This was a sick article. I had pretty much the exact same experience in my late teens: Hated life, couldn't bear the thought of "living" like that for 40 years, so I decided to either jump off a roof or stop bitching about everything and start getting my shit together. It's hard, it really, really is, but it's the only way forward that won't ruin you and kill your soul.
was about to throw myself away and give up and somehow someway I stumbled upon your substack, talk about timing eh, no time to die now I have lots to prove to all the motherfuckers who look down on me.
I don't blog, so I'm going to go on walkabout in this comment box instead.
The archetypes you've depicted fit the broad strokes of my experience. The usual uncanny accuracy, another decade passed and discovering your lonely little excruciating drama was playing out, more or less, in the closets of teenagers all over the place; just, too thinly dispersed to be heard before the herd was thinned.
I've attempted and discarded a couple of these coping strategies. I never had an adequately unified grandiose delusion that I could pursue it single-mindedly. Trying to kill myself stopped being a thrill when I finally admitted to myself that I was too scared of getting it wrong to really try properly. Addiction didn't work out because I'm too big a dork to encounter adequately lethal substances. The judge told me to give religion yet another shot in the form of peer support meetings.
The program was dreamed up and perfected by a bunch of Christian drunks in 1939; so, while they took pains to explicitly condone remixing, there's a lot in there that takes work to finagle into relevance for today's atheist thinkboi. I've been at it a couple years now. Slowly, but doggedly.
A recent assignment of mine was rewriting this prayer:
"God, I offer myself to Thee – To build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life.”
My first attempt was to really strip it down:
"Help me let go of all my ideas about who I should be so I can embrace my part in the world as it really is."
But now there's not quite enough in it to evoke the grandiose delusion flavors of copium rather than the Lie Down And Rot flavors. It's too easy to wonder whether my true part in the world is to convert food into poop and then periodically wreck the vibe.
If you had a religious upbringing, the original version of the prayer brings up all sorts of Sunday school memories about how generosity, integrity, and the full litany of Slave morality virtues create a beautiful here and a beautiful-er hereafter. It doesn't actually mention any of the virtues, but the voice gets you in the headspace. I think the Sunday school version of my religion was pretty alright, really. It only became a problem as the hypocrisies built up. Why were they making me learn this stuff if they didn't care to act in accordance with it themselves? Why were they telling me to read stuff they wouldn't read, when that just gave me questions they couldn't answer?
In the Christian tradition, Master morality virtues like beauty and strength were for God to embody and for general issue humans to simultaneously revere and abnegate. (I think the Master/Slave dialectic as I'm referencing it was a Nietzche thing, but Hegel and probably other continentals were in on it too.) I'm on the fence about whether staying firmly rooted in Slave virtues is the surest path. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of humility lately. Egoic attachment to my strength and beauty was central to my downfall half a lifetime ago. But two-way prayer, a personal relationship with the omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent deity, isn't a thing for me unless I'm in the middle of a psychotic episode. A slave is not a slave without a master. If I am to be a slave, how am I to define a master?
I guess I could let that alone a while longer, and just build a litany of virtues I have confidence in. But I'm a dirty utilitarian absurdist at heart. And a negative utilitarian at that. If I had a button that erased all suffering at the cost of erasing everything, I'd probably go ahead and press it. And I can think of an exception that justifies the violation of any virtue I could name.
I can't even get excited about arguing philosophy to pass the time. Mirages of meaning flash in the corners of my vision, but when I turn to focus on the source, they dissolve.
I'm really quite an ordinary man. This is likely all a learned defense mechanism that will restructure itself given enough time in a less dysfunctional environment than the one I was born into. I know I don't do well making meaning on my own.
"Help me keep showing up." How's that for a prayer?
If I’m reading you right, I think your post misunderstands what you classify as Type 1s. In reality, it’s just that we’re wired to accept the world as it is, and live the best, optimal life within those constraints. Life is pretty good, and I’m lucky to have it at all, who am I to complain that I get 80 years rather than 1000? The ancient stoics get this deeply, on an intellectual level.
It’s not about “the soul slowly dying” or fading from one’s true self, as you put it… I actually thought you were applying that to the existential-dread type 2s on first reading … which IMO would make more sense because by worrying about it so much one kind of is ruining their one life they do have, it seems to me.
hello fren. I’ll be honest, i don’t think i can help you. But if you’re willing to indulge me, perhaps i can learn something from you that will help others.
1. What do you estimate your IQ?
2. Are you saying that you have no passions, no skills, and you’ve never felt drawn to any kind of purpose (even one which you think is too crazy and delusional to ever achieve)?
3. what is your relationship with your family like? is it healthy and open and full of trust? do you share with them your struggles or keep it to yourself?
4. What do you spend most of your time doing?
5. do you ever read books or listen to podcasts on things that could improve your skills?
6. what is your approximate age and how long have you felt this way?
This was a sick article. I had pretty much the exact same experience in my late teens: Hated life, couldn't bear the thought of "living" like that for 40 years, so I decided to either jump off a roof or stop bitching about everything and start getting my shit together. It's hard, it really, really is, but it's the only way forward that won't ruin you and kill your soul.
