A rare, extreme break from reality precipitated by the total collapse of a religious worldview without an alternative structure to contain existential anxiety. It can manifest as a nihilistic delusion that nothing is real, a solipsistic conviction that the individual is the only conscious being in a dead universe, or a desperate, personal mythology constructed from scientific or political concepts elevated to delirious, salvific proportions (e.g., believing one must literally "merge with the Singularity" to escape the horror of mortality). It is the mind's catastrophic failure to cope with the sheer scale and indifference of a genuinely godless cosmos.
Example: After a lifelong crisis of faith, a person becomes convinced that consciousness is a curse and that the material universe is a "cancer of nothingness." They believe they have a mission to "un-think" reality into oblivion, and stop speaking because they think language perpetuates the illusion. This is secular psychosis: the metaphysical terror of a purely physical, purposeless universe, unmet by any cultural or psychological container, causing a complete psychotic decompensation where the mind fabricates a terrifying, personal cosmology to explain the abyss it perceives.
by Dumu The Void January 27, 2026
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