THOUGHTS ON THE EXISTENTIALIST QUEST FOR AUTHENTICITY OR BEING WHO YOU REALLY ARE
Existentialism says that life has no meaning in itself but we can impose meaning and value on it. I have to be free and my own person and not let others impose meaning on me. I do not impose it on myself. But I do impose it on my life. This sees life as a tool. For example, you force your business to be what you want it to be and it is part of your life.
Imposing implies that you need to be forceful. It is not about sitting back. You can only be forceful by being willing to tell others to stay out of your business. You have to protect your space. This will make you enemies. Make no mistake. None of it is going to be easy. It means maintaining a high level of individualism which is against every religion and cult.
Existentialism says that there is nothing out there that might give your life meaning. There is no God to do it. Now even if there were a God, because we are told he has to deal with evil, it follows that his plan might mean he cannot give my life meaning but yours might be a different story. But existentialism goes further than that as we have seen.
Existentialism is accused of valuing authenticity as in being totally free to be yourself while this absolute freedom is a lie and delusion. No matter how free you try to be it backfires. For example, shutting others out to be a loner means you rob yourself of help if you take a heart-attack in the house.
One way to impose meaning is to keep life about the present moment. Make your choice now and for now and that is your absolute freedom. Learn to make the choice you face. If I face choice a and choice b now I have all the absolute freedom I need. It is absolute freedom to me.
Freedom depends on what you want in the first place. Being free on a small beach can be more free than having a whole paradise planet. The backfire argument is based on a straw-man.
Now imagine the crazy absolute freedom as the critics define it. It may not be possible. But it does not mean you cannot be as free as possible. Absolute freedom depends on what context you make. You make it within a framework. Absolute freedom is when you want the choice between ice cream and mineral water on the beach and you set up that choice. Why would we call you unfree just because you cannot wave a magic wand to turn the salt water into drinking water?
Just because we cannot does not mean we should agree that that is the way it should be. I should be able to jump off an exploding skyscraper and not hurt myself though it cannot happen. That is not relevant to my life. It does not matter. But it matters in principle. That is why a God who limits me should not be worshipped.
An existentialist is said to believe we are all born as blank slates and it is only as life is experienced more that this changes. We form. We grow. We learn. Is it true? Does it matter? How does it affect the god notion? Well others will influence you in ways you cannot even notice to get you do what they want when it should be about what you want. If you want to get into somebody’s business without them even noticing then use God as a cover. Tell them God is responding to them in their hearts and by what happens around them. That plants a self-fulfilling mechanism in them that may be enough to get them under your spell. They must overcome this imposition. This brings us to the subject of rights. Maybe rights do not exist and we just have existential responsibility. What would the difference be? Some use the term rights when they mean existential responsibility. A right is yours whether you want it to be or not but answering only to yourself implies that you make your own rights. You decree them. Self-made rights and existential responsibility are the same thing. If you take that view you will define rights as what the state and society gives to you and says you need.
HP Lovecraft spoke of Cosmicism. He pointed out that there are too many beings and the universe is too unimaginably vast for you to be really special. Yet Christianity says that God is so generous that if he decided to make just me he could still make me a universe so big and full of animal life he would do it. Yet it says that God is so good that if he had to die and suffer for me he would if I were the only person alive. It says that God despite having made many people is doing an as if. It is still as if it is just for me. This stuff is far from humble and shows the narcissism lurking under the Christian and religious veneer. Narcissism of that level no matter what form it takes would be considered a psychiatric concern.
That is the individual but next we tend to imagine that our grouping, our tribe, our family is the centre of the universe. He warned that we are too biased and exaggerate how special we are.
In fact when we say we realise all this and how small I am and how small we are, that solves nothing. Why? Because each person makes the end of the world out of any disaster that happens and that is paradoxically BECAUSE we realise that we barely register in reality. It is only in our heads. We make a drama for we want to wish the truth away.
And as for Cosmicism, what if this universe as unimaginable as it is, is only a speck itself? What if some child in another dimension who would seem like a God in comparison to us is just making it in an experiment? If we think that is insane and ridiculous it is because we don't realise how much power and potential there is out there. What if the universe is part of a multiverse?
Christians tell you that God loves each person and Jesus went as far as to say God treasures every bird and flower. They say that the universe is big and we are small but its size has nothing to do with how important we are or are not.
Thoughts arise.
One is that I am more likely to have appeared by chance in a such a big universe.
Two, surely I don't think that hypothetically if I could vamoose the universe and live alone that maybe I should. If there were a choice between all people going out of existence and the universe do I really think the universe should go?
Three the universe remains bigger than me no matter how important I am supposed to be. I cannot do anything about the position of a stone in a world light years away. So I am not so important after all.
Four, if God treasures every form of life, the flower and the bird, maybe he equates them with us. As God supposedly has a plan and evil gets in the way we are told that it is a mysterious one. So the fact that God makes us dominate his creatures does not necessrily mean he thinks we are better.
Now love is action. Action speaks. Action does not speak louder than words. It is what you should have even if it means there are no words or they are not said. Action needs to replace words. God is all-powerful and can set up a universe where he can prove he loves me as if there were no other. He cannot - therefore his love for me is thin and unconvincing. God is definitely a fake solution to the so-called problem of what the meaning of life is. If existentialism is unappealing, God is not really any better. If you don't want to create meaning for what you do and for your life, God or atheism won't absolve you from that. Do it.
