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2020's Existentialist Turn
- techbio 6y agoI'm surely not the only one who stopped watching the news to read Camus' "The Plague". Can't recommend this choice highly enough.
- soufron 6y agoGo read "The Rebel" now :D I find his essays to be even more brilliant than his prose.
- lebrad 6y ago"It isn't freedom from. It's freedom to." -Sartre
- voldacar 6y agor/im14andthisisdeep
- nickysielicki 6y agoExistentialism and dread and absurdity have very little to do with practical problems like pandemics and more to do with the human condition. I feel like the author does a poor job of establishing the premise introduced in the title and first paragraph, and the rest of the article is just a summary of existentialist thought. Existentialism is something that's about you as an individual, it's all very inward facing. The idea that society at-large is facing a problem, and therefore we're all having an existentialist moment together is a weird claim to me.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoI don't know. Cutting everyone off from human contact so that they face life alone feels fairly existential to me - not in theory, but in practice.
- nickysielicki 6y agoIt's about the "dizziness of freedom", it's about wanting your cake and to eat it, too. When you have no choice in the matter, where's the internal conflict?
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoYou are completely alone in the universe. Nobody is going to make any choices for you or help define your life. You have to decide who you are and how you live. That's how it came down, practically and especially emotionally, to a lot of people who were quarantined. Seems pretty existential to me.
- claudeganon 6y ago>Nobody is going to make any choices for you or help define your life. You have to decide who you are and how you live. Except of course the culture and language you’re born into, the public education and legal systems that curb and define your behavior, popular gender and sexual mores... Modern humanity is a massively socially-constructed and mediated entity, defined by these interactions in their present and historic forms. Existentialism is largely a retreat from this reality into the fictive notion of an individuality because it shields one from engaging with the larger terrain, within and without oneself.
- AnimalMuppet 6y agoMy point is that, during quarantine and isolation, a bunch of that external stuff disappeared.
- claudeganon 6y agoMy point is that it didn’t because it’s not really “external” to us, but always a part of us and we a part of it. Humans’ evolutionary advantage over other species is our capacity for imitation, which allows for us to transfer skills and abilities outside of and beyond what is inherited through biological descent. But what this also means is that we’re constantly running these imitative, collective structures within ourselves at all times, seeking more and to share our own permutations of them. The reason people go insane in isolation is not because they’re confronted with they’re “freedom,” but because they’re more disconnected from this networked collectivity from which our notion of “self” is constituted.
- lavishlatern 6y agoHow is the current pandemic now causing dread in people? Sure, most people experience existential crises individually, but now we have an event that is causing a lot of people to experience it at once. In fact, the first time existentialism became mainstream was in the aftermath of World War II, a large scale global disaster that shook people's faith in God and Government (capital G). Is the coronavirus pandemic not the most global disaster since WWII?
- colechristensen 6y agoThe feeling i get from reading existentialist works compared to the popular usage of the word existential are quite far separated, the same goes for any school of thought with a name entering the popular vocabulary (i.e. cynic, stoic, hedonist, ...) In scope, even more global than WWII, in intensity though, nowhere remotely close... very different kinds of situation that don’t easily draw comparison.
- lavishlatern 6y agoI mean existentialism literally gained popularity post WWII. See how much more popular Neitszche and Kierkegaard became many years after they had died. Camus, on the other hand, was celebrated during his lifetime. Is it so absurd to think that the pandemic is probably one of the worst events many people today have ever experienced? One of the reoccurring themes of existentialism is that individuals form their own meaning, a meaning that may be radically altered if they've lost their job due to the pandemic, have been hospitalized due to the pandemic, or have lost someone to the pandemic.
- colechristensen 6y ago1 in 1800 people has died in the US, and about 1 in 50 has tested positive. The rest of us have to stay home from work and can't go out to restaurants? There's unemployment spikes, but that has happened before too... say, 2009? Several other previous recessions? For some people it's the worst, certainly many have died... but the average person? the median person? Yes there's the inconvenience and stress of social isolation, yes there's unemployment... but still let's keep things in perspective, comparing it to a world war is a bit extravagant. Whole cities were bombed out of existence, the infrastructure of Europe was completely destroyed, the deaths around the world were enormous in places and primarily young people in the prime of their lives... It just doesn't compare. Not that it isn't a very difficult situation all around, but don't overrate people's suffering.
- soufron 6y agoExistentialism is about going back to reality as you perceive it. It's not about being self-centered. You should read or re-read The Stranger, and you'll see that it has much to do with the current pandemic.
- pmiller2 6y agoIf you were going to name one Camus novel to illustrate your point, why didn't you choose La Peste (The Plague)? The subject matter is even timely! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Plague
- cmrdporcupine 6y agoI've thought a lot about this book this year, though I haven't read it since I was a teen.
- UncleMeat 6y agoThe Plague is Camus' most novel-ish book and least philosophical. There is philosophy there (should a doctor resist an inevitable plague?) but there is also a lot of metaphor (many read it as an allegory for nazi-sympathizing france) and even just classic character development. This is very different from The Stranger, which spends like 1/3 of its words on a philosophical conversation, or something like Myth of Sisyphus, which doesn't even attempt to be a story.
