Introduction
Whether it is the lure of sudden fortune, effortless salvation, or some imagined revelation that bypasses discipline, we are frequently offered, and often choose to believe, the illusion of change without effort. We believe that our goals are intrinsically meaningful despite their often external origins, and we repeatedly reprioritize novel pursuits as a way of maintaining the appearance of progress, while never fully committing to the toil that progress demands. These distortions flatten the narrative and obscure the simple truth we seem to recognize deep down; the most meaningful transformations are earned. While it may not be a conscious acceptance, stories grounded in suffering and perseverance strike us as more honest, whereas effortless analogs feel hollow and, in many cases, destructive.
The word hollow is both intentional and solicitous. To be hollow means to be devoid of something, and in this case what's missing is sacrifice, struggle, and pain. There is irony in the juxtaposition that these are things we inherently avoid as humans, yet they are anecdotally passed down as forms of virtue.
- The obstacle is the way. - Marcus Aurelius
- Smooth seas do not make skillful sailors. - African proverb
- Adversity is the first path to truth. - Lord Byron
- To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering. - Nietzsche
- To live is to drag one’s corpse from one day to the next. - Cioran
- To be is to be in agony. - Sartre (paraphrased)
The calm that we idealize, understood in the absence of our suffering, stands in direct conflict with the conditions of life that give experience its very weight and meaning. When this ideal collides with reality, the resulting friction is not merely emotional but existential, and the feeling of unease that emerges from this confrontation is captured by the German word weltschmerz.
Weltschmerz: a sense of world-weariness or melancholy, often brought about by a perceived disconnect between one's expectations of the world and the harsh realities of life.
This suffering is not an innate feature of human existence, but a consequence of definition. By imagining a version of life devoid of struggle, we limit ourselves to an ideal that reality cannot sustain; one in direct conflict with the apparent world. Over human history, only during periods of relative comfort has the mind been free to indulge this fantasy. In doing so, we have cultivated a unique form of suffering, not imposed by the world itself, but by our desire for a life without this resistance.
Limitations of Desire and Intent
No doubt this thought may seem comfortless to one who has not made a success of his life... Reality alone is reliable; that dreams, expectations and hopes serve to define a man only as deceptive dreams, abortive hopes, expectations unfulfilled; that is to say they define him negatively, not positively. -Jean Paul Sartre
Desire and intent often present themselves as rational answers to the discomfort of weltschmerz; if I simply focus my mind toward my perceived goal I should be able to manifest a desirable outcome. This stems from a psychological response akin to Nietzsche's Error of Imaginary Causes. Within this framework, we ascribe causal meaning to our present experiences (after the fact), and this is equally applicable for desirable outcomes. When we achieve something that creates a positive mental response, we subconsciously create a logical interpretation of the source of the outcome; the result is that what occurs last, constructed desire or intent, is experienced first, supplemented with materialized details that strengthen our internal sense of belief. The originating outcome is perceived as the logical result of self-enterprise.
The belief that the ideas, the accompanying processes of consciousness, have been the causes, is certainly produced by the agency of memory. And in this way we become accustomed to a particular interpretation of causes which, truth to tell, actually hinders and even utterly prevents the investigation of the proper cause. -Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols)
Actions taken at this level of conscious awareness tend to become performative, adopted for internal coherence rather than genuine transformation. They are logically consistent, but not yet experientially real. Memory obliges by supplying familiar explanations, while the real causes such as biology, conditioning, environment, and circumstance remain veiled. We cannot simply imagine ourselves into becoming what we wish to be, because intention operates as a post-conscious rationalization within the mind, and does not directly reshape our underlying neurology on its own.
