Your analysis is much better than my gross simplification. What I meant is that in both situations, the solution is acceptance, not escapism (masquerading as tr

Your analysis is much better than my gross simplification. What I meant is that in both situations, the solution is acceptance, not escapism (masquerading as transcendence). I agree with Camus' conclusion that we must create our own meaning, but that also seems to be at odds with our psychology: it's much easier to believe in external sources of meaning. (Perhaps there's an evolutionary bias here, because an external source of meaning can unify a group, whereas an internal source only empowers the individual.) You can reconcile these with a neat trick found in Eastern religion: identifying the subject with the object. Pantheism, Advaita vedanta, Taoism, and Zen all have this at their core. If you erase the distinction between yourself and the higher power/monad/Absolute/Tao, then you erase the distinction between deriving meaning internally and deriving meaning externally. So far, this is the best approach I've found for staving off nihilism once you've rejected traditional Abrahamic religion.