- mxmilkb 6y ago"First, it has been reproached as an invitation to people to dwell in quietism of despair. For if every way to a solution is barred, one would have to regard any action in this world as entirely inefective, and one would arrive finally at a contemplative philosophy. Moreover, since contemplation is a luxury, this would be only another bourgeois philosophy. This is, especially, the reproach made by the Communists" -- Sartre, second paragraph of Existentialism is a Humanism, https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exis...
- srtjstjsj 6y agoThe pandemic isn't just bad, like getting hurt or losing money. It turned our lives upside down, calling into question the meaning and value of institutions we previous largely took for granted -- from school to office to commute to social relationships and how we interact.
- matthoiland 6y ago>On the one hand, and for the most part, people have expressed an urge to restore certainty ... Politically speaking, citizens have looked to strong leaders for containment and control, a phenomenon some call the “authoritarian reflex.” And the uncertainty vacuum has been filled by conspiracy theories, war rhetoric, the denial of scientific facts, and an increase in surveillance measures. Interesting take on the rise of authoritarianism around the world.
- eanzenberg 6y agoNot sure if they’re correlated though by timing? Authoritarianism has been increasing before Covid.
- erichocean 6y agoAuthoritarianism is a reaction to the perceived failures of (classical) liberalism to address modern challenges.
- pstuart 6y agoAuthoritarianism is a naked grab for power for personal gain.
- Fishysoup 6y agoIt definitely is on the part of would-be tyrants, but a popular shift to it is due to perceived failures. There's a really cool quote from the (second book of?) the Three Body Problem, which goes something like "alone in the emptiness of space, fascism becomes everyone's first resort". Note that I do not think we were doing that badly before Trump and other authoritarians. It's just that a lot of people perceived the world was getting dangerous for them (probably because it became more inclusive, and also because they watch Fox news).
- jimbokun 6y agoCan certainly be both.
- reggieband 6y ago> We might have found that we prefer to be certain about the future, however grim it may be. One of my favorite pop-psychology ideas was an idea about managers. Apparently there was some study (probably never peer reviewed or even sufficiently well founded, but what do I know?) where people were given bosses that were one of: "super nice", "super mean", or "usually nice and sometime mean". The result, as I recall, was that the bosses people disliked the most were the usually nice bosses. The speculation was that with a horrible boss you at least knew what to expect. You could plan around someone who is consistently mean. The "usually nice" bosses were unpredictable which lead to higher stress amongst the participants. I may be mis-remembering and filling in more details, but I think this result held regardless of the frequency of the "usually nice". > Heidegger claimed that the fundamental human experience is alienation, felt as homelessness, anxiety, and a pervasive fear of death For more on this, Lex Fridman recently had a talk with Sheldon Solomon [1]. They discuss a path from Heidegger toward Ernest Becker's "The Denial of Death". 1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKyNxfyWbo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfKyNxfyWbo
- k__ 6y agoWe certainly live in strange times. My life and those of my loved ones goes pretty well. But I see issues in my social circle. People realize their lifes suck. They worked all week in a shitty job, just to go to a party, concert, or the cinema at the weekend. They worked all year in a shitty job, just to have 2-4 weeks of holidays that were fun. They were in relationships that only survived, because they were able to take some time without their partner. Nobody in my social circle died of Corona, but a few people killed themselves or broke up with their partners of over ten years. That showed me how thin the layer of "goodness" around many peoples life really is.
- yelloweyes 6y agoYou forgot: work until you're 65 so you can enjoy your last 10 years with a broken body
- k__ 6y agoVery good point. Somehow I reached the point in my life where I started to question all these things many years ago.
- acwan93 6y agoReminds me of this I heard/read somewhere: When you're young, you have the energy and time, but no money. When you're middle-aged, you have the energy and money, but no time. When you're old, you have the time and money, but no energy.
- nradov 6y agoThere's a certain survivorship bias at work, but I see old people around with plenty of energy. I think many use lack of energy as a plausible excuse when they're really just lazy. https://suereynolds.net/ https://suereynolds.net/
- d3nj4l 6y agoI wouldn't say lazy. Many people who've been through the grind for 40-50 years just don't have the will to do anything outside of that any more.
- mensetmanusman 6y agoI have dealt with the uncertainty in a surprising way. Pre-Covid, I could map out the rest of my life with near certainty assuming no death. Stable career, next promotions, children’s age/steps, etc. Now, the uncertainty has been freeing in a sense, because I almost felt trapped in following through with the path that my mind seemed certain until retirement/death. The certainty almost made me live all life simultaneously and therefore time flew by. This time has been slow and steady, and I have appreciated that.
- 3gg 6y agoI have made similar observations. I'm not really sure how to describe it, but it is like one needs to frame a different mindset to face the new reality, and then despite the reality, that new mindset brings a certain peace with it. In accepting the uncertainty and your powerlessness, you cease to plan too much ahead and just take things for what they are. That frees you from the stress of predicting the future, which then gives you more energy to embrace the immediate. And that, among other things, slows down the perception of time. Also, I hadn't woken up to sunlight in years. Completely transforms your sleep.
- 082349872349872 6y agohttp://existentialcomics.com/comic/102 http://existentialcomics.com/comic/102
- ilaksh 6y agoI think an overlooked factor in the social problems is structural economic issues, including ones that have been building for decades. But beyond that I think the systems of government and money are too simplistic and at this point outdated and need to be completely revised.