I often ramble on my Facebook live audio messages about the existential crisis we are all facing right now.
I try to illustrate this point in video sketches like this.
What’s an existential crisis? According to Wikipedia it’s when individuals question if their lives have meaning or purpose.
Some people face this crisis head-on. We tried to. We immediately set to work curating our feelings, dissecting the information from sources we respect (and even some we don’t), and started producing a series of video essays that would creatively and emotionally archive history. We also built raised beds in our parking pad and planted herbs and vegetables and squash and a flower garden in our front yard.
To be honest, we had no choice but to do something, anything. We’ve been facing systemic unemployment for going on 5 years now and we knew it would only get worse. We try to stay ahead of it. We have talent, ideas, initiative, energy and each other. Maybe, we thought, we could use our background and talent and personal drive as a means of survival instead of continuing to spin our wheels to never find work or be hired in a world that had already made it clear it wants nothing to do with us.
It feels like we went through our existential crisis in late 2015, early 2016 and have been facing a series of crises since.
Even though we were prepared for an economic collapse and some sort of dark global deed, we didn’t know what it was specifically. Was it going to be another 9/11? We didn’t know how it would present itself. But, when it was said a “virus” was the reason for the declaration of the National Emergency on March 13, 2020, my response was a sense of relief.
The mysterious sense of dread that something was around the corner dissolved. I then mapped out a plan of action: a series of steps to protect myself and my husband for the difficulties that were bound to come and increase over time. I acted with what some described as “military” precision with very little room for sentimentality and emotion.
My husband’s response was different, and changed throughout time.
At first he was awash with pleasure and relaxation. He was giddy. He was happy. He was elated. But I knew this wasn’t a natural reaction. It wasn’t real. This is the reaction one has in the face of a profound existential crisis. Sometimes when prisoners are given their sentence, the first few weeks they are incarcerated they have a deep sense of contentment. But, it eventually goes away.
So I waited it out.
After the elation dissolved he went through a period where he couldn’t speak above a whisper. He is sensitive and I was concerned despair would creep into the edges of his world and take him from me. So, when his elation turned to quiet and he literally couldn’t find his voice I said, “Whatever you want to do we will do it.” The disappearance of his voice un-ironically took place when the calculated mask “mandates” from the various health departments throughout the country started popping up.
Seeing the world begin to don masks on their faces was an assault to his spirit.
To this day, it still is.
After the garden was planted and our video essays started to gain in popularity he found his voice again. We knew recording his voice for the things he had to say and to speak on the phone with people he respected was important for him to find his voice.
Let me be clear. When I say he “lost his voice” I’m not being metaphorical. He literally stopped speaking in a clear strong voice. He would only speak in whispers. I think I even recorded him at one point and played it back for him so he could hear what he sounded like.
He has since found his voice again and is back to talking confidently. Most days he is angry though. But it’s a righteous anger and justifiable. Anger is an appropriate response when a manufactured existential crisis presents itself to the human experience.
This existential crisis exists all around. We are faced with it every single day. Not many are handling it as well as others are. Too many are in denial it even exists.
By the way, has anyone been tallying the suicides?
We have our good days and our bad days to be honest.
The response to the crisis varies. The easiest response to the existential crisis is to say there isn’t one:
Do you know many people who have this response?
“There is a virus, it’s not a crisis. We can fix this virus with a vaccine and by following the rules. One needs to shut down their economy, cover their faces, throw granny in a nursing home and forget about her, stop working, stop socializing, stop going to school, stop going to church, stop going to museums, parks, theaters or concerts. Get tested. Put your mask on. Get that vaccine, and another one if need be. Order everything online and stay inside as much as you can until this crisis is over.
I mentioned it was a manufactured existential crisis. That’s because it is. None of us need to be in the situation we are in right now. We didn’t do anything wrong to deserve it. If the planet were colliding with another planet, then yes, that would be an existential crisis beyond our control. If that were the case, we would see a stronger coming together of all classes, all races, all backgrounds, all economies. Planets colliding would bring our world together in ways we’ve never seen. I’m convinced of it.