From this misunderstanding of our conscious limitations arises weltschmerz, the psychological response by which we posit an “ideal” world as a corrective to reality. Whether imagined as a spiritual realm, a perfected self, or a future state of harmony, this ideal devalues lived reality by comparison, framing life as something to be managed rather than inhabited. The belief in the manifest power of desire and intent becomes a refusal of the world as it is, and from this refusal weltschmerz intensifies. To move beyond it requires reconfiguration of the neurological structures that create desire and intent; a transformation in how meaning is generated and change is synthesized.
Establishing Conditions for Change
If the mind is capable of changing itself at all, then it must already possess some means of influencing its own structure. We observe this capacity indirectly through experience: habits reshape attention, trauma alters perception, practice rewires instinct. These changes occur biologically, yet they are not wholly accidental; the capacity itself is not speculative. What remains unclear is how such change becomes available: under what conditions does the mind become capable of altering its own structure?
One recurring potential is doubt. Not doubt as skepticism in the pursuit of certainty, but doubt as the intentional suspension of what is often taken for granted. By placing what we believe about ourselves, our limits, and the world into question, doubt functions as a form of meditation on the self. Ancient Greek practices of epoché, Stoic exercises in withholding assent, and later early modern meditations all converge on the same functional insight: disrupting automatic judgment interrupts habitual interpretation. In Descartes, this suspension exposed the instability of assumed foundations, and ,through Pascal, unease masked by diversion is revealed.
In this sense, doubt operates less as a state of finality but rather as a preparative state. By interrupting habitual coherence, it weakens the constraints that ordinarily preserve rational equilibrium. Limits are no longer treated as fixed, and the psychological structures built upon these beliefs temporarily loosen. Doubt, then, is not transformative in itself, it simply creates the possibility of transformation by destabilizing existing neurological pathways.
Existential philosophy does not so much name this collection of mental state space, but offers a vocabulary for interpreting what is encountered within it. Concepts such as anguish, despair, and abandonment describe what emerges when inherited frameworks of meaning no longer function as stabilizers. Rather than prescribing new beliefs, existential thought attends to the psychological consequences of living without them. In doing so, it clarifies why certain forms of discomfort are not pathological errors or merely negative experiences, but indicators that familiar interpretive structures are failing.
Later existential philosophers explored the consequences of this failure in increasingly personal terms. Dostoevsky’s Notes from Underground depicts a mind relentlessly stripping away the layers of ego and rationalization that once provided coherence, only to encounter the anguish beneath them. Nietzsche diagnoses the mechanisms that defend these illusions, revealing how false values and imaginary causes shield us from confronting our limitations. Sartre and Kierkegaard articulate what follows when such defenses collapse: anguish, despair, and abandonment. These are not conditions to be avoided, but signals that the mind is no longer buffered by false certainty. Existentialism rejects false optimism not out of nihilism, but because optimism that denies reality cannot produce growth. Anguish becomes the condition of action precisely because it arises when multiple possibilities are felt as real, and no external authority remains to legitimate the choice. It is within this paradigm that the mind becomes more responsive to reconfiguration.
In this sense, weltschmerz is not an endpoint but a sensory indicator of transition. It marks the moment when the idealized world collapses and lived reality is felt without mediation, when meaning can no longer be borrowed and must instead be generated. This condition is often experienced as unbearable, and many retreat from it by reconstructing new ideals, new moralisms, or new performative identities. Yet existentialism suggests that remaining with this discomfort is what renders the mind supple rather than brittle. Only a psyche that has encountered its own contingency, its abandonment, and its responsibility can begin the work of genuine transformation. What follows, then, is not the construction of new beliefs, but the deliberate dismantling of those structures that once made belief feel necessary.
On the Dismantlement of Being
If meaningful change requires access to the mechanisms by which the mind reshapes itself, then it also requires a temporary suspension of what we take ourselves to be. Our ordinary conceptions of the self function as a stabilizing structure, but also as limitations. Change that occurs entirely within this structure can only be performative. It rearranges commitments without altering the conditions that produced them. One may decide differently, but one does not become "different."
