Condemned to Be Free

I dare not attempt a recap of Being and Nothingness, for fear of committing abject butchery of the topic. I freely admit I didn't understand half of what I read. But I did glean some insights from the text, and think it is worth reading, re-reading and studying.

We are free because regardless of any situation we find ourselves in, we have choices. What we choose will be based on what we value most, and what we value most is based on our image of ourselves, in part from choices we've made in the past. We are 'projects' of ourselves. We can make radical breaks in choices, and remake ourselves into new projects. But to try to deceive ourselves about our freedom or our essence is to act in bad faith.

Although we did not 'ask to be born' we are nonetheless fully responsible for our lives; choosing not to choose is still a choice. Our freedom consists in what we do with what has been done to us, including what we have done to ourselves in the past.

There are things in Sartre I do not agree with (for instance, I think he'd be appalled by the idea of a sexual 'orientation' - for him it would always be a 'preference'), but I find his radical assertions of freedom and responsibility to be challenging.

I have other philosophy texts to consider, but I am not through with existentialism. Aside from an anthology of Sartre by Cumming, I also have two anthologies of existentialist texts in general (Kaufman and Marino) and a study of Mulla Ṣadrā that takes an existentialist view of his philosophy. And sooner or later it will be time to read Camus's The Plague for a third time.

Freedom and Responsibility

You know you've deemed a book to be very important to you if you shape your weekend schedule around reading it. I've been working on Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness since late August*, and I'm finally nearing the end of it. Since I tend to read very well on long stretches of public transportation, I decided to make two shopping trips out to the 'burbs so that I could get a little shopping done, and a lot of reading done (105 pages over the course of the weekend). I'll write more about this text later, but I have to say that the five pages I read yesterday on "Freedom and Responsibility"** were among the most enlightening, profound and ultimately useful words in philosophy that I've ever read, and they made the rest of the book worth struggling through.

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*corrected; I originally wrote "early September".

**Section III of "Chapter One: Being and Doing: Freedom" in "Part Four: Having, Doing and Being".)

Quote, VIII

"We're born alone, we live alone, we die alone. Only through our love and friendship can we create the illusion for the moment that we're not alone."

—Orson Welles

The Meaning of Life

I cannot stress enough how much a fundamentalist upbringing cripples a person. The damage lasts long after a person escapes the fundamentalist milieu, and it may take the rest of their lives to deal with that damage. The damage includes, but isn't limited to, self-esteem/accurate self-assessment, understanding reality, relating to other people, critical thinking skills, the ability to make and carry out plans, etc.

For years after my escape from fundamentalism, I still had no answer for what is the meaning of life. I assumed life had a meaning, because the alternative I deemed unthinkable. Untethered from the religion of my childhood, I still assumed that I would come to know the meaning of life, and that it would be revealed to me if only I kept my eyes open.

Then one day last year I realized this was never going to happen. That there was no cosmic (much less divine) ordination for the meaning of my life. Consequently, I realized that if my life was to have meaning, I must be the one to give it meaning.

I still believe that, as someone put it, "The meaning of life is to give life a meaning." I understand the truth of this. But I have found myself unequipped to give my life a meaning. Since I've spent my entire life waiting for meaning to be revealed to me, I did not develop the necessary critical and creative skills I need to conjure up that meaning on my own.

My life is absurd, and I have trouble with that. I very much want to give my life meaning, but what should that be? For now, only questions...

Balance, Please!

I personally find relentlessly cheerful people to be just as annoying as the unendingly depressed. Life is not a bowl of cherries; nor is it a bowl of dog shit, either. Life is a bowl of dog shit with cherries mixed in. Our job as human beings is to dig the cherries out of the dog shit, thoroughly clean them, and then enjoy the cherries, knowing how much work we had to put in to get all the dog shit off of them. Then we take the dog shit and use it to fertilize the cherry trees.

Religion is Like a Penis

Religion is like a penis. It's fine if you have one. It's okay to be proud of it.

On the other hand, it is not okay to whip it out in public, and unless the other person is a gleefully consenting legal adult, you should never shove it down someone's throat.

[Paraphrase of something I read somewhere. Apologies for not being able to give proper credit.]

Favorite Quote, VII

Master Easturb inquired of Master Chuang, saying, "Where is the so-called Way present?"
"There's no place that it is not present," said Master Chuang.
"Give me an example so that I can get an idea," said Master Easturb.
"It's in ants," said Master Chuang.
"How can it be so low?"
"It's in panic grass."
"How can it be lower still?"
"It's in tiles and shards."
"How can it be lower still?"
"It's in shit and piss."

—Victor H. Mair (translator), Wandering on the Way: Early Taoist Tales and Parables of Chuang Tzu (Bantam, 1994), p. 217.