learn to control your Self, which is responsible for desires, and to be able to enter a state completely freed from them, and therefore from any meanings. This state is considered holy and people devote their lives to achieving it. The ancient mystics called the state of e. they called it the “twilight of the soul” and considered it a precursor to a new level of human spirituality. It turns out that an existential crisis may not have a negative meaning at all, but may be a desired goal. It all depends on your own interpretation.
An existential crisis, if you try to understand it, and not deny it, is an internal conflict of two different and super-tasks of a person-I Want, I Must, and I Can.
Or two internal I Want and Must.
Most often it occurs on the basis of the opposition imposed from the outside Should and internal Need:
– You have to work harder to … (become the best in your business, become the richest, gain recognition…) Or
– I want to find it … (- peace of mind and happiness, – a harmonious family and reliable shelter, – so that I am not touched and allowed to rest for several years…)
And when your capabilities do not correspond to your desires, an existential crisis arises: “And why did I do all this?”or “And for whom did I try so hard, if there is no Most important result?”
The picture for this is a donkey pulling a cart, and in front of it on a stick hangs a carrot, which is held by the cart driver.
This crisis is humorously described in the Caucasian toast:
“I can buy a goat, but I don't want to.
I want to buy a horse, but I don't have the opportunity!
So let's drink to the fact that our opportunities coincide with our desires!“
– to drink to the fact that we did not have this very existential crisis.
That's why the crisis that you didn't find the meaning and the solution – it's easier to give up, not to continue the search, but to convince yourself that there is no point.
The absence of an answer (the presence of a crisis) is not equal to the truth.
Maybe the point is to get out of the crisis.
Because this truth worsens the quality of life and as a result, a person may completely lose interest in it. The meaning of life for yourself can be found independently.