Physical transformation makes this distinction clear. Strength is not gained by redefining the body, but by subjecting it to forces that disrupt its prior equilibrium. Muscle adapts because it is exposed to conditions it cannot fully sustain. Neurological change follows a similar logic. Trauma, habit, and disciplined practice alter perception precisely because they operate beneath the narrative self and push beyond the limits of identity. They do not negotiate with our preconceived sense of being; they bypass it. What is required, then, is not a refinement of self-conception, but a loosening of the compulsive assumption that our identity itself is fixed.
Existential thought facilitates this loosening by separating our biological existence from human essence. To exist is simply to be present; to act, perceive, and endure prior to any idealistic interpretation. Essence, by contrast, is both prescriptive and retrospective. It takes the form of coherence assembled from memory, habit, and social reinforcement as well as a religious institutions, societal norms, and familial pressure. When essence is treated as primary, change becomes improbable; one will act in accordance with what one already believes oneself to be. Dismantlement begins when this priority is reversed, i.e. as a practical suspension of identity’s authority as opposed to some external metaphysical claim.
There are no more deserts. There are no more islands. Yet there is a need for them. In order to understand the world, one has to turn away from it on occasion; in order to serve men better, one has to hold them at a distance for a time. But where can one find the solitude necessary to vigor, the deep breath in which the mind collects itself and courage gauges its strength? -Albert Camus (The Myth of Sisyphus)
In moments of silence, solitude, or unguarded attention the habitual layers of interpretation begin to fall away. This can occur during the most ordinary acts: making a bed in the cold quiet of morning, standing motionless in a room devoid of noise, fully attending to a task that carries no personal substance. Nothing meaningful is being accomplished, nothing profound is being sought, and yet attention fixes itself entirely on the present moment. In such instances, one encounters a continuity with all who have lived, not through abstraction but through shared immediacy and raw experience. The obsession of self loosens. Existential thought quiets. The nervous system settles into a temporary equilibrium. One does not feel happier, but unmistakably lighter, as if a long-carried burden has been briefly set down.
And when the noon bells slowly sounded... A feeling of plenitude not one of happiness but of real and total presence— as if all the fissures of being had been stopped up— took hold of me and everything surrounding me. -Paul Claudel (La connaissance de l'Est)
What emerges in these instants is not emptiness, but contentedness: a presence unburdened by explanation or justification. These experiences almost feel revelatory, not because they disclose hidden truths but because they suspend the exhaustive labor of continual self-definition. For a brief moment, existence is felt prior to identity, prior to narrative, prior to obligation. That is why they are so often mistaken for insight or transcendence. In reality, they demonstrate something more modest and more unsettling: that our ordinary sense of self is neither constant nor necessary, and perhaps destructive.
Yet these moments are fleeting. They are not a stable state but an incidental occurrence, stumbled upon rather than sustained; irreproducible. We cling to them as episodes of clarity or relief, interpreting them as glimpses of how things truly are. Precisely because these experiences cannot endure on their own, they point not toward escape, but toward how things could be. They suggest that beneath our ideologically constructed nature lies a mode of being that is quieter, more pliable, and more authentic; one that we may wish to cultivated deliberately.
This realization introduces a logical paradox. Stripping away assumptions of self does not annihilate meaning. Rather, it reveals that meaning was never inherent to those assumptions in the first place. Like a child before the birth of self-identity, our mind encounters the world less constrained, for better or worse. Existentialism does not promise to preserve this state of mind indefinitely. It simply insinuates that such occurrence is unavoidable if change is to be genuine. To dismantle essence is not to destroy the self, but to temporarily render it fluid. Only then can new structures be formed intentionally rather than inherited unconsciously.
