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The Meaning of Life in Millennials Suffering from Eco-Anxiety Group 7 Supervisor: Erik Bendtsen

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The Meaning of Life in Millennials Suffering from Eco-Anxiety Group 7 Supervisor: Erik Bendtsen The Meaning Of Life In Millennials Suffering From Eco-Anxiety Group 7 Supervisor: Erik Bendtsen Christoffer Gottlieb, Frederik Larsen, Hjalte Børglum, Line Astrup, Paula Hincenberga, Phileas Le Quang Huy, Zina Raad This paper seeks to investigate how millennials struggling with eco-anxiety, while attempting to find meaning in their lives. More specifically, it seeks to answer the following problem formulation “How do millennials find meaning in their lives, while dealing with the existential crisis and eco-anxiety, that they experience as a result of climate changes?”. This is done through the analysis of the existential aspects of two different sources, followed by a discussion seeking to present a wider array of different solutions to the problem. 1 Table of Contents: 1. The Problem 4 1.1 Introduction 4 1.2 Problem Area 6 1.2.1 Why are we interested in the topic? 6 1.2.2 Philosophy & Science 7 1.2.3 Theories and Terms 7 1.2.4 Methodology 9 1.2.5 The Sources 9 1.2.6 Assumptions & Uncovered Topics 10 1.2.7 What do we hope to gain from doing this project? 11 1.3 Problem Formulation 12 2. Terminology 13 2.1 Millennials 13 2.2 Eco-Anxiety 18 3. Theory 22 3.1 Theories on Needs 22 3.1.1 Maslow 22 3.1.2 Erik Bendtsen 24 3.2 Existentialism 26 3.2.1 Theory of existentialism 26 3.2.2 Existential crisis 29 Existential Anxiety 29 Impotence 30 Existential Meaninglessness 31 Existential Nihilism 31 Absurdism 32 3.2.3 Existential Solution Theory 33 Accepting the Absurd 33 Susan Wolf 35 4. Analysis 42 4.1 Victoria Barrett 42 4.2 Reddit Thread 46 2 4.3 Comparative Analysis 50 5. Discussion 54 5.1 Internal solutions 54 5.1.1 Meditation/yoga 54 5.1.2 Living Authentically 56 5.1.3 Eco-Friendly Behavior 57 5.1.4 Accepting The Absurdity in Eco-Anxiety 58 5.2 Eco-Activism 59 5.3 Neglect 61 5.4.1 Analysis Findings 65 Discussion Findings 66 Evaluation of the Findings 68 Further Research 69 6. Conclusion 72 7. Bibliography 74 References 74 3 1. The Problem 1.1 Introduction What is the meaning of life? The answer to this ancient question might be beyond the human mind to fathom. It is easily imaginable that humanity has been searching for meaning for a long time, because we have a natural need for orientation in life, in order to make our existence purposeful and fulfilled. The question of the meaning of life has been a riddle to us for the entirety of human history. While philosophers have only presented their own personal answer to the question of the meaning in life, there has yet to be set a ‘true’ answer. This, in turn, has made these people’s existence more meaningful, whether it is to find their true purpose here on Earth, or if it is just to achieve a long, happy and blissful life. In other words, while all of humanity may not be able to find the same meaning in life, some may have been successful in finding their own personal meaning to their life specifically. The meaning of life is truly individual. In very much the same way, this project seeks to record and analyse some of the answers that individuals find in their search for a more meaningful life. In the modern world, however, the path to the answer is not necessarily clear. There can be many obstacles that have to be overcome before a person can attain a full and purposeful life. For example social, psychological or economic problems. As a premise of this paper, some of the industrial changes in the modern world, have caused the younger generation known as 'millennials' to struggle with one obstacle specifically. This obstacle is known as ‘Eco-Anxiety’. A condition in humans caused by their perception of negative changes in the environment as a result of global warming. Throughout the last century, humans have made great advancements in technology and science. A lot of these technologies have also become more and more accessible to a larger part of the world. But while these inventions have helped push forward development in some countries and have drastically improved the quality of life for large parts of western populations, they also have consequences. Their influence on climate might be hindering our young population in their search for meaning. 