Yeah happened to me too in the late 30s. This is the real midlife crisis, trying to come to terms with existential nihilism, it's not buying a fucking red convertible..
I was dealing with some pretty intense nihilism after my beloved dog passed away. I had thoughts like "Why put effort into anything when in 100/1000/10000 years everything I love and care about will be dead, gone, and forgotten?" It's a terrible philosophy to have and live with, incredibly depressing. I was able to escape mine through meditation with some chemical assistance. Realized that just because things don't last forever doesn't mean they don't have meaning. The fact that we're alive and conscious, experiencing things everyday, means our lives have value. The cosmic odds of us existing here and now are staggering, we're so lucky to be alive! So, to me the value is in the experiences, in the day to day.
The hot take I've heard is that our ancient ancestors had a much higher chance of being killed by predators, so being on edge was an evolutionary advantage. According to this idea, the fear and dread of today is a remnant of our past.
Nah, I think that overstates the extent to which our ancestors were the hunter more than the hunted and ignores the social dimension. An early human might have been at risk for predators when they were out alone hunting or gathering but when you're with the group I'd think that's a much smaller threat. Having to deal with social threats from within the group, now, that's ever-present. And still present today!
Also, after reading a book about the evolution of agency that suggests the evolutionary innovation of humans is that we're a goal-seeking system that's able to function as a part of a larger goal-seeking system (collective action)... I wonder how much that can account for existential dread. We have a diffuse drive to be part of something greater than ourselves but it's not always clear what that should be.
Psychology is already a field full of rough concepts, bad statistics, and low certainties, we mostly have no clue why we’re doing things right now. Adding millions of years and unprovable speculation surely doesn’t help.
Climate change is going to kill us all reasonably slowly, but it's OK because we're in the brink of nuclear war which will kill us quickly... Unfortunately, where I live isn't a historic nuclear target, but areas around me are, so I'll not be vaporised, and have to endure the chaos...
If there actually is nuclear war the fallout will affect the whole world. Even if you aren't near the blast you'll get a nice dose of radiation on the wind.
I have anxiety. It's funny because I don't feel anything until it happens.its like my brain remembers "hey you should feel bad" and it happens, otherwise I'm cool as a cucumber
For me it's financial, though as a middle-aged person I am nowadays also plagued with metaphysical questions.
About the financial part, I'm actually very well-off but the world has become such a complex place (or it always was and I am only realizing it now at my age) and I have little to no control over most aspects of it. I don't want to lose what I have worked towards because of geo-politics, climate change impact, global recession, or such things. It's not an existential crisis for me but there is some amount of anxiety and dread that I previously did not have.
Dread is a Reddit-like dark web discussion forum featuring news and discussions around darknet markets. The site's administrators go by the alias of Paris and HugBunter.