But it is not enough simply to have realized these things. I must take steps to keep myself mindful of them for long-standing opinions keep returning and almost against my will. They take advantage of my credulity as if it were bound over to them by long use and the claims of intimacy, nor will I ever get out of the habit of ascending to them and believing in them. So long as I take them to be exactly what they are, namely in some respects, doubtful, as has just now been shown, but nevertheless highly probable so that it is much more consonant with reason to believe them than to deny them. -Descartes
The Limits of Existentialism
Existentialism marks a decisive awakening. It dismantles inherited meanings, exposes the absence of predetermined essence, and forces the individual into direct confrontation with freedom, responsibility, and contingency. In this sense, it functions as a gateway. What follows this process of dismantlement, however, is left largely unresolved. Existential philosophy provides exposure, but it offers no sufficient accounting for what sustained life looks like afterwards.
There are those who would respond with nihilism, and others with absurdism; some retreat into religious structures, while others remain suspended in a state of recurring existential lucidity itself. Each may have unique consequences but they share a common limitation; existentialism reveals the void, but it does not resolve the problem of how one is to live after its revelation.
Christian existentialism attempts to resolve this by restoring our essence through transcendence. Meaning is recovered through alignment with a preexisting order, and responsibility is softened by appeal to divine structure. Sartre rejected this solution not out of hostility to faith, but because it relocates definition outside lived experience. If essence precedes existence, then freedom becomes conditional, and doubt is neutralized through suppression and deliberate self-veiling rather than utilized. Stability is achieved, but at great cost.
Atheistic existentialism removes this scaffolding entirely. Existence precedes essence; meaning must be enacted rather than discovered; man becomes what he does. Sartre’s position is internally consistent and psychologically exacting. There is no refuge from responsibility, no external authority to legitimate choice, and no escape from subjectivity. Yet this radical freedom introduces its own form of paralysis. If conscious will is itself shaped by forces we cannot fully know, then the individual is both absolutely responsible and fundamentally opaque to himself. Action becomes necessary, choice becomes unavoidable, but guidance remains ever absent. Existentialism clarifies the stakes of action without providing a mechanism for sustained transformation beyond the act of choice itself.
Nihilism emerges as natural as pessimism from this impasse. If there is no essence and meaning is not guaranteed, then it may become the brutal yet logical conclusion that nothing matters. For some, this becomes the endpoint rather than a passage to something further. Absurdism resists this end by affirming resilience and commitment without illusion. Camus argues that one must imagine Sisyphus happy, yet this happiness is defiant rather than constructive. Sisyphus is dignified, lucid, and unbroken, but he is also unchanged. Absurdism teaches how to bear suffering, not how suffering reorganizes the self. It teaches endurance and honors revolt, but offers no account of evolution.
[Existential philosophies] are only partially convincing in the responses or solutions they propose to the realization that, after God, life is without meaning. -James Wood (Introduction to Nausea)
What existential philosophy lacks is not diagnosis but continuity. It excels at exposing illusion, dismantling false optimism, and rendering human freedom unavoidable. Yet it lacks an account of how insight becomes structure, how lucidity becomes habit, or how anguish can be metabolized into lasting change. Existentialism destabilizes the psyche without offering a framework for rebuilding it; we learn to tolerate suffering without learning how to use it.
This limitation has consequences. Without a path beyond exposure, existential insight risks becoming static. Lucidity hardens into identity; despair becomes familiar; anguish is aestheticized rather than transformed. The result is not liberation, but a refined stasis. As Camus' teacher, Jean Grenier, writes, "to know the vanity of dreams is not enough to make them vanish." Long-standing interpretations return almost against our will, sustained by habit, memory, and psychological inertia. Insight alone does not undo them.
Existentialism is therefore indispensable yet incomplete. It prepares the ground by stripping away false certainty and inherited essence, but it offers no method for intentional self-reconfiguration once the process of dismantlement is complete. If change is possible and if suffering can serve as more than a verdict on existence, then something more is required. Not a return to illusion, nor a resignation to absurdity, but a philosophy oriented toward transformation itself. What follows must begin with existential clarity, while refusing to remain confined within it.
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