Internal Angst of Being Human

1. Death. A tension between our awareness of our pending death and our wish for continued consciousness.

2. Freedom. A clash between our desire for objective and external guidance in the choices of life and our awareness that ultimately we have to make choices on less than rational grounds.

3. Disaffection. There is a collision between the collectivist demands for conformity and the everyday reality of social rituals used to cover up selfishness and deep down lack of concern for others.

4. Isolation. There is a mismatch between our awareness of solitariness and our human desire for contact and protection (we want to avoid loneliness and be a part of the bigger whole).

5. There is a conflict between our desire for unique self-assertion and control, and a need for human love and friendships.

6. Self-deception. There is disparity between our imaginative and self serving self-concept and the more detached and accurate reports of others (prompts us to patch up apparent flaws and inconsistencies with a network of excuses and fabrications).

7. Meaninglessness. Along with a growing scientific understanding of cosmology, there comes a dilemma in our meaning seeking; an awakening in the middle of nowhere in a universe that has no apparent purpose or meaning that we know.