Existential Theories Abound, Mostly Worthless
Hinduism, Buddhism, Nihilism, Existentialism, Absurdism, Determinism, Creationism, Gnosticism, Agnosticism, Cosmicism, Realism, Trans-humanism, Evolutionary Theory and many more. Mankind has sought and created a hundred different existential theories and continues to keep adding to the collection even to this day. The search for existential justification and meaning has been our constant companion, it is here to stay. Most of these grand narratives are curated to meet the fundamental urge of man to rationalize his own existence and more critically, to give meaning to the suffering inherent in his existence. In spite of all these grand narratives being available at our fingertips today, man is far from convincing himself of the purpose of his own existence or justifying the suffering along the way. He is as lost as ever and will continue to be.
The theories we buy into might be sophisticated or rudimentary, but they are all theories nonetheless. That being said, there is a common thread connecting all the popular narratives, in that they are all affirming life in their own unique ways. Any existential theory that is aligned with this thread will find its share of followers. But, why do so many theories even exist, why not merge them into one unifying theory ? All the more so, considering that we have the tools to do this now with a simple prompt. In the market of ideas and ideologies, the demand shapes the supply as much as the supply shapes the demand. Not everyone can be satisfied with the same set of hopeful lies after all, so a wide variety of grand existential narratives is required to meet the demand. To each, his own.
It is easy to build an existential theory, it is words after all. Just words, words and more words, with us giving it meaning with our imagination and conviction. These words are not just minted and printed in the scriptures and works of philosophy, but they are something we all convince ourselves in order to keep our own existential show going. All combinations of words are acceptable, as long as they help in keeping our little show going. What combination of words one believes in is immaterial, it is a belief after all. Though it is true that some theories are more soaked in stupidity than others. As long as what they profess is not within the lived in experience of the follower, they are just a combination of words one has chosen to believe. I can any day choose to believe Crows to be the representation of the ultimate truth and build a theory around it.
It hardly takes anything to swear by any existential theory, but the real test is if the theory is within the realm of one’s imagination or within the realm of one’s experience. If the existential theory is within the realm of one’s lived in reality, it is bound to reflect in his actions. It always amazes me how disconnected the actions of the majority are from their core belief systems. It is almost like there is no through-line connecting their core mantras and their everyday actions. For instance, have seen hardcore defendants of evolutionary theory go to temple to seek blessings for their new-born child and fanboys of determinism take pride in their personal achievements. Maybe, most don’t take their core mantras as intensely as they profess or just that they have not invested enough time and energy in analyzing and resolving the contradictions that exist between their own beliefs and actions.
I understand not everyone has the resources or even the inclination towards a life of alignment. Then again, why bother aligning one’s core beliefs and actions, when a life of contradictions seems to work just as fine ? But, this life of contradiction between what one believes and what one experiences comes with it’s own price tag, nothing comes for free. One can live by any grand theory he fantasizes about, but reality does not align with our fantasies and this places the burden on the individual to do the mental gymnastics to live with the obvious resulting friction between his fantasies and his reality. At the core, this friction stems from not acknowledging one’s own lived in reality, but desperately getting invested in a fantasized version. This is akin to one watching too many superhero movies in order to escape his own mediocre life and eventually convincing oneself that he is a superhero in real life.
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It is not hard to see how this confrontation between reality and fantasy generally ends, history is full of case studies. Take for instance, Friedrich Nietzsche, icon of contradictions. One who declared that the glory of life is to be a Übermensch, but nevertheless ended up with a mental breakdown at 44 and led a bed ridden life until his death. Nietzsche was likely convinced he is a Übermensch in real life too, just that reality was not bothered by his convictions. One can believe in whatever one wishes, but reality continues to be what it is and what it always was. The very fact that this man is an icon of strength and stoicism to this day should tell a lot about what sells in the marketplace of existential theories. Alignment with the ground reality is simply not of importance here, what matters is to build a grand narrative of hope, fantasies and speculations.
Hope is the commodity being sold, nothing else. Even if the life of the very preacher is disastrous, the followers will gladly ignore it in order to keep their hope unchallenged. But, Nietzsche is not an exception, he is rather the rule, in the sense that he was as bound by the human predicament as anyone else and joyfully unaware as well. This is the human predicament, face the reality of our own existence, however bleak it maybe or seek refuge in fantasies, however fickle it maybe. Pretty much every existential theory desperately tries to quell this predicament and adamantly insists it has found the magic formula to do so. If there was any theory that perfectly addressed this predicament, am certain I would have come across it and adopted it by now, just that such a theory does not exist. Most existential theories are selling the good old hope, just packaged differently for different set of consumers.
Let us start with the age old promise of enlightenment, which does a good job of simultaneously giving an end goal to our existence and also give meaning to our suffering. Here, suffering becomes the means to enlightenment and this idea is so ingrained that many schools of thought end up relishing suffering in a rather twisted way. The same flawed logic trickles down into so called secular ideologies and here suffering becomes a means of character growth. Both the spiritual and secular narratives share the same fundamental urge to justify suffering, one way or another. If they paused and contemplated on a simple possibility of what if there is no real value to suffering and both enlightenment and character growth are just roundabout coping mechanisms, they could have avoided all the mental gymnastics.
Next comes the schools of thought which have the sense to consider the possibility that suffering has no purpose, but not the courage to admit that this makes the whole existential show pretty much unjustifiable and they start a new round of mental gymnastics of how it is upon the individual to find his own meaning. Does not take a philosophical genius to deduce that it is the same crap in a different flavor, with the burden now placed on the individual to do the impossible. What comes next is the worst of all, where the individual is asked to simultaneously accept that it is indeed all pointless, but find joy in the pointlessness of it all. If only Albert Camus and the like had the sense to realize that this is nothing but a paradox, mankind would have been saved from a new round of crappy one liners like ‘one must imagine Sisyphus happy’.
When these mental gymnastics fail to assure individual liberation, not to worry, we can twist it a bit and make it about something bigger and beyond the individual. So what if your suffering does not lead to personal paradise, find comfort in the promise that you are participating in the collective journey towards a better mankind, aka Trans-humanism. The irony being that those who generally follow this line of thinking are the same who would swear by evolution. It is beyond me how any mind can bind together evolution and Trans-humanism into a coherent narrative and not collapse under the weight of resulting contradictions. Maybe, coherence was never the goal. If coherence mattered, 99% of the existential theories would not be worth the paper they were written on or in the present day context, the data center resources they consume.
I find no glory in producing or consuming complex word salads, it is just regurgitated vomit of ideas anyway, however flowery the language maybe. If there is any glory, it must be in being able to differentiate between what one wishes existence to be and what it is. I often wonder if the Nietzsches of the world believe in their own fantasies or are they aware of the contradictions between what they profess and what they experience ? Either ways, having been naive enough to follow these shills in the past, was left with nothing but disillusionment. After a point of time, it just became impossible to ignore the glaring contradictions between what these grand theories professed and what existence is. At this point, I feel nothing but spite for the ones shilling these existential fantasies and pity for the ones consuming it.
An old friend recently shared this article titled ‘Disillusion’ by Thomas Mann, a passage from it sums this up well:
You need not be afraid that I’m going to keep on recounting my disappointments to you, one by one. It is enough to say that with disastrous eagerness I fed my magnificent expectations of life on a thousand books, on the works of great writers. Oh, how I have learned to hate them — these poets who write their fine words on every wall, who would paint them on the roof of heaven with a brush dipped in Vesuvian fire — while I cannot but feel that every fine word is a mockery or a lie!
