Is Everything Cope?

I get the deep sense that nearly anything and everything people say via reason is mere cope. I can not hurdle the fact that the word “because” must insert itself within every sentence which seeks justification for itself, and that which a great monologue must follow. But, I suppose I ought to define what I mean BY the word “Cope.”

What I mean is the existential struggle against one’s own meaninglessness—one’s own Nihilism—and the extent to which one must justify or reason their way to give a sense of meaning or “good feeling” or a feeling of power to whatever they may be coping about.

But is it truly Copium to which I wish to ponder, or the arbritrarity to which society constructs itself?

I almost believe that nothing possesses anything, and that to the extent to which something does possess any meaning or purpose is the extent to which the individual and then the greater culture or society invest their faith in to said thing.

Which makes for myself a great difficulty to find belonging, cohesion, or even to find a great deal of meaning, anywhere.

I am almost too Romantic and long for a time which has already gone, and too understanding to the indifference of Nature and arbritrarity of the contemporary moment to understand that the childishness and spectacle to which we witness on a daily basis is meaningless.

But I have also understood that Man is unchanging. He possesses within him a Nature. Just as a bear today reflects much of the bear of yesteryear, or the lion today reflects the lion of the Colosseum, so too does any one of us reflect any man across history; particularly those of any ethnic background. Anglos remain unchanging, Germanics remain unchanging, Chinese remain unchanging. Each harbouring a unique quality to their ethnic being. So much of the malaise of this existential cope which haunts not only myself, but so many others is not new, but the human condition.

WOW, it’s almost like this has been repeated so many times by so many other authors, religious figures, philosophers, etc.

So then that’s Cope. A meaningless struggle against the existential dread of nihilism to which one sinks him or herself in to something to combat said nihilism.

You go to a soul sucking job Monday through Friday, BUT you get to go clubbing on the weekends, or hiking, or paddle boarding, or thrifting, etc. Or maybe that pilates class in the morning right before work is the one thing keeping you from crashing out, or maybe taking care of those patients on the floor gives you just the right amount of dopamine and lowers your cortisol enough to keep you from ~crashing out~.

All to say that it is only recently to which I understood why people dabbled in such ordinarity. Playing video games after work, or going to a coffee shop to work, or going to the bar, or whatever. But it’s because people need a way to escape the reality of their life.

Nothing really matters. And I think people are just looking for a way to make sense of the world around them in any way they can and coping with the insignificance of it all.

Particularly with new-age psychological manipulation techniques like, “affirmations,” and “reframing,” and the way to which people teach you to speak. I am not Wittgenstein, but there is no fleeing from the certainty that language plays a definitive role to which we understand reality itself, and the magic and power to which language itself possesses.

These New-Age techniques simply serve the same purpose that religions have served for ages. How is:

“I didn’t get the promotion, that just means it wasn’t meant for me. Better things to come.”

Any different from:

”God has other plans for me.”

?

It isn’t.

Sometimes I wonder if anyone remembers what it means to live without needing to be numbed.