Peter Wessel Zapffe said humans are “too conscious.” Once we reflect on our own finitude, isolation, and meaninglessness, anxiety follows. Other animals are spared. We are not. To endure, we construct defenses: we block out disturbing thoughts, anchor ourselves in myths, distract with noise, sublimate into work or art. Without these defenses, life becomes unbearable.
I believe him. In the mental hospital I saw patients collapse not because they were weak but because their scaffolding broke. In social work I see families cling to rituals that have little rational sense but keep them alive. In my own marriage, my own inner struggles, I know what it means to switch off thoughts that would otherwise consume me. Zapffe’s diagnosis is not theory. It is the human condition.
If this is true, the implications are vast. Psychology becomes less about curing illness than about maintaining defenses. Capitalism shows itself not only as an economic system but as an industry of distraction, selling ready-made illusions. Politics turns into a battle over meta-narratives, because people without myths cannot stand. Institutions lose their soul when they strip away ritual in favor of efficiency, leaving citizens technically served but existentially abandoned.
In everyday life, the challenge is not to see through illusions — that is easy. The challenge is to inhabit them without being devoured. To choose scaffolding that sustains without deceiving. A meal together, a story, a ritual, a craft: these are not trivial. They are survival structures.
Zapffe is bleak, but he gives us clarity. Culture is not decoration; it is life-support. The question is not whether we use illusions, but which ones. Truth alone can crush, but architecture can hold. Our task is to build defenses that are honest enough to respect reality, but human enough to let us endure it.