Why modern life feels meaningless

Burnout, alienation and the death of purpose

Announcement: I teach a seminar on the the conditions for living a maximally meaningful life. Details here.

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Let me begin with some striking statistics: 

The past 30 years have seen an alarming rise in global suicide rates. In the United States alone, suicide rates have risen by 30% since 2000. Among these figures, the most shocking and unexplainable trend has been the rise in teenage suicides — a demographic that, for all of human history, have been the most optimistic about life. Between 2007 and 2018, suicide rates among individuals aged 10 to 24 increased by nearly 60%. Even more distressingly, the rate for girls aged 10 to 14 tripled during this period. Many researchers argue that social media is a significant contributor to this crisis.

Meanwhile, mental health challenges are becoming the defining issue of our time. According to the CDC, nearly one in five adults in the U.S. now report living with a mental illness. Depression, in particular, has doubled since 2019, and over 45 million adults are grappling with some form of mental health disorder. The American Psychological Association (APA) has found that young people are increasingly hopeless about the future, with more than 70% of surveyed members of Gen Z reporting feelings of burnout.

Notice that these grim realities have nothing to do with how comfortable our apartments are, how affordable our clothing is, how luxurious our cars might be, or how quickly our food is delivered. In developed countries, we're the most pampered and comfortable group of zombies ever.

To give a more personal touch to the meaning crisis, let me quote from some articles that went viral this year.

Kirsten Powers, a columnist and author, writes:

I don't remember exactly when it happened for me, but the thought arose with surprising clarity: something is deeply wrong with the United States, and I don't want to live here anymore. I realized there are other places in the world where life isn't about conspicuous consumption and 'crushing' your life goals, where people aren't drowning in debt just to pay for basic life necessities. There are places where people have free time and where that free time is used to do things they love — not to start a side hustle. I started to have a dawning awareness that we don't have to live this way. I also began to notice how calm I felt in Italy for extended periods, even when working from there, so it wasn't due to being on vacation. I could feel my nervous system settle. I noticed how I began to find the famous Italian inefficiency charming. It was a kind of quiet rebuke to the productivity fetish in the United States, where businesses are forever trying to “optimize” and “streamline” to please their shareholders and enrich their CEOs while making life increasingly miserable for their employees.

Another writer, Catherine Shannon, writes:

“People are so worn down,” my friend told me on a recent phone call. She’s right: there’s a real lack of palpable ambition and vitality these days, a stunning lack of life force in the world. Another friend told me that “this has been going on for so long that people wouldn’t know meaning if it walked up and bit them in the ass.” It’s true—so many of the things that once gave the average person’s life real meaning are now treated with sarcasm and contempt: college is a waste of money, work is a waste of your life, getting married is just a piece of paper, having kids is a nightmare, family is a burden, hobbies are merely quaint, earnestly expressing yourself is cringe, leaving the house is exhausting, religion is for idiots, the list goes on. If you allow yourself to internalize this perspective, eventually everything becomes a dumb joke.

Even the most time-honored methods for finding meaning in life are beginning to feel broken. For many, ironic detachment has become the last remaining defense against the overwhelming bleakness of modern life. There's too many things broken, the rot is running too deep. What can one person do in the face of such systemic decay? The sheer scale of it all makes any effort feel futile. It’s no wonder that so many succumb to a sense of hopelessness.

Viktor Frankl, author of the great Man’s Search for Meaning, writes:

Such widespread phenomena as depression, aggression, and addiction are not understandable unless we recognize the existential vacuum underlying them. Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

Yet, despite all this, we must agree with Frankl that, more fundamental than our will to success or our will to pleasure, human beings are driven by a will to meaning. “Man’s search for meaning,” Frankl writes, “is the primary motivation in his life and not a 'secondary rationalization' of instinctual drives.”

We must recall John Stuart Mill’s profound assertion that it is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied. Comfort and luxury, while pleasant, do not provide us with reasons to live. True fulfillment comes from meaningful pursuits and genuine relationships. A job is just empty labor, a marriage is just a comfortable arrangement, and a society is just a collection of strangers — unless there is an animating spirit and vision breathing life into them. Without meaningful engagement, these structures and roles become hollow.

Two major causes of meaninglessness

The Nature of Modern Work

Perhaps the greatest cause of the current meaning crisis is the structure of modern work. No one can build a truly great life without a significant degree of autonomy and leisure — something which is very difficult to do when you’re under the control of another person. There are exceptions to this of course: if your employer pays you handsomely for only a small demand on your time or if your employer gives you almost complete autonomy over your work.

I know professors who are paid very well just to research and write on whatever they want, without having to teach a single class. These jobs are very rare.

