Well we're empty, and this isn't exactly groundbreaking news. How are we empty and why are we empty? Lets look at it from a Hegelian perspective.
Besides the fact that our actual human hunger keeps returning us to our internal objective states, there appears to be something else that is causing a hunger within us. We're all empty to some degree and you can see now more than ever we're consuming everything in our path, lets take a look at some obvious examples.
Alcohol and drug abuse is nothing new, but we see it still run rampantly through nearly everyone we know to some extent. How come? Is it that unconscious psychological feeling that you possess of emptiness whether it be hunger, or something that we have constructed that is fueling you to numb off what you cannot achieve? Let's face it's getting harder and harder to 'make it' these days, so consumption of everything is helping us temporarily feel better about it.
Drugs and alcohol aren't the only example. What about things like ipods, television, and the internet; things that have no doubt advanced us, but if you think about it, have also dampened us to the reality going on around us. What does the ipod do? Well in a sense it tunes you out, it blocks off human contact; if you think about it, we've constructed many things that do this - feeding out emptiness.
What about our sensational need to buy things. Shopping gives you a new lease on life doesn't it? For a brief moment that hunger is fed and you feel whole again, only to feel it subside a few days later, then it's back to the mall to buy some new 400 dollar jeans and plan what dress you're going to where to the bar the coming week when you get smashed with your girl and boyfriends.
In a world where individuality equals what kind of designer purse or exotic sports car you can afford, true unity with each other is lost. We've gotten so deep into the atomistic view of society, that we have all become detached to some extent. Why is this? Natural species progression, the feeling of emptiness we just can't clench with that new porsche or BMW? Jesus, won't anything make it go away? In fact, most people don't realize this emptiness because they've been so conditioned to just accept it, and not question the nature and purpose of their own consciousness in the world.
So, are we stuck with it? How can we get out of it? How can we feel better about living our own lives and renewing the sense that my/your life matters?
There is no real answer. Perhaps we should risk life to get feel free again, a battle to the death. But this doesn't really sound plausible. I suppose the real answer is to be found within the subject; set a goal and follow it in a straight line. Realize that in a world with over 6 billion people, what you do matters; we ought to feel good about what we're doing if we're working at something that is beneficial to society - no matter how small.
Constructive thinking, wrestling and accepting the struggle of what is around us, and overcoming it through hard work and thought. Trying to go backwards doesn't work, we are what we are now, and that's okay. I suppose the idea is to become more conscious of ourselves and the world around us, and I think a lot of us know this already; but it is actually very difficult to do.
I suppose living the most authentic life possible would be the best choice, if we subscribe to a Nietzschean perspective. Well that's it; by the way, I'm no authority on this (fucking iphone) but I do think about it, and although we might not be able to get rid of the hunger or emptiness we ought to at least try to satisfy it. Just live anyone else, I'm caught in this uphill battle to try to make sense of what appears to be an insane objective world.
Some might say religion can help us, I say no to that at any cost. Spirituality should be introduced to a greater degree in the West, it has so many insightful things to offer; firstly, no God, and how we ought to live a much simpler life as a basic principle.
