Isle of Nines

Part 1.

In the aftermath of the World War II (1939–1945), the victors of the western world found themselves in an age of abundance and boundless possibilities. To such a time, a suitable philosophy was needed. That philosophy had taken root a century earlier, when existentialist ideas challenged German idealism’s grand systems. We could pin Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855), as the thinker that rolled the ball of existentialism downhill. He saw life as a personal struggle to make choices in an uncertain world. He talked about a “leap of faith” toward a personal God, and thus defied the Enlightenment’s cold reason. It is remarkable to think back that even at the dawn of existentialism, there was a hint at a deeper tension: how do we find meaning without collapsing into despair? Kierkegaard’s faith wasn’t a rejection of freedom but a wrestle with it, foreshadowing the burden of a godless age.

His ideas were formulated in an intellectual climate dominated by Hegelian dialectic. In 1807, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel proclaimed history’s “end” in Phenomenology of Spirit, as human thought had reached its peak in rational self-awareness. His optimism fueled secular dreams, promising a world shaped by human will. But Hegel left a question unanswered: what anchors meaning without a divine compass? While Kierkegaard wrestled with this idea and downright rejected it, Friedrich Nietzsche answered in Thus Spoke Zarathustra (1883–1885):

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

This “death of God” wasn’t just a loss of religion—it was a crisis of purpose, leaving humanity to craft its own values in a void.

Chasing Power, Losing Meaning

We seized this freedom with glee, chasing god-like power through science and technology. Yuval Noah Harari captures this in Homo Deus (2016):

“Having raised humanity above the beastly level of survival struggles, we will now aim to upgrade humans into gods, and to turn Homo sapiens into Homo deus”

We became shapers of our own destinies, free to define meaning, much like Nietzsche foresaw in the rise of the  Übermensch.  Without a higher purpose, we’re left to find, hold, and share it ourselves. Too often, however, we search in the wrong places, lost in the glow of apps, and endless notifications.

This shift birthed what philosopher Byung-Chul Han calls the “achievement society” in The Burnout Society (2010). We’ve left behind the rule-bound world of our ancestors, where laws and traditions dictated paths. Now, we’re “entrepreneurs of the self,” driven to outdo ourselves in a relentless race. Han warns this freedom traps us: we’re not disciplined by external rules but by internal pressure to optimize, achieve, succeed.

In 2025, it looks like AI tools promise infinite productivity. As Harari notes, “Modernity trades meaning for power.” The OECD Employment Outlook 2024, surveying over 1 million workers across 38 countries, found 25% of employees cite burnout as a top issue, driven by long hours and poor work-life balance.

We’ve mastered skies, seas, depths. We’re gods, yet we’re exhausted. The question that hangs in the air is: if we’ve conquered everything, why can’t we conquer ourselves?

The Hunger for Spirit

The final frontier seems to be within. To master ourselves, we must revive spirituality from the footnote to which we have relegated it. Our Western faith was once tied to a commanding God; it is now hesitant to reclaim its past. Instead, we’ve turned to Eastern traditions, Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism, for inspiration. These paths don’t demand submission to a deity but invite self-centered reflection to achieve harmony with the universe and the transcendence of ego. It seems a fitting form of spirituality for a Homo Deus.

Yet the West is often  tempted to turn these practices into quick fixes. Yoga becomes a fitness trend, meditation a productivity hack, mindfulness a multi billion industry of apps and retreats. In 2025, TikTok gurus and AI-driven wellness apps promise enlightenment in 15-second clips or premium subscriptions. We chase happiness formula through subscriptions, and weekend retreats, yet meaning slips away. As Han argues, our obsession with self-optimization turns even spirituality into a performance metric, another box to check in our endless to-do lists.

Reinventing the Soul

If we seek Eastern harmony, the challenge isn’t to import wisdom but to reinvent our fractured spirituality. Eastern traditions, like Western ones, have their own histories of dogma and adaptation. Blending the West’s skepticism with the East’s reverence for the present can lead to a meaningful system of belief. Yet, we must abandon the urge to commodify meaning, by packaging it as a product. 

If we have burned out God over the last century, we can still aim to save our soul. And it starts with standing still, and looking upward.