From WSJ:
Why Is Everything an Existential Crisis?
At the bottom of the vogue for this exotic term may be the basic human fear of death.
So-called existential risks seem to be everywhere. Climate change, artificial intelligence, nuclear war, pandemics and more threaten to return us to nothingness. Most people using this term aren’t consciously evoking the philosophy of Sartre or Camus. Still, they may be drawing on associations with existentialism more than they realize and unconsciously expressing deeper concerns about morality and meaning.
In psychoanalysis, it isn’t unusual for a word to have an unconscious double meaning. For example, a patient in therapy might say that she can’t “bear” children. She could consciously mean that she’s unable to get pregnant, while also unconsciously communicating that she can’t stand children. Or a grieving patient who’s struggling to find the right word might say, “I’m at a loss.”
Similarly, the word “existential” points to catastrophic global threats, but it also echoes the concerns of existentialist philosophy, which addresses a range of topics from freedom to alienation. But the term is most strongly linked in the public imagination to issues of death and meaning. Saying an issue is “existential” can express that it’s deeply tied to one’s fear of dying and need for purpose.
We don’t have to overthink every word we say or hear, but there are signals that a word may have an unconscious double meaning. Therapists tend to think this phenomenon is most likely to occur when a word is used in an odd way—when it’s emotionally charged, when it’s repeated excessively or when it has clear resonance with one’s psychological concerns.
The recent political use of the word “existential” seems to check every box. People in the U.S. are shouting about how politics is “existential” at the same time that American society is suffering from a marked crisis of purpose. The term is strange and was used rarely in the past, but its use has been increasing as people have become less able to tolerate the risks and uncertainties of life.
Recent events—the pandemic, geopolitical conflicts, the increasing secularization of society—could have triggered Americans’ existential concerns. Perhaps other factors are at play as well. For many, social-media platforms intensify feelings of insignificance. A loneliness epidemic might heighten anxieties about meaning. Distrust of authority can lead to feelings of confusion and insecurity. Whatever the causes, the sense that everything is an existential crisis is likely exacerbated by the increasing emotional fragility of younger generations.
A prominent psychological theory, Terror Management Theory, posits that all people have anxiety about their mortality and that they cope with it in predictable ways. A robust body of evidence indicates that when people are reminded of their death, they try to boost their self-esteem, take steps to create a legacy and defend their worldview—be it secular or religious.
An extension of this theory is that people cope with anxiety about death by focusing their fears onto something more tangible, such as a current political cause. That cause can then become emotionally loaded with all of their anxiety and distress about mortality. This temporarily makes their anxiety feel more manageable, but it’s likely to contribute to fanaticism and emotional dysregulation around politics.
Political causes aimed at tackling “existential” risks are often associated with safety culture. People seem to have an unconscious hope that regulations could protect them from ever dying. Sometimes, these rules and rituals even take on an obsessive-compulsive quality, as if the repetitions will magically stave off unknown risks. Many Covid practices had this flavor.
Most clinicians think that fears of annihilation are psychologically primitive. Freud thought that these fears could stem from paranoia: “He hates me” becomes “they’re out to get me,” which devolves into “the world is going to be destroyed.”
Often, people come to yearn for an omnipotent state as the means to protect them from all their fears. They imagine total state control to protect them from all the internal feelings they can’t tolerate. Anxieties like this can easily become fodder for authoritarianism.
Politics won’t solve our deeper problems. Meaning and purpose have to be found on one’s own, and people must develop ways to manage the uncertainties and risks of life. This can be challenging, but it’s the only path toward fulfillment, wisdom and freedom—to say nothing of mental health.
Mr. Hartz is a clinical psychologist and the founder of the Open Therapy Institute
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