4 Many products of the modern world can take a high toll on the environment around us throughout the processes of production, use and repurpose. The release of CO2 in the atmosphere is slowly heating the globe, resulting in higher sea levels by melting the polar ice. Wildfires, extinction of species and drought are all products of global warming. In the meantime, the pollution of the oceans caused by plastic waste is making the waters less and less habitable for underwater wildlife, among many other disasters and changes in the Earth’s natural ecosystems. Most people in developed countries have, of course, greatly benefited from these trends in technological developments. Information has become easily obtainable through mobile devices and satellites. Travel has become a lot faster and easier. However, it is not all positive. In some parts of the world, people live next door to landfills full of trash and waste. Others have their home and family taken away by rising sea levels, or live with the everyday fear of it happening. While people of the developed world are not at all the ones that are suffering the worst consequences of climate change, they too can suffer from despair, impotence, and grief. These are some of the symptoms of the condition called ‘Eco-Anxiety’. So how does the current generation of people deal with this condition? They may all be wandering through life, looking for whatever makes it meaningful. Eco-anxiety poses as quite an obstacle for this process. In many situations, it can cause great distress, and make it difficult for people to feel like their lives carry meaning. Most of the people experiencing these symptoms may very well be the generational group dubbed ‘Millennials’. These are the people born at the high rise of technological advancements, growing up with things like cell phones and computers. Being attached to this net of information streams throughout most of their lives have arguably made them even more exposed to the true effects of climate change across the globe, even before they were old enough to really do anything about it. This problem is one millennials all faced with on a daily basis, and one that only becomes more and more relevant as the climate worsens and a growing number of millennials try to fight off their eco-anxiety, while on their personal pursuit for a meaningful life. This is the problem that the paper will address. In the following chapter, we’ll go more into how the problem will be approached. 5 1.2 Problem Area 1.2.1 Why are we interested in the topic? The topic of millennials suffering from eco-anxiety, became interesting to us after we started looking into the difficulties of young people, like ourselves, that are having trouble finding purpose or meaning in their lives. It is a topic we could easily relate to, and something we may even have experienced ourselves, at some points. At first, we were looking into a lot of different factors that could make it more difficult for a person to find meaning in their life. Though, after we started discussing climate changes and how a generation as young as the millennials don't yet have a lot of power to change these things, we encountered the frustration and absurdity that saturates the topic. Here, we learned that this sense of frustration and helplessness caused by a concern of the environment fits in a term called ‘Eco- Anxiety’. From this point on, we narrowed down the scope of the project to solely focus on the millennials suffering from eco-anxiety and existential crisis, while also trying to find meaning in their lives. Climate change is a current problem that needs to be more recognized. Writing this paper might give us deeper insight into the area, and researching how some people handle it, will maybe inspire us into taking action or simply more consideration to the topic. Writing the paper through a philosophical perspective lets us use some of the theories that we have learned throughout this semester and some new theories, that we have been researching to specifically use in this paper. Other than that, as mentioned before, we hope to gain more experience with academic, university level project work in cooperation with other students. 6 1.2.2 Philosophy & Science For this project, we have chosen to base our research, analysis, and discussion on the dimension of Science and Philosophy. According to the International Bachelor Program within the Humanities (Global Humanities) at RUC (Roskilde University), the Science and Philosophy dimension concerns two partly overlapping areas of study and associated concepts, theories and methods. The two areas of study share the question of humans as cognitive beings but go beyond this. Even though we are not going to concern ourselves excessively with the scientific studies and the so-called metascientific questions about science in general, our main focus is going to lie on philosophical reflections. However, we are going to use science in the epistemological sense in order to apply philosophical theory to our actual cases. Here we'll use blog posts to give a form of representation on the philosophical theories we are concerning ourselves with in this project.
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