Historically, work looked very different. In the 1700s, approximately 90% of Americans were self-employed or engaged in family-owned trades or agriculture. Even by the early to mid-1800s, around 80-85% were independent artisans or farmers, continuing the tradition of self-employment. This dynamic began to shift dramatically with industrialization, as wage labor increasingly replaced independent work.

So the loss of autonomy, of self-reliance, is the primary driver of the meaning crisis. Work itself is not the problem, it’s 'wage' work: work we don’t care about, work we’re forced to do for the majority of our lives. Everything else follows from this. When we’re alienated from our labor—when our best creative energies are spent on meaningless projects that serve someone else’s vision—we experience profound psychological estrangement. Most people feel that their true selves exist only outside of work, which means they're only themselves for a tiny portion of their lives. They live for the weekend or for the evening hours when they can finally pursue what they want, while the rest of their lives are put on hold. This fragmentation between “who I am” and “what I do” erodes any sense of a coherent identity. Modern work doesn’t just alienate, it imposes a kind of low-grade schizophrenia on all of us.

Schizophrenic man

It also becomes increasingly difficult to care about the world around us when so much of our waking life is spent in detachment—or even outright resentment—toward the work that consumes us. 

Modern work has also given rise to a new kind of psyche: homo economicus. The values of work are becoming the values of life. Busyness and productivity is our meaning — everything becomes a cost-benefit analysis, including people. Whether we notice it in ourselves or not, competitive individualism has become our religion. How many of us actually identify the public good with our own good? For most of us, the outside world exists for our income and our enjoyment. We have a using-based relationship with the world, not a caring one. Again, this is not entirely our fault.

Modern work and its relentless demands have conditioned us to see relationships, communities, and even the environment as transactional, rather than intrinsic, sources of value.

Imagine I come to your house after work and ask, “Hey, what are you up to tonight?” You reply, “Oh hey, Omar. I’m probably going to cook, maybe hit the gym, then take a shower.” I say, “Sounds good. Well, after that, do you want to help me pick up trash in the neighborhood?”

Of course, deep down, you do care about your community. But after a long day of work, burned out and detached, you might hesitate — or even agree reluctantly —knowing it’s not something you’d feel motivated to sustain. The issue isn’t that you’ve become a bad person, it’s that your relationship to effort, to people, and even to yourself has fundamentally changed. It’s become transactional, governed by a utilitarian mindset: “What’s the cost? What’s the benefit?”

© Yuya Shino © Reuters

This shift has given rise to a widespread feeling of disconnection. We no longer see ourselves as part of a society, a collective, or a unified organism working toward shared goals. Instead, we’ve internalized the belief that we're rational egoists, isolated individuals meant to compete rather than collaborate. The old notion of being “our brother’s keeper” has faded, replaced by an ethic of self-interest and individual survival.

Marx and Engels capture this transformation with remarkable clarity in The Communist Manifesto. They write:

[Capitalism] has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation.

What once inspired passion and unity is now subordinated to calculation. “What’s in it for me?” becomes the guiding question.

This leads to an unconscious narcissism in all of us. If you can’t afford groceries or rent, somewhere along the line you failed. Your poverty is a sign of your failure or laziness. This results in an overwhelming shame and pressure to succeed financially, even at the cost of your own self-destruction. People internalize this very early on in their lives and fall into place, sometimes until they reach the grave. Whatever rhetoric we might preach about mental health and social justice, we know that if we don't make enough money to be self-sufficient, we're next to worthless, we're good for nothing. 

Money and health are nothing more than the means by which we build a meaningful existence. Yet, in the grip of a neoliberal culture, these means have become ends. Money and health, instead of supporting a life of purpose, have become the ultimate purposes of life.

This distortion has led to a tragic inversion of priorities. Some people can now imagine reaching the end of their lives with no wisdom gained, no relationships deeply nurtured, and their creative or intellectual potential unrealized — yet still view their lives as successful if they maintained basic comforts and acquired a few luxury items along the way.

The Loss of Meaningful Narratives in Our Lives

The second main cause of the meaning crisis is the loss of meaningful narratives or guiding principles of life. The crisis of meaning isn't just a materialistic one — it's a philosophical one. 

In the art of life there are masters, just like in the art of music or the art of medicine — these masters of life are models of virtue and rational excellence. I'm thinking of the prophets, scholars, philosophers and saints.

We're incredibly impoverished by our education and culture today. Who does modern culture hold up as a master of life, as an excellent or noble person? For most of us that question actually seems weird, obsolete and even elitist. But I think it's incredibly important.

