#9: things on my mind

I have been away from this blog for six weeks now. But it's not that I am done with existential thoughts — I don't think they will ever leave me, unless there is some gigantic shift in my philosophical understanding of life. I am okay, though. Things are not that bleak. I am a functioning human. So yeah, it's okay. Yet, I don't want to downplay the sheer feeling of alienation and disillusionment I felt at the peak of the existential crisis. It was not a pretty picture, and it's important for me to be kind to myself.

I don't have a theme today. The agenda for this writing session is documenting some thoughts that have been with me over the last few weeks. I am not looking at my journal while writing this one — really, a stream of consciousness, as this blog was meant to be.

One: The Big Questions I have been thinking about, at their core, revolve around The Big Question — Why do humans even exist? What are we doing here on Planet Earth? Scientists (evolutionary biologists) tell us it's all blind luck. (Or so I interpret from theories of evolution.) Human existence is a biological accident, and there is no real purpose why we exist. There is no design. What we are witnessing and living through—our own existence—is the sheer magic of evolutionary pressures.

What we don't really understand is consciousness. There are theories here and there, but from what I gather, we don't have a confident understanding of this phenomenon. What I have inferred is this: at some point, unlike other species, humans became self-aware to ask all of these questions about existence, wondering why they exist and all, and what they are supposed to do; which led to the birth of human civilization over hundreds of thousands of years. That is all. Each generation moved the needle a little more than the previous one, and the world became what it is today.

It feels complex because of two things: one, because there are too many of us, we have too many organizing structures to hold us together, some large and some small, but our brain is not really used to deal with all this at such a grand scale; and two, because the pace of change is really fast— things are changing quite faster than ever in our generation, much faster than what our brain is adapted to.

This is my current understanding. A few things follow from this base theory:

a) Nothing was meant to be. The world we live in today could have been completely different had some things been different maybe twenty thousand years ago. There is also a possibility that nothing would have been done, that there would be no human civilization, and we'd still be living as hunter-gatherers, and that would have been fine too. Again: there is no grand purpose for our existence.

b) Having said that, while it's theoretically interesting (for me) to imagine hypothetical scenarios about what humanity could have looked like, what we are living in is what the reality is. On this, I have no control. I mean, yeah, the more Jane Austen I read, the more I feel how cool it would have been to be born in her era — so I was not making a joke of myself swiping left and right on the stupid dating apps and actually writing love letters to women — but I was born in 1993, and the initial conditions were set for me. I'd have loved the world to be significantly different than it is now, but again, not in my control. So I am left with two options: go completely rogue and disengage with society, which I don't want to, or the second — and the only viable option — which is to understand how society is and then find a way to exist despite all the problems with the setup I have been given.

And that is exactly what I have been trying to do over the last six weeks: accept society as it is, then rethink how I want to exist in the world, and then rebuild my relationship with society. That's the way out of existential crisis.

Two: Now, all this theory of mine — the explanation of existence I can live with — doesn't answer the fundamental question of existence: If life has no meaning, if there is no God, if there is no purpose, if we are just biological beings (like the insect I don't like is), then why do we go on living? What's the point?

The answer to that, for me, right now, is this: yeah, right, there is no point; but it's just that I feel living is better than dying. And it's pretty cool to get to experience human life. It's painful (more on that later) and so much suffering (more on that later, too) and humans are both kind and cruel, and things do feel really hopeless so many times, so one does wonder why subject yourself to all this?

But that is how it is. That is life. You can't escape this. You can't just have the good parts. And even after accepting this, I think living is better than dying. So I continue to exist, and all that needs figuring out is how I want to exist — in the truest spirit of Sartrean existentialism. Existence precedes essence.

Three: Do you even realise how hard it is to accept all this? To tell yourself that there is no order to life, and so you create an order and meaning for yourself, a story of sorts, and just start living that story? Life starts feeling like fiction. And that's still...kind of...okay. I am constructing a story, I am distracting myself to find meaning in places and people. But the point is, everything will fall apart again if I stop believing in this story? It's so malleable. How much conviction one must need to believe they will continue to believe a story — a story that has no real basis. And if you don't believe in any story, and don't have anything to look forward to, than what are you even doing? Just aimlessly passing time on this planet? Merely surviving because living is better than dying? Well, sounds okay, in theory, but just the thought of this life makes me feel so empty. Do I want to exist in this nothingness for nothing?

