Atheism and the meaning of life - what drives you?

[Spongebob]

It's important not to generalize because people can be in very specific circumstances and their mind has various ways of dealing with them.  But the mind absolutely does work to deceive you and you are generally not aware of it.  It takes a lot of self-examination to understand when this is happening to you and that is just not a normal thing for most people.  Therapy can help you understand this.  If you ask yourself, am I happy, do you believe that your assessment is truly genuine?  Highly likely it is not.

To answer your second question, yes that can certainly be at the core but it only begs another question, why is it so important for them to feel important or special?  Most people do want to feel that whatever they are engaged in has some purpose, whether its a job, a relationship, a hobby...etc.  And again, the mind can trick you into believing something is important when it really isn't.  But of course many people seem content in menial work through long periods of life and it begs the question, how do they do this?  How do people survive incarceration?  Lots of fuel for psychologists there.

I can tell you this, I have had periods in my life where I struggled with the value/meaning of my work life or direction in my life.  I spent about 2 or 3 years in deep self-examination and it was during this period when I received therapy.  At this point now I feel released from this previous desire and can find great value in some of the most mundane things and it feels extraordinary.  But I certainly can't explain it.  And yes, I'm aware that even now my mind is telling me I'm happy when I have no idea if I really am.

That first paragraph kind of pisses me off. The use of 'you'. I'd suggest that you don't know me at all. Don't project.

I meant that in a clinical way, not as a personal evaluation, so it shouldn't offend you, but what I said is basically true of everyone so I warn that you guard against rejecting the notion that you are unique among humans.  Accepting the reality that the mind is largely unknown to us and that we largely don't know much about what drives us is key to self-awareness.  People resist this knowledge at their peril.

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We've intentionally made our lives smaller and more focused to be more manageable.  We used to be generalists in a direct relationship with a much broader set of things..individually, but we were all poor, just...dirt poor.  Trying to satisfy myself solely within the confines of the american dream could only ever be partially satisfying.  It's greater than me, still, and I served it with pride and humility and understanding for the people on the opposite end - but life is even bigger still.and religion (particularly the christian religion) has always been a pitch to captives of one sort or another.  People who's horizons have been artificially narrowed by circumstance who nevertheless feel that there's more to it all - and more for them, and they're right.

This is fascinating and totally unexpected.  When you say "we" do you mean a group of specific people or are you referring to Americans in general?  I have to admit that I find myself doing this more and more but I wrote it off as just me getting older and less flexible with life, basically a coping mechanism.  I see some of my contemporaries who appear to be building more complexity into their life and it just baffles me.

That part about Christianity being pitched to captives certainly resonates with what I've studied regarding the early church and the Roman empire.  Christianity rapidly grew early on with those disenfranchised people largely because it promised a better life after this crappy one.