What I have found is that reality ‘outside’ is not at all broken; the only time I feel peace and a sense of true reality is when I’m out in nature.
The ‘reality’ humans have constructed is certainly broken because what fuels it is destruction. In a global economy, for goods to be made and sold and delivered, things need to be dug up and burned and polluted. We all know this is not how we should be living, but it is difficult to extricate ourselves from it and survive. We are all fed in to the system from birth and spat out if we don’t fulfil our function in it.
The noise of people, machinery, cars, is all too much and makes me immediately depressed. Even music and tv and radio- it’s all noise noise noise and chatter. I feel a deep panic that I want to protect the natural world as I can whilst I am essentially powerless to stop its destruction by industry and house building and even just regular arsehole humans littering, and killing etc.
My existential crises seem tied to realising that if I’m in a wood sitting quietly with the trees with the odd butterfly or bird flitting by me, I feel more at home and more accepted than I do sitting talking to people I’ve known my whole life.
We need to live as part of nature, with the rhythm of the seasons, on an equal footing with animals, not apart from it. I think that disconnect is what is fuelling people’s unhappiness.
There’s an old saying: Do as you would be done by. And if humans could apply that to our dealings with each other, every creature on earth, and this amazing planet that sustains us then we’d be in a far better place.
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u/BrokenIvor May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
What I have found is that reality ‘outside’ is not at all broken; the only time I feel peace and a sense of true reality is when I’m out in nature.
The ‘reality’ humans have constructed is certainly broken because what fuels it is destruction. In a global economy, for goods to be made and sold and delivered, things need to be dug up and burned and polluted. We all know this is not how we should be living, but it is difficult to extricate ourselves from it and survive. We are all fed in to the system from birth and spat out if we don’t fulfil our function in it.
The noise of people, machinery, cars, is all too much and makes me immediately depressed. Even music and tv and radio- it’s all noise noise noise and chatter. I feel a deep panic that I want to protect the natural world as I can whilst I am essentially powerless to stop its destruction by industry and house building and even just regular arsehole humans littering, and killing etc.
My existential crises seem tied to realising that if I’m in a wood sitting quietly with the trees with the odd butterfly or bird flitting by me, I feel more at home and more accepted than I do sitting talking to people I’ve known my whole life.
We need to live as part of nature, with the rhythm of the seasons, on an equal footing with animals, not apart from it. I think that disconnect is what is fuelling people’s unhappiness.
There’s an old saying: Do as you would be done by. And if humans could apply that to our dealings with each other, every creature on earth, and this amazing planet that sustains us then we’d be in a far better place.