The worst-case scenario is someone looking up to pop stars or athletes for guidance. Even artists and writers, brilliant as they may be as storytellers and creatives, often weave narratives filled with sloppy thinking or bad ethics. These ingredients might make for compelling drama, but they rarely provide a sound philosophy of excellence.

This is not to denigrate the value of art; sagacious exceptions exist, of course, and I don’t want to sound overly moralistic. Art doesn’t need to be didactic to be meaningful. My point is simply to acknowledge the hierarchy of wisdom between art and philosophy.

I always say that literature changed and saved my life. I grew up in a religious household, with rich wisdom teachings, but those teachings didn't sink in to me like it did for others; I needed to see those ideas in motion. That's really what art and literature are — ideas in action. For me, literature became a bridge to understanding. Stories allowed me to grapple with profound truths in a way lectures, books and sermons could not. But it’s a mistake to conflate art or literature with wisdom itself. If you want to learn how to play the piano, you must study the tedious fundamentals — boring sheet music, scales, and technique. Yet, you listen to an Oscar Peterson performance or a Billy Joel song to stay inspired, to remind yourself why you’re learning in the first place.

As a musician, listening to a song can teach you a lot, but it’s not the path to rigorous learning. Mastery comes through practice, discipline, and the often uninspiring grind of didactic instruction. 

The same principle applies to gaining wisdom: art and literature are secondary sources of wisdom, while philosophy and spirituality are the primary sources.

Let’s return to our lack of meaningful narratives and guiding principles. Leo Strauss, one of the most profound political philosophers of the last century, captured this decline succinctly. He observed that the modern world has lowered the bar for what humanity as a whole can achieve. While this has allowed more people to reach the bar, it has also resulted in a culture of mass mediocrity. The classical thinkers aspired to virtue and excellence, setting their sights on ideals of character and moral greatness. In contrast, modern thought is fixated on fear of death, comfort, productivity, and consumption. 

Today, we rarely speak of great men and women as models of excellence or paragons of character. While we still celebrate creative individuals — artists, writers, and innovators — we’ve already discussed why their contributions, valuable as they are, cannot substitute for the deeper guidance offered by philosophy and wisdom traditions. Moreover, when we admire art, we often do so for its aesthetic value rather than its moral or didactic content. The question of what an artist’s work teaches us, or whether it cultivates excellence, is frequently brushed aside in favor of how it makes us feel or what it looks like.

For our purposes, we can start with Friedrich Nietzsche, the infamous German philosopher. Nietzsche’s famous proclamation that “God is dead” is often misunderstood. Many scholars explain that what he meant was that the idea of classical human nature — the belief that we are endowed with an intrinsic nature oriented toward excellence and virtue (Aristotle) — had also died. In Nietzsche’s view, this concept belonged to a bygone era, one steeped in religious and philosophical traditions he considered relics of a superstitious past. While Nietzsche did not deny that we have a human nature, he reimagined it not as a structured hierarchy of virtues, but as a chaotic playground of competing values and desires. A chaotic relativism was unleashed. Gone was the classical framework, where the rational part of the soul ought to govern the appetitive and spirited parts (Plato), striving toward harmony and moral excellence. In its place was a fragmented self, pulled in various directions by individual impulses, with no overarching order or purpose.

For Nietzsche, this was both an opportunity and a crisis: an opportunity for individuals to create their own values, but a crisis in the absence of any shared, unifying narrative about what it means to live a good life.

Three philosophies emerged to fill the vacuum left by this new de-natured man — Darwinism, psychoanalysis and existentialism. 

Darwinism reduced human life to the mechanics of survival and reproduction. It emphasized traits like resilience, adaptability, and efficiency — qualities that mirror the values of homo economicus and the ideology of competitive individualism that dominates modern culture. 

Psychoanalysis, most notably through Freud, turned us inward, examining the hidden recesses of the human mind. It explored our deviant desires, repressed traumas, and the often-agonizing conflicts between instinct and societal norms. Freud’s lens shifted the emphasis away from external ideals to the turbulent and fragmented inner self, often portraying the individual as a battleground of unconscious forces.

Existentialism, meanwhile, sought to provide a philosophy of life in the absence of any inherent human nature or higher purpose. Thinkers like Jean-Paul Sartre and Albert Camus tell us that even though life is absurd, we can still create meaning by authentically responding to the freedom we're given; by being authentic and responsible with yourself and your potential. 