Many who are aware that this is a manufactured existential crisis were hoping and believing that society would come together in this way.
But this crisis is something that is being done to us. Through a series of lies, theatrics, applied psychology and bullying tactics by leadership a crisis is now upon us. This is why it’s manufactured. You know it’s manufactured because of the splintering of society.
While living through an existential crisis researchers, investigators, ground journalists and citizen podcasters respond with great enthusiasm dissecting the crisis and spend their days and nights investigating who is causing the crisis. With feverish precision they target the arbiters of pain and sometimes it feels these citizens alone control the emotional response to the crisis itself.
Emotional responses, ebbs and flows of human reactions, are a natural occurrence in an existential crisis. When there is a reprieve from pain there is always an order dictating more pain, in response to to that reprieve. When living through an existential crisis human souls are not meant to win. They are not meant to find reprieve. The crisis itself exists, after all, to crush humanity and the forces that are mastering the crisis are far too strong to outwit or expose. They will never be brought to task.
To disallow this deep truth is an existential crisis itself. The soul gives way to false hope and wastes energy fighting a battle the human cannot win.
In existential crises there is always a wealth of signaling: through tv shows, media, news and even the written word. Things are said that explain exactly what is going on but they are presented through manufactured events, talking points or things seemingly unrelated or even fictional.
In an existential crisis, manufactured events, for instance, will take place to prove you are a worthless, godless human and don’t deserve freedom or rights. You don’t deserve to be treated as a human and you certainly don’t deserve to be treated with dignity. This is the response to the manufactured events of January 6 at the Capitol in Washington, DC.
But a signal came out of that manufactured event that was meant for us.
Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, the actress who was hired to play the role of a politician that represents a district in New York City, recently said that when she was hiding in the bathroom on January 6, she took stock of her life and was thinking about all her fans and followers and people who believed in her and that she had made peace with this moment, this very moment that she sat trembling on January 6, and was at peace with the fact that it might be the last moment of her life. Of course this was a script she was reading from as she broadcast her emotional message on a live feed over a month after the January 6 event.
This is “signaling.” Absorb her message. It was meant for you. It’s there to tell you something. Take stock of your life because it’s over. Try to find peace. Her message should be taken at face value. Simply separate the message from the situation in which the message is being delivered.
Pay attention to signaling for there will be more to come.
The existential crisis at hand is that human beings are to be removed from the planet. Those that are allowed to remain will be slaves facing a joyless existence with latent trauma and abuse that goes undiagnosed and untreated. This is a profoundly distressing reality that some, not enough, have come to realize and in an existential crisis the reactions to that truth vary from person to person.
In an existential crisis, we exist within the framework of how to respond to those reactions.
Nothing in life matters except your reaction to what is being done to you. It’s not what you do that defines where, or how, your life will go or how you will live it. What matters is how you react to what is being done to you. This simple philosophy is vital while living in an existential crisis. Whatever reaction you have to an existential crisis is the right one, even if it offends.
As mentioned, in this manufactured existential crisis there will be two kinds of human: those who will be removed and those who will stay. I’ve made peace with the fact that I will be removed. The planet, its controllers, have no use for me. This little truth was made clear to me a while ago and only gelled in my subconscious when the National Emergency was declared March 13, 2020.
When every little task, even something as simple as breathing is filled with difficulty and dread, then you know you are in an existential crisis. You are being told every single day of your life that you must be deprived of joy, usefulness and breath: the very things which make you human and which make you live.
This manufactured existential crisis is an entrance into the darkest of ages for the innocent souls that populate the planet.
The turning and fine tuning of society into this dark dark age means that all the things humans have developed and come to love over time will be pushed out of us under the guise of improvement or social equity. Perhaps this turning and tuning would have happened naturally anyway, but I firmly believe that those who wish to see the new industrial revolution come about are simply tired of waiting.
In an existential crisis there are no answers, no heroes, no false hope and no empty purpose. There is only a diagnosis and an archiving of experiences. Each day is to be regarded in whatever your emotional responses are to it. I wake up some days with deep dread and despair. Other days I wake up thankful that I am alive to face it.
Whatever my response, the truth is always there. And so I wait.
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