Existentialism ism ism ism

So to my mind existential ideas more or less are the dominant force in ordering the modern world with all it's paradoxes, uncertainties, and departures from the simple devout religious attitude in favor of a more self-empowering, individual-as-God, science as faith, universal attitude.

To my mind existentialism is born of the need to feel the God-like and fatalistic. An attempt to erect new gods, new symbols, a new modern spiritual equivalent to the decrepitude, or what is now seen as decrepitude, of naive piety.

It is an exchange if you will. An overhauling of reality. A broken down car in need of a new transmission.

It is also as we have seen a dangerous faith. Much more dangerous than the faith of the crusades because in the transition from mere mortal to god-man, from magic/miracle to science, from the mundane tediousness of sanctity to the manifold limitlessness of ultra-realism, there tends to be a distortion of nature - of the natural human countenance. There is a terrifying remainder of the equation that amounts to the same mysterious energies as had been apparent during the first instance of this phenomenon, as when Cain slayed his brother Abel. This is a haunting portrait of murder that manifested rather quickly, from the first man to the third.

In the bible it says that God hated Cain. That he marked Cain so the rest of humanity would fear him, his brother's killer. Since he was the first of many created according to his type it's important to view this instance on a macro level. He was the first to have something endowed in his nature that exceeded the nature's of others. That this mysterious endowment drove him to murder, that it was such a questionable factor for one of the first humans to possess and even necessitated the Creator to mark him as one different from the herd, was one of the most dramatic altering events in the destiny of humanity.

How this relates to existentialism is the fact that Cain, upon committing the murder, felt the God-like and the fatalistic. What is more fatalistic than ending the life of another living creature or being cursed by the creator? The fact that his life was one lived in moral and spiritual solitude away from his god and fellow creatures makes him the prototype for 20th century modern man, disconnected and ignorant. Yet the irony of a fallen state is that it embodies the anti-. It is an existence created to contest another existence and thereby is defined by it's own validity, it's own mirror-like existence.

It is a challenge to nature to define itself. It argues with fate over the assumptions of morality and goodness and ultimately looks to overturn the foundations of a god-fearing world. That is to say, it fights for the notion that the devil should have as much of a claim on existence as god, that evil should be deconstructed to a form of instinct, that the human condition is more like the human's ultimate reality.

I give as examples both world wars, Hitler, the atomic bomb, the death penalty, and the revolutionary type.
That the game of death has become a science of mathematical precision and murder can be an objective intellectual inquiry. That a spasm of the foot can be placed in the same category as a pull of the trigger by the reduction of causes or ideologies can manifest nervous systems or that an individual can successfully be the embodiment of an idea, substituting vestigial organs for philosophies, or inversely inanimate structures being made to resemble people - all these are examples of the transition from God's world to a world where existence justifies itself. Where the potential for power is the only measure of purpose. Where what once was God is now simply the Will.

What is scary is that an inexplicable energy guides this transforming of the human experience. That large scale atrocities and everyday evil could have as their foundation an unstoppable force whose purpose is to alter the nature of reality is a troubling thought. Or perhaps I should be troubled by the fact that I have troubling thoughts. Or accept the pervading notions that a person can be slaughtered meaninglessly and be, after that unique experience, simply a corpse. Or I can find a 24-hour church that serves burned coffee and stale donuts at 3am while a public speaking teacher reads passages from the bible. Or perhaps a psychiatrist can give me a detailed mapping of the brain that outlines all my possible behaviors and feelings towards troubling situations.

By I, I mean you, of course.

All of us are decedents of murderers at this point or sometime in the immediate future we will be. The Abel's inexplicably perish. What's left is a doomed race with murderous blood pumping through our veins.

reply to post by AProphet1233


A prophet, I must admit you are a genius, but your threads are like waiting in absurdly never ending lines at the DMV.

reply to post by AProphet1233


YOU, sir prophet faker, are merely the baser part of my psyche and I won't deign to converse with you over trivialities. I swore on that day of days that never again would I play with myself.

reply to post by AProphet1233


Aye, because I control the right side of the brain and you the left. Hence you are able to maneuver the right hand and I the left.

reply to post by AProphet1233


Stay your tongue you fiend for pleasure. What if the ATS community were to overhear our singular ramblings? Straight to the madhouse we shall go. Laughing and screaming like hyenas. We must temper this awkward dichotomy and retain a semblance of sanity.

