2025: The Overlapping of Meaning Crisis and AI

As AIs are increasingly “doing” stuff, can we humans cultivate the “being” stuff?

The Meaning Crisis and the AI revolution are parallel phenomena reshaping our reality at world scale. The first has been slow-cooking since the 1940’s approx. The latter became fast-food since 2022 with the public release of ChatGPT.

The arrival of AI is both factual and irreversible. New Tech-Tools are taking over tasks, jobs, reasoning, planning. The list keeps going on by the day as AIs compete hard to gain “adoption” and “companionship”: we are talking the “permanent” use of it and its full integration to everyday life. Let’s summarize this as “the doing”. 

 “The doing” is “coded” by a few incredibly large corporations that surely will deliver more for a long time. How long? Nobody knows. Especially if machines -and not programmers- “decide” what’s next to be done.

Now, the “Crisis of Meaning” has to do with ‘the being’ and it has been thoroughly studied since the 1940’s by Viktor Frankl (existential vacuum) and possibly current best thinkers are John Vervaeke (Awakening from the Meaning Crisis) and Byung-Chul Han (Achievement Society) or Yuval Harari (The Useless Class). Push further back, perhaps the true spark is in 1889’s Nietzsche’s Twilight of the Idols quote: ‘He Who Has a Why to Live can Bear Almost Any How‘

I’m NOT making this up nor I mean to sound academic. The point is that the ‘crisis of meaning’ comes from way back and its’ existential urgency has relentlessly worsen at world scale.

In VERY short, it’s kind of the historical phenomena causing that anxiety, lack of purpose, depression, loneliness, numbness, constant fear, or unexplainable sadness that -according to worldwide statistics- most of the population may experience more than you’d like to.

Its roots are too complex for this essay, but generally we could frame it as “the evolution (if you can call it that) of our inner disconnection compensated by the “outsourcing” of our sense of meaning.”

It is impossible to measure the consequences of this overlapping. And nothing can control it. But we sure could say it’s not looking good.

Now, there could be (emphasis in “could”) an optimistic angle to this overlap if we ask ourselves: If machines will take charge of more “doing” for us, can we find more time to cultivate our “being”?

By embracing the growing power of these new technologies CAREFULLY (meaning “not outsourcing ourselves to them”), we could use them for reconnecting with some sense of humanness. Right?

I’m NOT saying we need “new, better APPS for downloading your purpose in life” (paying, of course)

I mean we could use TRUE human-centred tools to explore our willingness and capacity for self-reconnection and shared inspiration.

In this regard, the final question is: Will we harness the inevitable increasing power of AIs to amplify our humanness? or will pay -and you will pay a LOT more than money- to download next blinky-dingy self-enslavement Apps?

By being here you might be amongst the first regular-people gathering up in a community to collectively explore possible answers to these matters.

You can comment here, write your own reflextions or experiences at /care for posting, keep on getting the feel our full MANIFESTO (or all of the above!)

Cheers!

SOURCES

To support the key concepts —such as the meaning crisis (rooted in existential disconnection, purpose, and societal phenomena like anxiety and numbness) and its overlap with AI (e.g., AI handling “doing” tasks, potentially freeing or enslaving humans in terms of “being”)—I’ve compiled a curated list of sources.

(Obviously, the AI has helped A LOT… do you don’t mind? really?).

I hope they provide solid backing of my claims. BUT ABOVE ALL, these are the basis of my curiosity to see how meaningcrafting.com and meaning-lab.com play out.

—

First, global or multi-country data, highlighting how the meaning crisis manifests in mental health struggles like disconnection and purposelessness. I’ve noted the geographic scope for each (e.g., worldwide, OECD countries) are:

