Photo: "Eggistentialism I" by Mike Bitzenhofer
I somewhat recently discovered Oliver Burkeman and have found his columns rather good. This week’s is no exception.
…Garcin is having an existential crisis, as people tend to do in Sartre. (These days, he could just pick up a copy of The Purpose-Driven Life and be done with it.) He’s facing the Big Question: how to deal with life’s apparent meaninglessness? Of course, many other philosophers, not to mention self-help gurus, would argue that life isn’t meaningless–that meaning’s to be found in family, or work, or spirituality. But intriguing new research suggests that, for a sizeable chunk of the population, a different answer to the Big Question may be more pertinent: who cares?
a study…based on a survey of 603 Germans, found 35% of them were “existentially indifferent”: they didn’t feel their lives had meaning, and frankly, it didn’t much bother them.
Judging by Schnell’s efforts to measure their levels of life-satisfaction, these chilled-out types aren’t as happy as those who score high on the meaningfulness scale, but they’re significantly happier than those who crave meaning yet lack it.
Compulsively, we compare ourselves with those around us and find our lives wanting: other people seem to have found meaning, while we’re still searching. Partly, that’s because we have no direct access to their inner torment. But it also may be because they’re not looking for meaning in the first place. Perhaps that’s a blessing of sorts, but it’s hardly the enviable state of fulfilment we imagine must suffuse their lives. Being the kind of person who seeks answers in life is troublesome enough. There’s no point feeling inferior to those who aren’t even asking the questions.
I’ve long been interested in meaning formation as a primary motivator of human behavior and a majority stakeholder in any person’s happiness (I’m a big fan of Frankl). As I’ve tried to parse the recent events of my life, this is often the lens I use. I’m often confused by others who appear to have this existential indifference that Burkeman refers to. On one hand, I want to be able to move through life with more aplomb. On the other hand, it sure seems like a lot of us here sharing this planet just don’t care.
Of course existential crisis is not required to do important work. I have a friend who spends a lot of time thinking about how to work better and does excellent work partly due to that intention (he’s also just a hard worker). About a year age were discussing his strategies for maintaining focus and doing meaningful work–I was just starting work on Todoblin and particularly interested (as I always am, really) in groking how people work. I asked him, “Don’t you ever have moments of existential crisis?” He just kind of gave me a look that said something like, “You speak of this ‘existential crisis’ like it’s something that actually happens to people.”