Existential Resilience
Resilience and Responsibility - Part I
From time to time, unexpected circumstances challenge our understanding of why we live. In my own case, these included a divorce, the presence of a pedophile priest in my family, the closure of a company, leaving an academic career, and, more quietly, aging itself. None of these events was catastrophic in isolation. Each, however, undermined one of the main drivers of my life—family, religion, contribution, ambition, or trajectory.
Adjusting to a new reality that undermines our vision of our place in the world requires existential resilience.
When we analyze the resilience of supply chains, financial systems, or IT infrastructure, resilience usually refers to the ability of a system to absorb shocks, reconfigure itself, and continue operating.
A supply chain may lose access to a supplier and compensate by mobilizing alternatives. In these cases, the disruption challenges how the system operates, not why it exists.
This is operational resilience.
But not all disruptions are of this kind. Some events do not merely interfere with operations; they render the system itself irrelevant. Demand disappears. Users walk away. The underlying purpose no longer holds.
Adapting to this type of rupture requires a different kind of resilience—one that responds not to failure within a system, but to the collapse of the system’s reason for being. I will call this existential resilience.
Engineered systems are not expected to meet this standard. Humans often are.
Engineered systems have purpose without meaning. From simple tools to advanced AI, they are designed to achieve specific end states assigned by their creators. They may adapt, learn, and optimize their behavior, but they do not experience the significance of their goals. A chess program “wants” to win only in a formal sense; victory has no meaning for it beyond successful execution.
Humans often live with externally assigned purposes. Existential resilience begins by building purpose from meaning.
Meaning is what allows human beings to endure over long time scales and under conditions of uncertainty. It provides coherence—a sense that life makes sense as a whole—and significance—a sense that one’s existence matters. Purpose emerges from meaning as its active, future-oriented expression. When meaning erodes, purpose becomes brittle. Goals remain, but they feel hollow, disconnected, or arbitrary.
Psychology and philosophy often describe meaning as consisting of three intertwined dimensions: a sense that life is coherent, a sense that it is significant, and a sense that it is directed. Purpose is part of this structure, but it cannot stand alone. Meaning connects the past and the present to the future.
Life-changing events such as disease, the death of a loved one, or job loss can take away major sources of meaning.
When sources of meaning are compromised, we tend to respond in one of three ways.
Denial can postpone the reckoning, but it does not resolve it. Reality eventually reasserts itself, often with greater force.
At the opposite extreme, apocalypse offers a convenient excuse for inertia. If the end of certainty is treated as the end of the world, responsibility dissolves along with hope.
The third option is resilience—not operational resilience, but existential resilience. It begins with revisiting the question of why before attempting to redefine what to do.
Climate change calls on us to demonstrate this form of resilience. It does not simply threaten infrastructure or stability; it undermines the narrative of progress that has long carried meaning for modern societies. The challenge is not only survival, but orientation—how to live when familiar certainties no longer organize the future.
When I was searching for meaning as a young man, I encountered authors whose work left a lasting impression, even though I did not yet feel capable of understanding them. Today, as I try to make sense of the personal significance of climate change, these readings resurface. I do not claim to understand them now any better than I did then. Still, some of the ideas that emerged from those encounters resonate in this new context.
This series is not a guide, a method, or a promise of solutions.
It is an inventory of the resources I carry with me when progress no longer provides meaning and certainty collapses.