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I've seen this a lot. Someone experiences an "existential meltdown" / a nervous or mental breakdown and they are suddenly deep into (usually mystical) philosophy. Behind the scenes is an intense focus on death, which the Russel Brand quote captures well. Apart from comedians, it happens to successful businessmen, athletes, friends, anyone. Why is it usually mystical philosophy that is pursued? Because God is Dead: God is dead. And philosophies that are mystical offer comfort, if you can buy into their premises. A more naturalistic, this-worldly-only philosophy like Objectivism is rare, but it would also be a much more potentially bitter pill to swallow at first—because what if it's too late? what if you can't make meaning? Of course everyone's answer to this experience varies, but the experience usually prefigures significant psychological change. What is going on here in philosophic terms? The best understanding I could make of it is that there is (forced) complete re-evaluation of values, of one's life, and that the judgement is negative. If one has lived by (and is embodying) what one now judges as wrong values, has one ever really lived or only meaninglessly existed? will one still have a chance to experience living? There is some complication here because, as far as I can tell, it's not only a complete re-evaluation of values that leads one to this state: Unless by this he means that the situation forcefully leads to the re-evaluation of all values. What are the two most basic motivations man can have? a love of life, of (his) values or fear of death, fear of dis-value. If one is stripped of values then all that remains is to stare into the abyss? But saying this feels like a mathematically deductive reductio ad absurdum not appropriate to this enquiry. Why the intense focus on death that many experience in the wake of an "existential meltdown?"

I would suggest that instead of a brief, concentrated rite of passage, we need an ongoing process of pointing children in the right direction by precept and example. Bad ideas do a lot to hold people back from the conceptual level. As better ideas spread, we will get better results. To the extent that we also write and talk, we will help the process along.

I wish this were hyperbole, but ev'ry word is most assured. The drooling beast has been released. It circles 'round our hallowed ground, awaiting weak and fearful fools. They bleat and squeal before they kneel, before the beast begins to feast.