[00:00:00.340] The freedom of choice is the only real freedom that any of us truly have. You ever considered ironically that maybe we didn't have any say in this matter? Freedom of choice was imposed on us. This is a central idea in the topic that I'm gonna be speaking about today, which is existential philosophy. I've been studying existentialism for roughly the last six years or so now. Um it's something I've a passion for. I don't consider myself an existentialist. I don't align myself with any political or religious or social or philosophical movement in whole.
[00:00:26.990] There are some ideas in it that I agree with, but I'm not part of any [inaudible from here] specific anything study either. [to here]
[00:00:34.410] Um, most people think of philosophy as something that has very little relevance in their everyday lives. They don't see it as having a whole lot of practical application. The thing about philosophy is that while it won't teach you how to do very practical things, it will help you come to terms with the bigger answers to the bigger questions of life or the lack of answers thereof. And it can change your perspective on life at such a in-insane degree that it makes you rethink how you do the most basic things, why you get up in the morning.
[00:00:58.410] Um, if existentialism had any point as a philosophy, it would be to help people live authentically.
[00:01:04.020] Uh, other key concepts in existentialism are the ideas of subjectivity and existence preceding essence. So to begin with, it's paramount that we understand what a subjective view of reality is. We all live in this objective view of the world. Uh or we all live in an objective world. So this marker is blue, we all see this marker as blue. However, each of us has a different association with the color blue. We all live in a subjective experience of reality and we all live in our own fantasies.
[00:01:28.740] It's all filtered that we distort reality and [<s>forfeit?</s> or that] every time that we thinking and we undermine it in that way. We have total control over the subjective experience of reality, so we have total freedom over our experience of reality. We're slaves to this freedom. We are bound to this freedom, um according to Sartre 1957 existentialism, human emotions. Since we are stuck in this subjective view of reality and since we are totally free to experience it as we choose to we are completely accountable to ourselves
[00:01:54.030] and are responsible for ourselves in how we experience reality. We cannot escape our free, uh subjective experience so we cannot escape our accountability for our experience of reality.
[00:02:06.660] Um those are very uh personal ideas, very uh intimate with our own personal, individualized experience of reality and they make great assumptions about uh human experience. So we are going to take a step back from that and let's learn some more abstract presumptions that we're making. First of all, there's the idea that existence precedes essence. This basically just means that, well, human beings are born,
[00:02:27.750] we come on the scene and we are arbitrary objects, basically, and then we decide from that point on where um what what qualities we're going to apply to ourselves, what features we're going to apply to ourselves.
[00:02:39.900] We uh we define ourselves. In this,
[00:02:42.670] again, this is just for the sake of argument. We're making the presumption that there is no God or that possibly God existed as a form of morality that we created that then fell in upon itself and died because of its own intrinsic flaws. That's just a presumption we're making for the sake of argument, uh not necessarily something that I think, not necessarily something that I want you to think. But if we assume that there is no God and that life is meaningless and void of any purpose, that we're all going to die.
[00:03:05.360] Then this means that life is absurd and ridiculous. And according to Kierkegaard, um Either-Or 1843, um society, religion, etc., the-these things do not give life its meaning or purpose. Meaning and purpose in life are put, are something that we place on our own individual experience of it by our choice, and that something that we choose to give to life. Um, at this point we're left at looking at life as something, it's kind of hilariously silly and stupid because we give it its own meaning.
[00:03:33.810] And there is no intrinsic value to it, according to some. This is not necessarily the case.
[00:03:39.570] Uh you can be left in a state of either affirmation or negation of life.
[00:03:44.160] There are different ways people can negate life. And if you look at our youth today, a lot of people take on the YOLO view. That you only live once, so you may as well waste it. It's all about you. It's all about your own pleasure and your own happiness, and it doesn't matter what happens to future generations or how you affect other people. Um that's a negation of life. Another way of negating life is by seeing it as something to be just depressed about because it doesn't have any meaning, and because it doesn't have any value thereof.
[00:04:07.200] However, um you can affirm it. You can look at it as an open canvas. Since you are totally free, and you are totally responsible. You are totally in control of your life. It's up to you to determine how you want to experience it. We can't always control what happens to us and we can't always control our experience of it, but we can control how we interpret life and how we perceive it. Um so from that we can come to the idea of authenticity. We can reach a state of authenticity.
[00:04:31.890] Basically, that means you're living in accordance with your own beliefs, personality, feelings, what's uh, etc., what have you. And being aware of your limitations. You're basically being true to yourself according to uh who you are and without allowing external forces to um limit your own freedom. Um being authentic is something that uh varies from moment to moment. And we're only as authentic as we are at any given second. Um I'm not authentic. It's really, em, I don't know that I've ever met anyone that is; it's impossible basically to come to this state of authenticity
[00:05:03.880] almost. Uh a good example of an authentic being would be any wild animal.
[00:05:08.200] They don't um, they don't have inhibitions. And although they're a slave, they're slaves to their uh instincts. They also exist without self-consciousness. And so while they lack self-awareness to be authentic, they are true to themselves in their inner being. Um the opposite of authenticity is the concept of bad faith, which is basically any form of lying to yourself or self-deception, groupthink or conformity.
[00:05:33.240] Conformity can be an aspect of bad faith; it's not always. But groupthink, for instance, many of you in school had to do group projects and you just all I-I remember doing this personally, I would just come to the point where we would just all agree about something for the sake of getting it over with, regardless of what we actually thought or arguing about it, coming to compromise. Um lying to yourself in any way, shape or form is a form of bad faith. So anyway uh you guys understand existentialism in terms of its basic tenets now, um I hope that if nothing else you find it a little interesting. You find philosophy
[00:06:02.790] interesting and something you'd like to learn about. Respect all of your own beliefs. I'm not trying to impose anything on you. I just, this is something that I have a passion for learning about. And um let's see, you control your own experience of reality. Um it's up to you to decide whether or not you wanna be free, even if you decide to give up your freedom; that's a choice. You can never escape your freedom. Um, let go or be dragged. Thank you. [clapping]