Humanity's Existential Angst
Growing Up and Finding Meaning as a Species
Originally written in June of 2021, this essay has been lightly revised as part of an ongoing effort to revisit and refine my thinking.
In the middle of the night, I woke up in a sweat. A car honked outside the window, rushing to be somewhere in the city beyond. Lying awake, I felt the weight of the future pressing down — the rush of days, weeks, months, and years ahead. At thirty-one years old, despite sometimes still feeling like a fresh college graduate, it seemed a realization hit me all at once: I'm an adult.
I soon examined this episode through the lens of existentialism. As existentialist thinkers suggest, we are not born with purpose and the universe owes us nothing, there is no meaning to *waves hand* all of this. Jean-Paul Sartre eloquently summarized this perspective with his famous quote "Existence precedes essence." All we can do is live to find our own meaning. As I slept in an anxious haze, the existentialists seemed to haunt me in my dreams, shouting that I was free, that I must find my purpose. Upon reflection, perhaps my midnight anxieties weren't mine alone, but of a deeper unease symbolic to humanity itself…
Our species’ current state, perched on a pendulum between peril and prosperity, comes with a pressure like the one I experienced. Unlike my three decades of life, though, humanity has been around for a few hundred thousand years. It would seem that as species we should be equipped to face any challenge. Yet despite centuries upon centuries of wisdom, we've lived in the industrialized world for only a few hundred years. The modern smartphone is only a little over a decade old. Technology accelerates — much like time speeding up as we age. Humanity, whether we like it or not, is at the cusp of true adulthood. We stand at the edge of a cliff, and we can either fly into the stars or fall to our doom. Like children, we've learned valuable lessons during our time on Earth: right and wrong, freedom and responsibility, equality and truth. It's now imperative that we live up to these lessons and cross the threshold of uncertainty into a future of overwhelming goodness. Foraging into an unknown future is daunting individually — how much more challenging, then, for a society facing existential stakes? Is there a medicine we can prescribe humanity for its current immaturity? Is it philosophical debate? Education? Technological advancement? The solution is likely a combination of all of these and more.
It's a lot to ask each person to navigate both the anxiety of their own life and that of our entire species. But that's what we all must do if we want to ensure a future for our descendants. Humanity has endured for millennia, achieving remarkable feats, yet our true purpose remains elusive.
Perhaps we need to grow up before we can find it.
