Category: Existentialism
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It’s not a problem, it’s just what’s so.
Recently I bought “Speaking Being” and started reading it. The book is more like a screenplay of a specific 4 day and 1 evening Forum that was held from 27th December 1988. That particular Forum had 502 participants PLUS 40 Forum Leaders attending as participants PLUS another 100 people participating as observers. The 4 days…
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No freedom, only responsibility
The words freedom and responsibility mean different things to different people. When someone says “Sam is free to do xyz“, it could either mean “Sam can choose to do xyz, if he ‘wants’” OR “Sam is not ‘banned’ from doing xyz, so he can potentially do it” OR “Sam can try out xyz ‘for size’…
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Anxiety about unlimited freedom
Tight rope walking is scary because there are no rails to hold on to while walking on the tight rope. So, it causes an obvious anxiety about walking on the rope. Anxiety stems from the fact that, without support, one might fall off to the left OR to the right OR forward OR backward OR…
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On Authenticity
Each and every one of us has at some point in our lives paused to ponder over questions like “Who am I?”, “What is the meaning of life?”, “What is the nature of reality?”, “What does it mean to exist, to be?” and so on. As we pondered over these questions we came up with answers…
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8 habits of highly authentic people
Pardon my cheap shot at free publicity. I couldn’t resist naming this blog post after Stephen Covey’s magnum opus “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People“. It was one of the first “real self help” books I read in my life. Up until then I was mostly reading books on personality development, which taught me…
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being-for-others – a breeding ground for inauthentic relationships
Sartre and others carve a phenomenon called being-for-others, that leaves a human being with an experience of being an object along with other objects in a world of objects, with fixed properties, labels, behaviour etc. Given that people are seldom, if ever, truly alone these days, each person constantly confronts the existence of other people, not simply as…
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Anxiety, Commitment & Healthy Dose of Bad-Faith
Bad-faith, or inauthenticity, is living a lie that we dont have freedom to choose in the face of situations and realities that we encounter in life. Existentialists, Sartre in particular says that as human beings we are condemned to be free. Our fundamental nature, he says, is to be a free transcendence of our facticity, for…
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Projects of Bad Faith – Part #2
According to existentialism, authenticity is living life with willingness that who I am is a free transcendence of my facticity. Therefore, I willingly own-up my facticity and make choices & take action by being fully aware of my freedom to do so. I also take note of the fact that my choices & action lead to consequences that…
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Projects of Bad Faith
After a long time, I started to re-read books on existentialism from Gary Cox. Like he says, study of existentialism can be a hugely impactful thing. I was reading his book “Existentialist’s Guide to Death, the Universe and Nothingness” and tumbled upon this chapter about “Bad Faith”. I inquired into the kinds of bad-faith projects…
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Existentialism
Ever since I did the Landmark Forum in 2009, I have been curious as to know the source of their material. I looked around in libraries, book shops and Wikipedia for hints. Any book that had “Nothingness”, “Racket”, “Strong Suit”, “Being”, “Possibility” in its title or content was catching my attention. I also bought a…
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The origin of negation
When we go about the world, we have expectations which are often not fulfilled. For example, I go to meet an old friend. I imagine that he will be happy to see me after all these years and that we chat for hours sharing about our lives. I go there and I find that he…