It really is scary. Which is why I am careful. Taking it slow. I now spend more time in the city, with my family and friends, to actively engage with society — and distract myself a bit. Set some fitness transformation goals, eat well, go for plays and movies and events — and most importantly, feel like I am useful for someone else's existence. Like I am taking work with people who are not dealing with existential questions and genuinely believe in what they are doing — well, if I start theorizing, I will come to the same conclusion — "big deal if this doesn't exist; so be it" — but then, I see, there is this human being, they find meaning in their work, and if I work for them, I will be of some use to this person. So let's do that. Same for people in general: if others feel my existence means something to them, maybe that's the answer? That in the middle of this great existential despair, we exist for each other? I don't know. But that's, for now, my approach. Holding on to craft a giant story for myself — like, fixing journalism and all — for a while. Who knows, maybe I find solace in writing fiction.

Four: I recently read Robert Sapolsky's new book, 'Determined: Life without Free Will' — and now I don't know what to do. I love Sapolsky, so it's not some random scientist. And now he is making a book-length argument for biological determinism. Yup, he's saying there is no Free Will. Won't get into the details here, but the point is this — it's so hard to be an atheist, existentialist, and I'm-still-thinking-about-it there-is-no-free-will person. It feels like I have to do the whole process of figuring out life from scratch to make these views compatible. Huh.

The broader point is this: We are learning so much about human biology with new research and new tools that the philosophers from a hundred years ago didn't have access to. They were observing and building theories; now science is offering evidence about our behaviour, desires, motivations etc. I don't how accurate this is, but feels like if art was the primary way to understand the human condion many decades ago, science is now playing an active roll, too. And maybe it does reveal at end of the day that yeah, everything really is fictional — we all, at end of the day, just biological machines. Moreover, as we are witnessing the magic of AI with LLMs, that is leading me to question everything, again.

No resolution, no clear thinking on this — yet. Noting it here to document a line of thinking I'll explore.

Five: The only thing that hasn't changed all this while is that whatever happens, what I am doing now i.e., writing — this is what gives me the most meaning. India lost the World Cup final yesterday, and I felt so sad — still feeling it, which is one reason I returned to this blog — and all I wanted to do this morning was...write. I had some thoughts around waking up which I wanted to just write. Two days ago, I felt so animated while imagining myself to start a new writing project, something I have never done — a fictional short story on our political discourse. I felt alive in the truest sense. So maybe, yeah, I should keep doing this?

Six: This is the last point, and I will stop after this. (I must stop and get back to living life rather than analysing it.) I feel that if we want to reduce suffering, we have to stop caring about things. I know that Buddha says the root of suffering is not desire, but the attachment to desire. I'm totally on board. But this whole detachment thing... umm... makes me stop caring. Like, as I write this, innocent people in Gaza are being killed. Should I not care because how does it even matter to me? There are people dying of hunger, people being discriminated against for their religion and caste, and so on—should I just say, 'What does it matter to me, let's be chill'? But then, do I really want to do something about it? I don't want to be a politician or an activist—I just want to write. So, is there any point in caring if I'm not going to do anything about it? Is it just plain human stupidity? I can actually stop caring—there is no moral obligation for me to care. But that's the question: do I want to be that person who doesn't care?

I can offer this rational explanation: maybe this is the truth about humanity—some people will kill, others will get killed. Equality, liberty, and freedom are idealistic values we dreamt up but have no basis in how humans actually are, so even dreaming of those ideals and wanting a peaceful, nice world is a giant foolishness. The world is what it is because that's how things are. It can't change. And even if it can, it will be temporary. It won't really matter. And the change will be small. Yes, there are some people who completely change the course of human history, but I most definitely don't have any such ambitions. So, what am I even doing? Should I care or not? What if life, ultimately, is about biological sensations, oscillating between the feelings of pain and pleasure, and the smart thing to do is to maximise pleasure and reduce pain—is that the meaning of life?—and so I should not subject myself to worldly brutality and make peace with my existence, make peace with the fact that human life is mortal, and all of us will ultimately die?

I don't know. Maybe this is my life mantra a few years from now. At the moment, I am asking myself this question: do I want to be the person I just described? The one who doesn't care for his own mental sanity? The answer, at the moment, is a big no. I don't want to exist like that.

Because meaning comes from giving things significance—and what I choose to give significance to is my choice. It could be about things like the performance of the Indian National Cricket Team, my cholesterol levels, my dancing skills, the shape of my shoulders, the quality of my writing, the health of my parents, the happiness of my sister, the joy in my friends' lives, or the kids being killed thousands of kilometres away. It's a choice—and I don't think I want to live a life where I don't care about things and become a complete yogi or something. And when you choose to care, and choose to love, you suffer. But maybe, just maybe, suffering is inherent to a life that's full of meaning.

Bye for now!