MP3 Exi Intro

The speaker reflects on their childhood confusion about existence and their non-traditional spirituality. They discuss essentialism, the idea that each thing has its own essence, and how it relates to being true to oneself. They also mention Dostoyevsky's view on human irrationality and the purpose of life being authentic self-expression. Nietzsche's nihilism is mentioned, emphasizing that nothing in the world matters. Sartre's perspective on freedom and self-realization is introduced, highlighting the importance of personal growth and accountability. Self-limitation is criticized as disregarding the freedom of choice. Existentialism, podcasts, intro script thing. When I was a kid, I felt so confused. While other people my age were worried about who was coming to their birthday parties or which new kid looked the cutest, I was constantly trying to figure out how I had gotten on this earth and what I was supposed to do here. I still noticed the cute kids, don't get me wrong. But my obsession with existence and all things non-physical from a young age made me somewhat of an oddball growing up. But it set me up nicely for the free-thinking attitude of my generation. Religion is the natural answer when it comes to understanding this conscious experience of ours, but its traditional restrictions have steered many of my peers in a different direction. According to Axios News, one-third of Gen Z identifies as religiously unaffiliated, in large part due to our disinterest in bandwagoning our spirituality. While religion provides community and love for many people my age, a lot of us no longer believe in when people tell us that God will save us because we can't see this God they speak of. But if God's not real, who made us? And why are we here? And couldn't it really be real? Let's go back to the basics from Aristotle and Plato at the turn of 300 BCE. They established essentialism, which states everything we witness has an essence that remains through time and space. In other words, each existing thing is its own thing. While you and I both have identical iPhones, same year, same color, my iPhone is not yours because they're two separately existing things. You could really use any object for this scenario, but ultimately it's like Oscar Wilde saying, be yourself because everyone else is already taken. We have to be ourselves since it's in our essence to do so, and it's kind of our only option. Dostoyevsky took this idea a bit further in 1874 with Notes from the Underground, a fictional diary written by a man who has isolated himself from society as a result of being annoyed by humans and their unpredictability. The irony is that through ranting about his annoyance in this diary, he discovers how annoyed he is by himself. Dostoyevsky argues that humans cannot be inherently good because of our inevitable irrationality. Therefore, the purpose of life is to be authentic to yourself because the more we try to plan or rationalize the way we should be, the more we drive ourselves crazy. Ultimately, he believes that our understanding of the world comes from our personal experiences and suffering, which is kind of hard to dispute. Around the same time, philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche introduced a different dark but legitimate view on existence with nihilism. Nihilism is defined as the belief that all values are baseless and that nothing can be known or communicated. Nietzsche points out that the structure of the world only exists because we created it that way. The government would not have power if the people did not place it there, and the social expectations we hold for one another would not exist if we weren't around. A nihilist judges the world as it is and sees that it is supposed to be different, while also recognizing that the world as it should be does not exist. Therefore, nothing in this world matters because it's inherently wrong. On a far more positive note, philosopher and playwright John Paul Sartre reintroduced hope into the existentialist discussion in 1946 with his book Existentialism is a Humanism. At this time, the Western world was making its way through the Industrial Age, and World War II had just been won, so there were a lot of reflections happening about existence and change and our role in it. Sartre made the argument that we are painfully and shockingly free, and only through self-realization can we come to terms with our ungoverned existence. We have an insatiable drive to achieve what we believe to be impossible, to understand our own insanity, and that drive is natural to our evolution. It is our role in this world to discover more about ourselves and then apply what we find through self-discovery to bettering our minds, souls, bodies, and communities. Sartre also introduced an important idea of holding ourselves accountable because the world just ain't going to do it. Bad faith, according to Sartre, occurs when we justify not making a decision because we believe it is not in our power when in actuality, we just don't want to suffer the consequences of choosing wrong. An example of this that he gives is a server who believes the best career they can achieve in life is to wait tables, despite being capable of more than they realize. The server won't explore other options because they're afraid to fail, and that fear keeps them where they are. Basically, self-limitation is the worst thing someone can do because it disregards the freedom of choice that our consciousness gives us.