Self-Consciousness and Existential Angst

I was watching this video, and a thought occurred to me. Self-consciousness, by that I mean not simply the feeling of being overdressed for a social event, but more generally being aware of your state of being, reflecting on your own existence, is generally an unpleasant feeling.

It's not exactly an original thought. Buddhism came up with it 2500 years ago. In order to achieve enlightenment and hence nirvana, you have to let go of your ego. It's also a fundamental part of existentialism, the idea of angst.

It's odd that one of the few things that seems to be uniquely human is so apparently negative. It makes you wonder why that is. I have a couple wild ass guesses, but they aren't worth mentioning without further research.

It also makes you wonder what you can do about it. The simplest answer I can think of is to maintain a state of flow as much as possible, to do things that are engaging and challenging, so you can think more about it than yourself. (And it is apparently possible to achieve a state of flow by philosophizing about angst, paradoxically enough)

Some Thoughts About Existentialism

I just finished writing essays for my take-home philosophy final. So, what better way to celebrate than to write some more about philosophy on my blog? Perhaps I'm just a masochist...

Anyway, a few years ago, I came across existentialism, and it resonated with me. I'm sure I had heard of it before then, but for whatever reason, it didn't stick. But this time, I looked into it, decided that I rather liked it, and so started considering myself an existentialist. I particularly like the idea that we create our own meanings. Meaning doesn't exist independent of us, waiting for us to find it, rather we create it.

Anyway, I needed to take an elective course, and Intro to Existentialism fit, so I took it. We went over four philosophers - Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger and Sartre, and read The Grand Inquisitor by Dostoyevsky, The Metamorphosis by Kafka and saw the movie District 9.

After about a month into the class, I knew less about existentialism that I did before. Being slightly wiser, realizing how little I knew, I decided I should stop considering myself an existentialist until I knew more about it, and so could make an informed decision.

So, being done with the class, I gave it some thought. The first thing is that I disagree with most of what was said by most of the philosophers we studied. Interestingly, I disagreed with each philosopher a little bit less than the last. If I don't agree with what most existentialist said, how can I be an existentialist? Well, first it's important to remember that most existentialists didn't consider themselves existentialists. Hell, Kierkegaard and Nietzsche predated the term.

Further, if there was only one idea that all four philosophers shared (and there were damned few things all four philosophers agreed on), it was focusing on the individual over the group. So, I can disagree with them, and chalk it up to individualism. Seems appropriate. Also, the ideas I found appealing in the first place, I still find appealing, and while they are less central to the philosophy than I thought they were, they're still there.

And as a special bonus, here's a joke about existentialism. Don't forget to read the mouseover text.