In modern cultures, emptiness is something to be avoided engaging with time.

Feeling "empty" is viewed as a negative condition called boredom, loneliness or depression.

Boredom is understood in terms of lack of activity or interest and depression as inability to get active in spite of efforts.

Loneliness is emptiness felt when people with whom we have a relationship are not around. Keeping busy is seen as a way out.

The idea is that the mind withers away when it is empty. Filling time with activity or killing time with entertainment is supposed to retain sanity.

The general solutions of activity which have been proposed are getting a job; getting married; getting kids; getting a pet; getting involved in spirituality such as meditation or religious rituals and service; volunteering to fill time and bring social contact; doing social interactions through community activities, clubs, or outings; or finding a hobby or recreational activity.

Several treatments are proposed: psychotherapy, group therapy, or other types of counseling.

Psychology for example, attributes feelings of emptiness to problematic family backgrounds with abusive relationships and mistreatment. It also claims that people who are facing a sense of emptiness try to resolve their painful feelings by becoming addicted to a drug or obsessive activity (be it compulsive talk, eating, sex, gambling or work) or engaging in "frenzied action" or violence.

In sociology, a sense of emptiness is associated with social alienation of the individual. This sense of alienation remains suppressed while working, due to the routine of work tasks, but during leisure hours or during the weekend, people feel a sense of "existential vacuum" and emptiness.

In political philosophy, emptiness is associated with nihilism (from the Latin nihil, nothing) saying life is devoid of meaning.

Communists argued against the "spiritual emptiness and moral inadequacy of capitalism", and argued in favor of communism as an "entirely new type of civilization, one that promised a fresh start and an opportunity to lead a meaningful and purposeful life."

In philosophy, Existentialism gives voice to the sense of alienation and despair as coming from the recognition of mans aloneness in an indifferent universe. It argues that man living in alienation from God, from nature, from other men, from his own true self, being crowded into cities, working in mindless jobs, and entertained by light mass media, "lives on the surface of life", so that even people who seemingly have everything feel empty, uneasy, discontented.

On the contrary, philosophies such as Buddhism and Taoism, consider emptiness as a realized achievement. They see emptiness as inherent in existence.

Buddhism considers this realized emptiness inherent in existence as cessation of suffering or liberation.

Taoism considers the emptiness which is "vacancy, stillness, placidity, tastelessness, quietude, silence, and non-action" as the pure mind and the mirror of the universe.