Sartre’s ideas are kind of profound to me. Although, I do have to say I like them. Especially the idea of essence vs existence. It’s fun to think about how things are made
with a purpose in mind. Like the
keyboard I’m using to type this. It was
created for a specific reason. To send
little signals to my computer which then get processed and within milliseconds my
thoughts are put before me. But I could
on and on about things that were designed with a purpose, because everything
humans created was created with some purpose for it being there. Whether that purpose is to look pretty, or to
make electrons travel at the speed of light.
But after looking at all these things, it makes me wonder. What is my purpose for existing? I know for a fact I have an existence. But what about my essence? I’ve had many sleepless nights wondering
this. What is the point of living? More specifically, what is the point of my
life? But I’ve been wondering this for years.
And people have been wondering this since farther back than we care to
think about. Maybe we have no essence. Maybe there isn’t a reason for our
existence. But after contemplating this
for a bit, maybe that’s a good thing.
Because if we don’t have a set purpose, we are free to do what we
want. There’s nothing that forces me to
me to live my life in a certain way.
Hell, if I really wanted to, I could just up and leave. I could move into the woods and live off the
land. If I don’t have a set purpose,
what will stop me? Nothing, other than the fact that I don’t really want
to. So maybe it isn’t too bad to not
have a purpose.
I have also thought about the question of why we exist a lot and found it rather frustrating. It doesn't seem fair to me that we have the ability to reflect on our thoughts and be aware of our consciousness because that undoubtedly leads man to question who he is and why he is; a question that can cause great confusion and discomfort. It is not fair that we know how to ask these questions yet do not know how to find the answers, if perhaps there even is an answer. For this reason too I think that even if we do have a purpose in the universe that affects something outside of ourselves it is only an inconceivably small purpose. We really do not understand ourselves, let alone the world around us.... and the universe is a whole different ball game.
ReplyDeleteI think the questioning itself is the beauty of human existence. Without getting into the way that Sartre's "existence precedes essence" concept ties into darker (and I use the term in a not necessarily negative way) philosophies of writers such as Nietzsche and Dostoyevsky, the capacity to wonder about what we mean and what our purpose is, and event perhaps the ability to actually determine our own essence, is the most beautiful thing about the accident of human existence. We are self-aware to a tragically beautiful degree. It tortures us, yes, and makes us lie awake at night, but it's also pretty goddamn cool if you think about it. While I don't necessarily endorse moving out into the woods and abandoning society, free will really does mean just that. You're allowed to determine your own essence in just about any way you damn well choose. And like I said, that seems pretty cool.
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