Existential Crisis

[sailing to byzantium]

We no longer feel sure about our identity: whom we are, where we are going, what our goals/ideals are. The answer to this question today is no longer a challenge, but a simple reply: we have no identity. We're soulless consumers, upholding fancy slogans such as "compassion," "freedom," and "progress," yet we all deep down inside know something's not quite right.

Read more (http://www.corrupt.org/articles/existential/)

[Pow R. Toc H.]

Thats because conformity is a natural occurence in society. Most people tend just to blend in with the crowd. To just be another cog in the machine. It makes people feel safe when they play their little part in a bigger overall system they feel like they've accomplished something at the end of the day. There really isnt any spontaneous activity anymore.

I dont know if I would go as far as to say that its an existential Crisis. But more of a case of Identity theft. The culprit being society.

[Hit The North]

I have my Mummy stitch my name and address into my clothes, so I always know who I am and where I'm from.

[phragit]

Kind of like, I don't know; existential angst..........way back from Keirkegaard.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by sailing to [email protected] 22, 2007 04:25 pm
we all deep down inside know something's not quite right.
Yeah, it's called death. Deal with it.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by Citizen [email protected] 22, 2007 06:49 pm
I have my Mummy stitch my name and address into my clothes, so I always know who I am and where I'm from.
That made me lol so hard!

[SittingBull47]

This is a generalization. Existentialism is not that depressing...in fact it's liberating. We may not have souls, but we still have the ability to be good people.

[Dragily]

Honestly, though, when people take the decision to merge into society, aren't they still creating their own purpose? There are probably a much lesser number of truly spontaneous persons, given, but it isn't such that just because we choose to be simply "soulless consumers" that we have given up our identity. Rather, we have chosen to create our identity following that of the majority, wouldn't you think?

[détrop]

I view existentialism as a kind of neccesary next step in class consciousness which emerged during the quickening pace of industrialization, and the social contexts it created in society. Look at it as a part of the Hegelian dialectic (relax Rosa), for instance. Like this: world enters stage X, stage X produces internal contradictions (class wars), world produces philosophy X (existentialism).

With Nietzsche we get the death of God. Now this doesn't mean that God is dead. What it says to me, at least, is "workers stand up against ruling class tyranny and destroy them! There is no God to punish you for this!"

With Kierkegaard we get the final and real nature of religious belief....how utterly terrible and absurd it is. Kierkegaard took the "public" out of religion and put it back into the individual. This tactic, in combination with Nietzsche's, helped to disintegrate "state" religion as it was used as an "opiate." He battled public Christianity tooth and nail, to show how hipocritical and contradictive it was in society.

Sartre comes along. His exegesis, I believe, was aimed at pointing out with greater clarity the problems in social discourse, among other things which are matters of "philosophy" and therefore questionable. But Sartre was the master. He could see through anything.

These three dudes alone worked like a hydrogen bomb against the new industrial and capitalistic social settings, and all the problems they create.

I don't count Heidegger because he looked too much like Charlie Chaplin, and because of that, I think he was angry at the world and so took up the Nazi ideology. That, and the fact that Sartre kicked his ass so bad he never fully recovered.

If a successful global communism had been established before the industrial period...I don't think existentialsm would have happened.

[Luís Henrique]

Originally posted by sailing to [email protected] 22, 2007 03:25 pm
we have no identity.
Good riddance.

We are no longer loyal to particularities, just cosmopolitan have-nots of the world. We are nothing; free to become everything.

Down with identities!

Luís Henrique

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by Pow R. Toc [email protected] 22, 2007 05:03 pm
Thats because conformity is a natural occurence in society.
I disagree that comformity is natural; it is to be expected in a society that promotes conformity through a variety of agents, but one can conceive of different results from a different society.