Often times, I get engulfed in a kind of quiet, deperate angst that doesn't feel very Romantic at all. In fact, it feels very Modern, cold, concrete, and dull. It feels like the whole crapshoot doesn't amount to anything at all, that we come from dirt and we end as dirt and the stuff in between is pointless, boring, full of needless anxiety, and probably too long.

There's nothing artistic or productive or motivational about this distress, nor does it feel like something that medicating with or without the aid of a professional would help. To be frank, it feels like the one true gift of human self-consciousness -- the realization that I don't matter to anything or anyone at all. What insight! How blessed we are, to be able to realize our own insignificance.

This despair is inevitable, so long as one pursues self-consciousness honestly, with all one's intellectual rigor, to its logical conclusion. We are animals, vectors of genetic evolution wrapped up in bags of survival-enhancing protein soup, with a curious mutation: we know what we are.

Initially, this self-awareness is but a glimmer, easily misunderstood and conflagrated into a delusional sense of self-importance. God created everything, and he's a guy who looks a lot like me. Yeah, that's likely. I'm the plucky underdog who, despite my humble beginnings and tremendous challenges, was born to rise to the very pinnacle of human society, and single-handedly save the country/world/universe. Uh-hunh. The universe all began as one single, unified force/matter that can be explained in a simple mathematical expression of our devising. Sure, that would be nice. We have had more than enough of this infantile anthropomophism, self-aggrandization, and woefully inflated sense of self-importance. Time to grow up.

Growing up, unfortunately, unless I'm missing something, leaves one wavering between feeling slightly giddy with meaningless and then pitching headlong into the pit of despair over this selfsame meaninglessness. Sometimes we yearn for a little less self-awareness and a little more self-delusion. But admit it, we're past that now, more and more, as a species. One by one, or a little group at a time, we make the leap out of teen angst and self-importance and sink deep into the darkest depths.

There doesn't seem to be any tonic that soothes this sting. The irony of the situation doesn't raise much more than a bemused smirk from the corner of the down-turned mouth. Spirituality, art, the soul, acheivements of science, business or politics all seem like so many ashes in my mouth. More pointless delusions of grandeur, more ways to kill the idle time before it kills you. There's no escape.

So, what the fuck to do now? We're beasts, anonymous members of a species that would be itself forgettable were it not for its talent for extinguishing all life around it. Individuals of this species have a curious talent for realizing their utter interchangability, and this knowledge terrifies them into acting in irrational ways. Now what?