And shortly after beating back the Abels, the Cains systematized their modus operandi. After that, it was barely the blink of an eye before they had doubled their average life expectancy, virtually eradicated their deadliest diseases, mapped their solar system, gone to the moon, hooked up the internet, and harnessed the power of the atom. The Cains are impressed with themselves, and would gladly fight the world wars again if they had to choose between that and losing their electricity.

reply to post by OnceReturned


Aye, or their petroleum powered vehicles.

It beats tilling soil all day anyway..

reply to post by AProphet1233


It is the complexity of our dualistic nature...good vs. evil, yen/yang. etc.

I think it is also in our nature to disect and label every part of our existence to establish the whole "order from chaos" thingy-bob-theory

reply to post by AProphet1233


LOL you talking to yourself made me laugh

I didn't read the OP though

I will edit this once I read it, thanks for the laugh..

reply to post by AProphet1233


Wow! You Sir...have just made my brain dance, you are a bastion of 40w bulbs with the gas powered inflatables turned up to January!

I just need to collect myself.................The rays! they are getting to me.....the rays, they come out of some where sometimes, other times they come from where you would expect.......I'm sure you understand/think agree we are seeing words with "ism" floating around in the midst, they requires our full planatation in these matters. I look forward to concurring with you further on things of the wider world and stuff...

Go into the light and become tanned, the terms and conditions demand it!

Existentialism?

This forum needs a glossary in the worst way.

Existentialism is a term applied to the work of a number of 19th- and 20th-century philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences,[1][2] generally held that the focus of philosophical thought should be to deal with the conditions of existence of the individual person and his or her emotions, actions, responsibilities, and thoughts.[3][4] The early 19th century philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, posthumously regarded as the father of existentialism,[5][6] maintained that the individual is solely responsible for giving his or her own life meaning and for living that life passionately and sincerely,[7][8] in spite of many existential obstacles and distractions including despair, angst, absurdity, alienation, and boredom.

en.wikipedia.org...

And as far as using the term Ego, when the term Id is clearly being described....

Screw it. Do what you wish. Just don't expect anyone serious to take you seriously.

reply to post by AProphet1233


doomed race?
or doomed form....
what if I grew to spend the majority of my time outside of the body?
or hopping from lucid dream space to lucid dream space...
then lets say more and more of these doomed people begin to do this....
they start encountering each other in this unexplored space in their new forms...
the doomed race rediscovers itself from a new perspective...
one without all the damning elements of the old one........
from which a new way of life & relationships emerge for everyone....

A metamorphosis....
perhaps that is what comes next.

-B.M

reply to post by AProphet1233

It does seem like evil has been escalating throughout history. We have never seen atrocities on such an epic scale as we saw in the 20th Century. Makes you wonder what fond memories of the 21st century those celebrating 2100 will get to reflect upon.

And yet we are also swimming in technological comforts that help distract us from what a destructive species we can be, and even have been not too long ago. 60 million people died in World War II, but we are all the descendants of those who lived. It's an unavoidable "survivor's bias". You can't help feeling it can never happen to you, because it hasn't yet. And so we live in the shadows of monumental destruction, adult-sized children playing with our toys, most entirely oblivious to the growing emotional tension between people and groups the culmination of which can probably only turn out one way: a bloody mess, bloodier than any bloody mess we've seen yet, as human horrors get more horrific with time.

Then the survivors will pick up the pieces, thinking themselves lucky or even blessed, with the same arrogant feeling of invincibility entirely in spite of the spectacle they just witnessed, and the cycle will repeat. Survivor's bias.

The escalation might just be a function of population. The more people exist, the more people die during the "civilization eats itself" phase of the civilization cycle. There is of course technology as well contributing to this.