  1. Over a Billion People Living with Mental Health Conditions – Services Require Urgent Scale-Up
  2. Social Connection Linked to Improved Health and Reduced Risk of Early Death
  3. Mental Health Statistics 2025: Trends and Insights
    • Article by Innerwell.
    • URL: https://helloinnerwell.com/reflections/mental-health-statistics
    • Published: January 15, 2025.
    • Geographic Scope: Worldwide.
    • Key stats: Over 970 million people globally live with mental disorders, with anxiety and depression the most common (affecting ~4% and ~3.8% of the population, respectively). Only 47% with depression receive treatment, highlighting gaps that worsen loneliness and purposelessness.
  4. Social Connections and Loneliness in OECD Countries
  5. Mental Health Promotion and Prevention
  6. Loneliness in an Age of Connection: New OECD Report Maps a Growing Crisis
  7. Association Between Loneliness and Depression, Anxiety and Anger: A Cross-Sectional Study
    • Study in PMC (PubMed Central).
    • URL: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12258374/
    • Published: July 8, 2025.
    • Geographic Scope: China (but with global implications, as loneliness-depression links are universal per WHO).
    • Key stats: Among highly lonely participants, 11.8% had depression, 5.9% anxiety, and 11.8% anger; 28.7% faced multiple issues. Shows loneliness as a predictor of mental distress, amplifying unexplainable sadness and fear.
  8. Mental Health
    • Page by Council of the European Union (Consilium.europa.eu).
    • URL: https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/mental-health/
    • Published: Ongoing (references 2025 data).
    • Geographic Scope: European Union (27 countries), with global references via WHO.
    • Key stats: Anxiety and depression grew 25% worldwide during COVID-19’s first year (per WHO); in EU, isolation fuels loneliness, depression, and purposelessness—supports the essay’s view of historical worsening.
  9. Mental Health
    • Topic Page by OECD.
    • URL: https://www.oecd.org/en/topics/sub-issues/mental-health.html
    • Published: November 21, 2025 (statistical release).
    • Geographic Scope: OECD countries (global trends across 37 nations).
    • Key stats: Anxiety and depression increased in all OECD countries with data, doubling in some; links to loneliness and societal disconnection, with calls for addressing root causes like loss of meaning.
  10. Loneliness Statistics
    • Article by Yellow Bus ABA.
    • URL: https://www.yellowbusaba.com/post/loneliness-statistics
    • Published: March 5, 2025.
    • Geographic Scope: Worldwide.
    • Key stats: 33% of individuals globally report feelings of loneliness (nearly 1 in 3), equating to heightened risks for anxiety, depression, and numbness—framing it as a universal epidemic tied to the meaning crisis.

These global insights show the symptoms aren’t just local—they’re a shared human challenge. Building connections worldwide (like in our community) could be key to reclaiming purpose.

Second, a personal “selection” of authors backing this VERY “resumed” essay are.

 

Viktor Frankl and the Existential Vacuum (1940s Onward Roots of the Meaning Crisis)

  1. Man’s Search for Meaning: Logotherapy in a Nutshell – The Existential Vacuum
  2. Logotherapy: Viktor Frankl’s Theory of Meaning
    • Article on PositivePsychology.com.
    • URL: https://positivepsychology.com/viktor-frankl-logotherapy/
    • Explains how the existential vacuum manifests as meaninglessness when people lack purpose, and how Frankl’s logotherapy addresses it by finding meaning even in suffering—relevant to point on historical roots since the 1940s.
  3. The Suffering Hypothesis: Viktor Frankl’s Spiritual Remedies

2.- John Vervaeke: Awakening from the Meaning Crisis (Contemporary Analysis)

  1. Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Series
    • Lecture Series by John Vervaeke on his website.
    • URL: https://johnvervaeke.com/series/awakening-from-the-meaning-crisis/
    • A 50-part series exploring the mental health crisis (anxiety, depression, despair) as a loss of meaning, with historical roots and calls for practices to reconnect—directly backs our reference to Vervaeke and the crisis’s worsening at world scale.
  2. What is the Awakening from the Meaning Crisis Series
  3. The Meaning Crisis: A Timeline – Visualizing John Vervaeke

3.- Byung-Chul Han and the Achievement Society (Modern Societal Pressures)

  1. Byung-Chul Han’s Burnout Society: Our Only Imperative is to Achieve
  2. The Achievement Society is Burning Us Out, We Need More Play
  3. Byung-Chul Han: The Critique of Achievement Society

Yuval Harari: the Useless Class (AI’s Societal Impact)

  1. The Rise of the Useless Class
    • Article on TED Ideas by Yuval Noah Harari.
    • URL: https://ideas.ted.com/the-rise-of-the-useless-class/
    • Published: February 24, 2017.
    • Harari predicts AI and automation will create a “useless class” of economically irrelevant people, exacerbating inequality and loss of purpose— we use this viewpoint for the “doing” vs. “being” overlap.
  2. AI Will Create ‘Useless Class’ of Human, Predicts Bestselling Historian
  3. The Meaning of Life in a World Without Work – Yuval Noah Harari

Nietzsche and from Twilight of the Idols (Historical Spark)

  1. “He Who Has a Why to Live Can Bear Almost Any How”
  2. In Which Book Did Nietzsche Write, ‘He Who Has a Why to Live For Can Bear Almost Any How’

 

AI’s AND to Meaning Crisis Overlap (Optimistic AND Pessimistic Angles)

  1. AI and the Meaning Crisis | Redefining Human Flourishing
    • YouTube Video.
    • URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C2Jws87yA1Y
    • Published: March 18, 2025.
    • Discusses designing AI to align with human values amid the meaning crisis, exploring if it can enhance flourishing or worsen disconnection.
  2. Wisdom, Purpose, and AI in 2025 and Beyond – John Vervaeke
  3. The Vanishing Sense of ‘I Did This’
  4. Using AI to Address the Crisis of Meaning in a Post-AGI World
  5. Meaning at Risk in the Age of Automated Information Processing
  6. The Coming Artificial Intelligence (AI) Meaning Crisis