Great post.
based. subscribed.
was about to throw myself away and give up and somehow someway I stumbled upon your substack, talk about timing eh, no time to die now I have lots to prove to all the motherfuckers who look down on me.
YES LETS FUCKING GO KING!!!!!
THANK YOU BROTHER
I don't blog, so I'm going to go on walkabout in this comment box instead.
The archetypes you've depicted fit the broad strokes of my experience. The usual uncanny accuracy, another decade passed and discovering your lonely little excruciating drama was playing out, more or less, in the closets of teenagers all over the place; just, too thinly dispersed to be heard before the herd was thinned.
I've attempted and discarded a couple of these coping strategies. I never had an adequately unified grandiose delusion that I could pursue it single-mindedly. Trying to kill myself stopped being a thrill when I finally admitted to myself that I was too scared of getting it wrong to really try properly. Addiction didn't work out because I'm too big a dork to encounter adequately lethal substances. The judge told me to give religion yet another shot in the form of peer support meetings.
The program was dreamed up and perfected by a bunch of Christian drunks in 1939; so, while they took pains to explicitly condone remixing, there's a lot in there that takes work to finagle into relevance for today's atheist thinkboi. I've been at it a couple years now. Slowly, but doggedly.
A recent assignment of mine was rewriting this prayer:
"God, I offer myself to Thee – To build with me and to do with me as Thou wilt. Relieve me of the bondage of self, that I may better do Thy will. Take away my difficulties, that victory over them may bear witness to those I would help of Thy Power, Thy Love, and Thy Way of Life.”
My first attempt was to really strip it down:
"Help me let go of all my ideas about who I should be so I can embrace my part in the world as it really is."
But now there's not quite enough in it to evoke the grandiose delusion flavors of copium rather than the Lie Down And Rot flavors. It's too easy to wonder whether my true part in the world is to convert food into poop and then periodically wreck the vibe.
If you had a religious upbringing, the original version of the prayer brings up all sorts of Sunday school memories about how generosity, integrity, and the full litany of Slave morality virtues create a beautiful here and a beautiful-er hereafter. It doesn't actually mention any of the virtues, but the voice gets you in the headspace. I think the Sunday school version of my religion was pretty alright, really. It only became a problem as the hypocrisies built up. Why were they making me learn this stuff if they didn't care to act in accordance with it themselves? Why were they telling me to read stuff they wouldn't read, when that just gave me questions they couldn't answer?
In the Christian tradition, Master morality virtues like beauty and strength were for God to embody and for general issue humans to simultaneously revere and abnegate. (I think the Master/Slave dialectic as I'm referencing it was a Nietzche thing, but Hegel and probably other continentals were in on it too.) I'm on the fence about whether staying firmly rooted in Slave virtues is the surest path. I've gotten a lot of mileage out of humility lately. Egoic attachment to my strength and beauty was central to my downfall half a lifetime ago. But two-way prayer, a personal relationship with the omniscient/omnipotent/omnibenevolent deity, isn't a thing for me unless I'm in the middle of a psychotic episode. A slave is not a slave without a master. If I am to be a slave, how am I to define a master?
I guess I could let that alone a while longer, and just build a litany of virtues I have confidence in. But I'm a dirty utilitarian absurdist at heart. And a negative utilitarian at that. If I had a button that erased all suffering at the cost of erasing everything, I'd probably go ahead and press it. And I can think of an exception that justifies the violation of any virtue I could name.
I can't even get excited about arguing philosophy to pass the time. Mirages of meaning flash in the corners of my vision, but when I turn to focus on the source, they dissolve.
I'm really quite an ordinary man. This is likely all a learned defense mechanism that will restructure itself given enough time in a less dysfunctional environment than the one I was born into. I know I don't do well making meaning on my own.
"Help me keep showing up." How's that for a prayer?
Miss you fren. Glad to see you’re still around.
Memento Mori
The accuracy of assuming I was group two! Found you today. Enjoy your stuff. Thanks for writing.
seems more like the fear of living life not death
Interesting post. Glad you made it through that.
If I’m reading you right, I think your post misunderstands what you classify as Type 1s. In reality, it’s just that we’re wired to accept the world as it is, and live the best, optimal life within those constraints. Life is pretty good, and I’m lucky to have it at all, who am I to complain that I get 80 years rather than 1000? The ancient stoics get this deeply, on an intellectual level.
It’s not about “the soul slowly dying” or fading from one’s true self, as you put it… I actually thought you were applying that to the existential-dread type 2s on first reading … which IMO would make more sense because by worrying about it so much one kind of is ruining their one life they do have, it seems to me.
go for it
hello fren. I’ll be honest, i don’t think i can help you. But if you’re willing to indulge me, perhaps i can learn something from you that will help others.
1. What do you estimate your IQ?
2. Are you saying that you have no passions, no skills, and you’ve never felt drawn to any kind of purpose (even one which you think is too crazy and delusional to ever achieve)?
3. what is your relationship with your family like? is it healthy and open and full of trust? do you share with them your struggles or keep it to yourself?
4. What do you spend most of your time doing?
5. do you ever read books or listen to podcasts on things that could improve your skills?
6. what is your approximate age and how long have you felt this way?