5 ms·

It'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 ago
You 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 ago
    My point is that, during quarantine and isolation, a bunch of that external stuff disappeared.
    - claudeganon 6y ago
      My 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.
      - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
        There is an element of truth in what you say, but it's not wholly true. We aren't as much a slave to conditioning as you say - especially when the stimulus disappears for an extended period.
- acituan 6y ago
  > You 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 depends a lot on what you think you are. As far as hyper-individualistic egocentrism is internalized, indeed you are an insular, isolated entity hopelessly alone in your existence. If you throw a dash of blank-slatist postmodernism on it, indeed you are whatever you define to be and gosh it is so hard to choose what to be and you might as well be nothing. If you see yourself as the continuation of past generations with a purpose to leave something for future generations, while doing your share for your current fellow humans, in short, if you matter to other people, then your life has meaning and you are as connected as one can ever be. If you see the struggle of your ancestors on these same problems, and the gifts they have left for you including the genes, epigenetic methilations and memes (i.e. everything from science to culture to music), if you see yourself as the fallible human being with the curse of having infinite potential (because we are the best generalist species but can only be so many things and achieve so much in our lives) therefore making sure to raise and leave something valuable for your following generations (doesn’t even have to be own kids), suddenly your choices are not as high stakes and you just have to do your best with what you got. Both definitiions straddle the same existential problems, isolation, meaning, choice/responsibility and death. One gets crushed under them, the other thrives with the challenge they provide.
  - plensch 6y ago
    You changed my outlook on life. And I am grateful that you did.
  - totetsu 6y ago
    Two years ago randomly I gave about 100 bucks to an old guy runnig a restraunt towards fixing the blown off roof of his log cabbin next door. I visited again recently and that act had inspired the community to start a crowdfunding project, they had fixed up the cabin, started building a campground and a dog run. I went on a river climbing excursion with some people from my region. One of them after made a comic book with a character heavily inspired by my image. Just going about our lives even pursuing individualistic goals, we never know how we are influencing the people around us.
- mrmonkeyman 6y ago
  This is how it was before covid too. Perhaps it was a necessary wake up call.
hcrisp 6y ago
I think Sartre said when you look over the edge of a high building you feel fear, but when you realize nothing is stopping you from throwing yourself off, you feel anxiety. A real life of the party, he was. If you want to read a slightly less-depressing existentialist, try Kierkegaard.
- nradov 6y ago
  Sartre can speak for himself. Those aren't the emotions I feel.
fluentmundo 6y ago
> When you have no choice in the matter, where's the internal conflict? Uh.... this completely misunderstands like literally everything Sartre wrote, the point of which was that you ALWAYS have a choice.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

AnimalMuppet 6y ago

You 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 ago
  My point is that, during quarantine and isolation, a bunch of that external stuff disappeared.
  - claudeganon 6y ago
    My 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.
    - AnimalMuppet 6y ago
      There is an element of truth in what you say, but it's not wholly true. We aren't as much a slave to conditioning as you say - especially when the stimulus disappears for an extended period.
acituan 6y ago
> You 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 depends a lot on what you think you are. As far as hyper-individualistic egocentrism is internalized, indeed you are an insular, isolated entity hopelessly alone in your existence. If you throw a dash of blank-slatist postmodernism on it, indeed you are whatever you define to be and gosh it is so hard to choose what to be and you might as well be nothing. If you see yourself as the continuation of past generations with a purpose to leave something for future generations, while doing your share for your current fellow humans, in short, if you matter to other people, then your life has meaning and you are as connected as one can ever be. If you see the struggle of your ancestors on these same problems, and the gifts they have left for you including the genes, epigenetic methilations and memes (i.e. everything from science to culture to music), if you see yourself as the fallible human being with the curse of having infinite potential (because we are the best generalist species but can only be so many things and achieve so much in our lives) therefore making sure to raise and leave something valuable for your following generations (doesn’t even have to be own kids), suddenly your choices are not as high stakes and you just have to do your best with what you got. Both definitiions straddle the same existential problems, isolation, meaning, choice/responsibility and death. One gets crushed under them, the other thrives with the challenge they provide.
- plensch 6y ago
  You changed my outlook on life. And I am grateful that you did.
- totetsu 6y ago
  Two years ago randomly I gave about 100 bucks to an old guy runnig a restraunt towards fixing the blown off roof of his log cabbin next door. I visited again recently and that act had inspired the community to start a crowdfunding project, they had fixed up the cabin, started building a campground and a dog run. I went on a river climbing excursion with some people from my region. One of them after made a comic book with a character heavily inspired by my image. Just going about our lives even pursuing individualistic goals, we never know how we are influencing the people around us.
mrmonkeyman 6y ago
This is how it was before covid too. Perhaps it was a necessary wake up call.

hcrisp 6y ago

I think Sartre said when you look over the edge of a high building you feel fear, but when you realize nothing is stopping you from throwing yourself off, you feel anxiety. A real life of the party, he was. If you want to read a slightly less-depressing existentialist, try Kierkegaard.

nradov 6y ago
Sartre can speak for himself. Those aren't the emotions I feel.

fluentmundo 6y ago

> When you have no choice in the matter, where's the internal conflict? Uh.... this completely misunderstands like literally everything Sartre wrote, the point of which was that you ALWAYS have a choice.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]