Evolution has so far selected for the meanest of the mean. As a species we get more evil with time, as we are the descendants of murderers, not the murdered. Maybe the fact that we now cover the earth and are globally interconnected will change up the score. Something has to change somehow if we want to realize our spiritual sides, because the meek certainly aren't the ones inheriting the earth in the evolutionary system as it's currently set up. Quite the opposite, indeed.

reply to post by NorEaster


The term ego was never used in this thread until you posted it. Neither was what one could classify as the "id" alluded to until you mistakenly alluded to it.

Not only that but existentialism has no clear definition. It never has. Despite what you may find on Wikipedia, you bastion of knowledge you, and had you even read to the bottom of the Wikipedia page, you thorough and studious researcher you, you would have known that the very nature of the discipline defies ultimate classification as it is not a philosophy but an anti-philosophy. Existentialism is anti-ideology, religion, or anything claiming to know the absolute nature of existence. At best the definition for it would be like me slapping you in the face and making you write the exact opposite of what that Wikipedia definition says.

Not only would it be completely funny, but completely valid.

And I'll also add that Kierkegaard was much more a theologist than existentialist. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche would be the true fathers of the movement. Heidegger, Camus, and Sartre are others who basically influenced any great mind to exist after them.

reply to post by NewlyAwakened


Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with everything you said.

reply to post by B.Morrison


The transition is too easy and lacking a historical earthiness.

Originally posted by AProphet1233
reply to post by NorEaster

 

The term ego was never used in this thread until you posted it. Neither was what one could classify as the "id" alluded to until you mistakenly alluded to it.

The term Ego is tossed around this forum, and I was referring to its use in this forum. Not everything is about you. Not even everything in that post.

Not only that but existentialism has no clear definition. It never has. Despite what you may find on Wikipedia, you bastion of knowledge you, and had you even read to the bottom of the Wikipedia page, you thorough and studious researcher you, you would have known that the very nature of the discipline defies ultimate classification as it is not a philosophy but an anti-philosophy. Existentialism is anti-ideology, religion, or anything claiming to know the absolute nature of existence. At best the definition for it would be like me slapping you in the face and making you write the exact opposite of what that Wikipedia definition says.

Not only would it be completely funny, but completely valid.

And I'll also add that Kierkegaard was much more a theologist than existentialist. Dostoevsky and Nietzsche would be the true fathers of the movement. Heidegger, Camus, and Sartre are others who basically influenced any great mind to exist after them.

edit on 22-9-2010 by AProphet1233 because: (no reason given)

My implied suggestion was that if someone is going to use an alternate definition for a commonly used word, then they should go ahead and make the statement that [insert your word here] in regards to this discussion will refer to [insert your definition here] so as to prevent confusion or pointless debates over semantics.

Philosophy is the rational investigation of the truths and principles of being, knowledge, or conduct. [dictionary definition] and in our rational investigation of these truths and principles, a common language is the best strategy for actually succeeding in that endeavor. In fact, our greatest threat to success is a disregard for clear and unambiguous terminology. Especially significant terminology. Especially the terminology that directly identifies the prime subject matter that is being discussed.

As an aside, here are the dictionary definitions for the term Existentialism. Yes, while it is a notion, and for some, a discipline of sorts, it is also a defined term in the English language. It's not my fault that the human race determined that the word was significant enough to feel the need to standardize its meaning.

ex·is·ten·tial·ism   /ˌɛgzɪˈstɛnʃəˌlɪzəm, ˌɛksɪ-/ Show Spelled
[eg-zi-sten-shuh-liz-uhm, ek-si-] Show IPA

–noun Philosophy .
a philosophical attitude associated esp. with Heidegger, Jaspers, Marcel, and Sartre, and opposed to rationalism and empiricism, that stresses the individual's unique position as a self-determining agent responsible for the authenticity of his or her choices.

World English Dictionary
existentialism (ˌɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəˌlɪzəm)

— n
a modern philosophical movement stressing the importance of personal experience and responsibility and the demands that they make on the individual, who is seen as a free agent in a deterministic and seemingly meaningless universe

Word Origin & History

existentialism

1941, from Ger. Existentialismus (1919), ultimately from Dan. writer Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855), who wrote (1846) of Existents-Forhold "condition of existence," existentielle Pathos , etc. (see existential), and whose name means, literally, "churchyard." Related: Existentialist .

Ah, existentialism another one of those secular philosophies meant to delude and enslave us.