A Third of Americans Are Having an “Existential Crisis”

So definitions may vary.  A common use of “existential” today refers to threats to one’s existence, as in the doomers who think AI poses an “existential threat” to humanity, meaning that they think a sentient AI will exterminate the human race.  But questioning your meaning or identity, as in the survey, is, indeed part of what the existentialists were getting at.  (I might say that AI poses this kind of “existential threat” to humanity, denigrating the meaning and purpose of humanity.)

The study goes on to delve deeper into this crisis.  Although it puts a lot of blame on financial stress, it uncovers in those who say they are in an existential crisis a lack of purpose, anxiety, a sense of powerlessness over their lives, and a loss of agency.

The philosophers were onto a genuine struggle inherent in modern, secular life.  It isn’t just the angst of philosophers and artists, but an angst that strikes ordinary people.  This hits some demographics harder than others.  More than half (52%) of Generation Z  (14-29 years old) feel this way.  Among Millennials (30-45 years old) the percentage of existential crises is 39%; for Generation X (46-61), it’s 32%; for Baby Boomers (62-80), it’s 20%.

The term and the condition have been taken up from philosophy into psychology.  The Wikipedia article on “Existential Crisis” focuses on that psychological dimension, both in its description and in possible cures.  Here is its definition:

Existential crises are inner conflicts characterized by the impression that life lacks meaning and by confusion about one’s personal identity. They are accompanied by anxiety and stress, often to such a degree that they disturb one’s normal functioning in everyday life and lead to depression. Their negative attitude towards meaning reflects characteristics of the philosophical movement of existentialism. The components of existential crises can be divided into emotional, cognitive, and behavioral aspects. Emotional components refer to the feelings, such as emotional pain, despair, helplessness, guilt, anxiety, or loneliness. Cognitive components encompass the problem of meaninglessness, the loss of personal values or spiritual faith, and thinking about death. Behavioral components include addictions, and anti-social and compulsive behavior.

What can be done to resolve such existential crises?  “The different approaches to resolving the issue of meaninglessness are sometimes divided into a leap of faith, the reasoned approach, and nihilism.”

What the article says about the “leap of faith” is highly psychologized and secular, as we would expect.  The term is from Kierkegaard, who advocated the leap into Christian faith; indeed, for him, Lutheran Christian faith.  Conservative Christians usually criticize him for this term, saying that it implies an irrational, untethered jump into the unknown, which is not what faith in Christ is.  I recently heard someone explain that this is not what Kierkegaard intended with his metaphor, that the leap is away from one’s meaningless condition to the solid truth of Christ.  As he says, “Leap, then, into the arms of God” (from This Present Age).  At any rate, I won’t vouch for Kierkegaard’s complete orthodoxy, but faith in Christ is certainly a way out of an existential crisis.  Still, this psychological account from the Wikipedia article is interesting [my emphases]:

A leap of faith implies committing oneself to something one does not fully understand.  In the case of existential crises, the commitment involves the faith that life is meaningful even though the believer lacks a reasoned justification. This leap is motivated by the strong desire that life is meaningful and triggered as a response to the threat posed to the fulfillment of this desire by the existential crisis.  For whom this is psychologically possible, this may be the fastest way to bypass an existential crisis. This option may be more available to people oriented toward intuitive processing and less to people who favor a more rational approach since it has less need for a thorough reflection and introspection.  It has been argued that the meaning acquired through a leap of faith may be more robust than in other cases. One reason for this is that since it is not based on empirical evidence for it, it is also less vulnerable to empirical evidence against it.

Well, Kierkegaard also said, “Leap of faith – yes, but only after reflection.”  And less need for introspection?  The author of this article and/or the existential psychotherapists that are being described clearly know little about Christianity.  The article reduces faith to wish fulfillment and uncertainty, and any object of faith will do.  Still, it admits that the “leap of faith” is the “fastest” and “more robust” way to deal with an existential crisis.

What about the path of rational certainty?  I find that possibility nearly comical!

More rationally inclined persons tend to focus more on a careful evaluation of the sources of meaning based on solid justification through empirical evidence. If successful, this approach has the advantage of providing the individual with a concrete and realistic understanding of how their life is meaningful. It can also constitute a very robust source of meaning if it is based on solid empirical evidence and thorough understanding. . . .

In comparison to the leap of faith, this approach offers more room for personal growth due to the cognitive labor in the form of reflection and introspection involved in it and the self-knowledge resulting from this process. One of the drawbacks of this approach is that it can take a considerable amount of time to complete and rid oneself of the negative psychological consequences.  If successful, the foundations arrived at this way may provide a solid basis to withstand future existential crises. But success is not certain and even after a prolonged search, the individual might still be unable to identify a significant source of meaning in their life.

But while “empirical evidence” can give us evidence of design–something not allowed to be considered by our scientific establishment–it can’t give us meaning.  As in the quotation from C. S. Lewis about the star in our Owen Barfield discussion, from which we concluded:  “Modernist science tells us what a thing is made of, which is a useful service.  But it cannot tell us what the thing is.  For that, we need to know its meaning.”  And, as J. G. Hamann has shown, scientific rationalism cannot provide certainty.

The final way of dealing with an existential crisis is more common and more horrible:  the way of nihilism:

If the search for meaning in either way fails, there is still another approach to resolving the issue of meaninglessness in existential crises: to find a way to accept that life is meaningless. This position is usually referred to as nihilism. . . .

One difficulty with this negative stance towards meaning is that it seems to provide very little practical guidance in how to live one’s life. So even if an individual has resolved their existential crises this way, they may still lack an answer to the question of what they should do with their life. Positive aspects of this stance include that it can lead to a heightened sense of freedom by being unbound from any predetermined purpose. It also exemplifies the virtue of truthfulness by being able to acknowledge an inconvenient truth instead of escaping into the convenient illusion of meaningfulness.

Note how the article itself embraces nihilism by saying juxtaposing its “inconvenient truth” with the “convenient illusion of meaningfulness”!  But even this article admits that nihilism doesn’t help much in helping people know what to do with their lives.  Of course nihilism can’t give anyone a  purpose; rather, it denies that there is a purpose!  But this can be liberating, the article claims, giving a “heightened sense of freedom.”  The question remains, what will you choose to do with your freedom?

One answer is that if there is no meaning in life, you are free to create your own meaning.  If no values have any validity, you can create your own values.  In the words of a Reddit thread, “Nihilism is a call for individuals to create their own meaning and values in life.”  This, of course, is the path of postmodernism.  Just as the scientific rationalism response is the path of modernism.  And the response of living in faith is the pre-modern path.  Though, of course, today all three are live options.

I would argue, however, that the rationalistic option has faded, since it is intrinsically unable to deal with the problem of meaning.  (See our recent post The Problem of Skepticism.)

Today, the one-third of Americans and the one-half of young Americans who are struggling with an existential crisis have, for all practical purposes, two choices:  nihilism or faith.

Those are the only options.  We can thus see, as we blogged about, why religion is both declining (due to nihilism) and growing (due to faith) at the very same time.

Nihilism, though, is a dead end, as we are experiencing today, leaving only power, conflict, the loss of truth, and cynical despair. Only faith gives us a way forward.

So says John Betz in After Enlightenment: The Post-Secular Vision of J. G. Hamann, and he is surely right. The one-third of Americans and the one-half of young Americans who are struggling with an existential crisis are in need of evangelism.  The fields are ripe unto harvest.

Photo:  Sad Man by George Hodan via PublicDomainPictures, CC0 Public Domain