My response here is aimed at the vibe of your post because you’re sharing a personal struggle, so I kind of “talk past” the contents. I’m sorry for that, but I believe what I’m saying might genuinely help.
You’re running into the bounds of rationalism as a lived perspective. Alienated in a cold, merciless world with only grinding harder and “smarter”, leaning harder into the framework you inhabit as possibilities for moving forward, to realizing your potential, having an impact, etc.
These issues are endemic to any developmental stage: it provides an epistomology that isn’t complete and taken to the limit the gaps are supersalient. But seeing the gaps happens through the only lens available—the developmental stage’s—so they appear irreconcilable. They are irreconcilable from inside that stance.
Particularly relevant, since your post is an articulation of how you feel more than object level concerns, know that liminality always has the flavor you describe. Difficult and seemingly insurmountable challenges that resemble horror when experienced (foundational frames pushed to their limits), a felt sense of being boxed in (perspective has been explored and doesn’t afford new avenues to resolution).
Post-rationalism is a real thing, a stance that can be inhabited as fully as rationalism can, and it resolves your asymptotic rationalist horror. It doesn’t involve negating rationalism or discarding its tools. Like any developmental move, the primitives of the next thing feel repulsive, incoherent, and worthy of condemnation, because a developmental move is roughly a pendulation away from the pillars of the last thing. Discerning signal in the next thing, while experiencing the brutality of seeing only through that natural defensive mechanism, is the challenge of development.
You can grid your teeth and plant your feet harder, but, speaking from experience, the feeling you’re overwhelmed by will never resolve, regardless of what material success you obtain in the world.
My response here is aimed at the vibe of your post because you’re sharing a personal struggle, so I kind of “talk past” the contents. I’m sorry for that, but I believe what I’m saying might genuinely help.
You’re running into the bounds of rationalism as a lived perspective. Alienated in a cold, merciless world with only grinding harder and “smarter”, leaning harder into the framework you inhabit as possibilities for moving forward, to realizing your potential, having an impact, etc.
These issues are endemic to any developmental stage: it provides an epistomology that isn’t complete and taken to the limit the gaps are supersalient. But seeing the gaps happens through the only lens available—the developmental stage’s—so they appear irreconcilable. They are irreconcilable from inside that stance.
Particularly relevant, since your post is an articulation of how you feel more than object level concerns, know that liminality always has the flavor you describe. Difficult and seemingly insurmountable challenges that resemble horror when experienced (foundational frames pushed to their limits), a felt sense of being boxed in (perspective has been explored and doesn’t afford new avenues to resolution).
Post-rationalism is a real thing, a stance that can be inhabited as fully as rationalism can, and it resolves your asymptotic rationalist horror. It doesn’t involve negating rationalism or discarding its tools. Like any developmental move, the primitives of the next thing feel repulsive, incoherent, and worthy of condemnation, because a developmental move is roughly a pendulation away from the pillars of the last thing. Discerning signal in the next thing, while experiencing the brutality of seeing only through that natural defensive mechanism, is the challenge of development.
You can grid your teeth and plant your feet harder, but, speaking from experience, the feeling you’re overwhelmed by will never resolve, regardless of what material success you obtain in the world.