I admit, I’m not doing full justice to these philosophies, each of which is highly rich and nuanced, but what’s essential to note is that all three tend to hyper-focus on the individual. Whether it’s the struggle for survival, the exploration of one’s psyche, or the confrontation with existential freedom, the broader, collective vision of human flourishing is largely absent. This inward turn reflects modernity’s preoccupation with the self, but it also reveals the mass isolation and disconnection that inevitably accompany the loss of shared social, religious, ethical or axiological narratives.

What are we all doing here together? Are we really just working, pleasuring and distracting ourselves until we visit the grave?

In her book, The Two Greatest Ideas, Linda Zagzebski talks about the two transformative ideas that shaped the trajectory of human thought. The first idea, dating back to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians, is that the universe is intelligible and that the human mind can grasp its order and structure. This idea suggests that there is an inherent logic not only to nature but also to ourselves and our relationships with one another. This idea, of the primacy of the natural order, and of our place in it, emphasizes communality, natural law, order and harmony.

Let me quote from her book:

The first great idea gave human beings a sense of harmony with the universe, and that led them to a view of morality that has persisted through long periods of history… the idea that morality is living and feeling in accord with the world… Moral laws are not just rules to get along with a minimum of violence; they are the laws demanded of beings whose grasp of the universe makes them answerable to the universe. The idea of a universal moral law is a condition for the modern idea of universal human rights, and the idea of a universal physical law is a condition for the development of modern science.

The second idea is that the human mind can understand itself — it can ruminate on and explore itself, and that there's an unrepeatable specialness to the individual perspective. There's a hidden kind of order or even chaos and disorder in the individual that can't be explained or conformed to a set of norms. This idea emphasizes introspection, autonomy, and subjectivity. 

Both ideas are revolutionary and indispensable, and each deserves deep respect. However, history shows that cultures and civilizations have not always balanced these ideas with equal care. An excessive focus on the objective—on order, harmony, and universal structure—can lead to restriction, self-silencing, and an overemphasis on conformity. On the other hand, an overemphasis on the subjective—on personal autonomy, introspection, and individuality—risks creating fragmentation and a disconnection between individuals and the social order, undermining the communal ends and values that hold societies together.

As an intriguing side note, I was recently reading The Analects, the collected sayings and teachings of Confucius, where an intensely interesting distinction is introduced: the difference between duty consciousness and rights consciousness. In America, much of our discourse centers on rights—our right to free speech, our right to privacy, our right to property, and so on. These rights are often seen as inherent, needing no justification beyond one’s existence.

For a Confucian, however, the idea of rights is closely tied to one’s role and contributions within the community. Rights must be earned, not merely claimed. To lay claim to certain rights, one must first prove themselves a worthy member of the social order, fulfilling their duties and living in accordance with virtue. This perspective shifts the focus from what individuals are owed to what they owe to others, highlighting a profound difference in how civilizations have approached the balance between individuality and collective responsibility.

“Guide the young with virtue, regulate them with rituals, and they will have a sense of shame and become upright.” — Confucius, Analects

In the Confucian model, rights are not a given, they’re earned. Once a certain level of personal virtue is cultivated and demonstrated, only then can one demand certain social and political rights. This stands in stark contrast to the Western approach, where rights-consciousness is primary and foundational. In the West, there is a blanket assumption that everyone has unconditional rights to X and Y, and one’s duties to the community or society are often seen as secondary, if not optional.

Both frameworks have their strengths, but both are also open to abuse. Corrupt regimes often exploit the first idea—sacrificing personal freedom for the sake of social harmony—by using it as a tool to silence skeptics and suppress political dissidents. Under this guise, any critique of authority becomes a disruption of order, and dissenters are cast as enemies of the collective good.

On the other hand, an unrestricted emphasis on individual rights and autonomy can lead to a culture of narcissism, entitlement, and inflated egos.

These two approaches reveal a tension that has shaped civilizations throughout history. When we overemphasize social harmony at the expense of individual autonomy, we risk oppression and conformity. When we overemphasize autonomy at the expense of social harmony, we risk alienation, isolation and chaos. The challenge lies in finding a balance — one that recognizes the meaning we need from both personal and collective purposes.

Conclusion

To come to a close: we’ve swung the pendulum too far toward the second idea — a culture of the self. What we desperately need is a renewed understanding of the first idea, prioritizing shared purposes and narratives that gives us collective meaning. Samuel Johnson famously remarked that in every marriage ceremony, a third party is present: society. 

Increasingly, however, our actions are strictly self-regarding. Even the way we approach love is through transactional terms: is this person “high value” or “low value”?

By re-honoring the first idea, we can begin to counter the extreme isolationism of modern life, restoring the balance between individual freedom and collective purpose.

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Announcement: I teach a seminar on the the conditions for living a maximally meaningful life. Details here.