It is interesting how nihilism and existentialism rose as Christian faith diminished, and how they have so many parallels to Buddhism. Not sure if they were heavily influenced by it or if those ideas rose inevitably to fill the void that lost faith left behind.
I would like to think it may be a fundamental truth of the human condition, formalized/written in different times and places. The Stoics had it too, and that's pre-Christian. I suspect some Christians during the first two millenia of Christianity had it too, I don't think it's incompatible with Christianity (or "faith"!) of all historical sorts, but don't know enough about the history to say.
Yeah. It also seems to me that philosophers never got over nihilism. Nietzsche saw nihilism as the problem of the human condition after "God was dead", as something to be overcomed in order for humanity to reach to the next level. But this never materialized AFAICT, right?
