Chapter One: Why is the World Experiencing a Meaning Crisis?"Existential Dread" is one of the trendier topics in social spaces. Users from all ages seem to relate - we're living our best lives and dreading it! The internet prophet and media sensation, Bo Burnham, has become wildly popular because his content captures the dread of having everything at our fingertips, and no meaning to show for it. Overexposure causes us to wonder what, if anything, is sure enough to anchor the meaning of our lives.Chapter Two: What Happens When Society Tries to Find Meaning Apart from God?Nihilism is the belief that life has no meaning. Having been overexposed to endless content, the world now resigns itself to the fact that life is so immense and chaotic, and full of so much suffering and disappointment, that it is irrational to think any real meaning exists - especially meaning which is divine. Fyodor Dostoyevsky believed that nihilism is an intellectual distortion and that any society that gives into it will experience the end of itself. Three of Dostoyevsky's darkest characters - Kirillov, Raskolnikov, and Filippovna - are developed throughout his writings to deter future societies from giving in to the defeat that is nihilism and becoming like the monsters nihilism produces.Chapter Three: How Will Humans Live If God is Dead?Imagine waking up tomorrow: God is dead, and the Holy Scriptures aren't around to tell anyone what to do.
Now what? It seems like an impossible thought but. with the rise of AI and super technologies, it's becoming harder and harder for the overexposed masses to see God as a reasonable prospect. So, how will humans live if God is dead? Nietzsche believed in the rise of the 'overman', the person who thinks they are greater than they really are - a human who deifies themself by means of their godless ego. The impulse of the overman is what is animating our current achievement society wherein the purpose of existence is the curation and commoditization of the individual self.Chapter Four: The World Is Cold and Silent - How Can There Possibly Be Meaning?Our dreams, at one point or another, will come face to face with the arbitrary silence of the world. School shootings. Tsunamis. A family member killed in a car wreck.
When tragedy strikes, the universe is cold and indifferent. Albert Camus called our confrontation with the unsympathetic universe 'the absurd'. Through overexposure, we meet the unsympathetic universe daily. These constant confrontations have caused society to back away from any hope of divine meaning. Is there a way to accept the cold universe and maintain hope of divine meaning? Albert Camus grappled honestly with the absurd and was no proponent of settling for cheap answers. He seems to think there is.Chapter Five: What Can't I Do If God Does Not Exist to Tell Me Not to Do It?Without a Creator, we are left to decide who we are and what is best for ourselves. If there is no God, we are innately free from any moral commitments.
Yet, moral commitments still exist. This enigma isn't anything new. Jean Paul Sartre, an atheist philosopher, believed on the one hand that since God does not exist, we can do anything we want. Yet, on the other hand, he acknowledges that killing a human is wrong - "directly, absolutely wrong." Sartre's contradiction alludes to something about the state of a world wherein there seems to be no God: everyone still remembers God, and there is no forgetting him - no matter how disillusioned the world has become. Thus the world will never live without God or, at least, the memory of God. The skeptic's slightest moral commitments betray their most palpable disavowals.Chapter Six: Why Try If Our Existence Is Temporal? The meaning crisis has produced a disdain for effort.
Overexposure has shaped a world that believes that life is a failed project. All the trying in the world will not change this. Trying is cringe, and insincere. It's pretending. To live an authentic l.