The word existentialism was used recently In regards to nuclear war, climate crisis and political authoritarianism. This disquisition presents abbreviated aspects of the philosophical writings of Soren Kierkegaard, Frederick Nitschke, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger ,John Paul Sartre and their relevance today from articles found in the New York Times .
One significant idea in existentialism philosophy pertains to God’s death ,based in part, questioning a belief in an afterlife .The loss of faith in God,negates a belief in immortality. Jesus spoke to the poor without a political agenda, nor was he concerned about acquiring wealth and power. In fact, the wealthy and the powerful were not at all admired. Today, the messaging is different. The wealthy TV and mega church messengers have a political agenda. Forget about the 10 Commandments, the ends justify the means and focus on implementing minority rule. it's okay and reinforced to discriminate, to deceive and express hostility to black skin people and the infidels. What about” Blessed are the poor?”Also, why is following an immoral, lying, cheating, criminal, greedy capitalist worshiped ? The Pledge of Allegiance reframed "I pledge allegiance to capitalism …and for a white nation with liberty and justice for us. The newspaper article following addressed the fictionalism of God and questions his omnipotence.
The article was dated May 8, 2022 and titled "Praying to a God You Don't Believe In. In this reference, a 12-year-old boy who was studying for his bar mitzvah had this interaction with his father, a professor of law and philosophy. Briefly, during one of their walks, his son said that he didn't believe in God. In response to why not, " if God was real, he would not let all those people die ( Covid -19 and Ukraine}." Why do you say that ? "God is supposed to care about us." "That doesn't seem like something you could have done if you cared-and could stop it." His son also stated on another occasion, "I think for real God is pretend and for pretend God is real." God is real, but we were pretending he is." The article went on, and the professor's father raised questions such as the presence of evil. If God was all-powerful and endlessly empathetic, why does God let people suffer? Why does” good “require” evil” and why can’t good exist without evil? If God is omnipotent,why does he allow so much evil ?Why couldn’t God create good without evil? The professor added that he seeks refuge in religion but not because he thinks his prayers will be answered , but that pretending helps him. Pretending( Fictionalism), for him, makes a world more magical and meaningful.
The second idea identifies the denial of man’s supremacy of rationality with the acknowledgment that man has crippling irrational impulses. In addition, man is not in the here and now but escapes and pursues vicariously with dependency on TV, newspapers, social media, sporting events,drugs, games etc. Detrimentally, man places emphasis on a subjective experience of truth, or the belief in his opinion, as the only criteria of truth. In other words, man takes opinion as truth.
Aspects of rationality "the quality of being based on or in accordance with reason or logic. Other synonyms include logic, reason, empiricism, reasonableness, morality, analytical, deliberate , enlightened, intelligent, impartial, and level headed.” However ,irrationality,” is the inability of capable reasoning, as in senselessness, absurdity, unreasonableness, groundless,and invalid. Further, to describe someone's feelings and behavior is irrational - meaning it was not based on logical reasons or clear thinking. Moreover, irrational behavior arises as a consequence of the emotional reactions evoked when faced with difficult decisions, according to research at University College London.
An article titled "Clear Thinking" in October 31, 2021 made the following points regarding the difficulty of employing rationality as far as truth was concerned . Examples related to logic : 1. Some A are B; therefore, some B are A 2. Everything that runs has feet; the river runs; therefore, the river has feet . The writer pointed out that logicians have classified some fallacies as modus morons. He added “ today there is a pandemic of poppycock when applying logic.” Psychological research experiments showed that simple assumptions about what people want and what drives their decision-making are even more unrealistic than was previously thought. Our faculties work well in some settings, but go wrong when applied in novel circumstances or in the service of other goals To illustrate, a Gallup survey found that 42% of Americans believe in demonic possession. Gallup questioned the survey and wondered how many people took the question literally. Also, more than two billion people believe that if one doesn't accept Jesus as one’s Savior, one will be damned to eternal torment in hell.
With the above being said, it's obvious that people misunderstand, distort, read into, oversimplify, give lip service and do not challenge illogical assumptions about themselves or toward others. In order to think more clearly, one has to discipline their thinking. It is important to note that thinking consists of the following, which are interconnected: 1. Perceive , sense-see, taste, smell, feel and hear. 2. Act-walk, eat, swim, throw, climb, etc. 3. Feel ,emote-love hate, fear, become guilty or depressed 4. Reason, think, remember, imagine, hypothesize, consolidate and solve problems.
Are the schools failing us? Not only are people irrational,but they are unable to read. 1. The Department of Education finds fewer than half of American adults proficient in reading 2. The Department of Health found 1/3 of adults have difficulty interpreting simple health information such as instructions on a drug label.
The second article titled How Much Military Spending Is Too Much? was dated January 16, 2022. In that article Joe Manchin voted against the Build Back Better plan that addressed climate change, investment in childcare, healthcare and education. Yet ,voted yes on a bill that allocated 768 billion for the military in 2022. That amount was roughly 24 billion more than the White House requested from Congress. On another note, more people have died from the pandemic than from every war that we fought. Further, we build aircraft carriers, each of which cost about 1.5 billion . We have 11 and no other country has more than two. We know there is waste, misappropriations, and even the Pentagon said it’s unable to balance its books or do an analysis of spending until later. Also, we don't even debate the amount of money that is spent for national defense. Moreover, in 2015, the Pentagon hired contractors-nearly as many as deskbound, back office people as well as troops. We could save money by eliminating many of the contractors. Oh yes, military spending contracts go to a large number of congressional districts and it is not surprising why there's excessive military spending. Greed and irrational thinking benefits the military-industrial complex .
The third article titled The New Wave of Holocaust Revisionism was found in the January 30, 2022 edition. In this article, the nationalistic Polish government was reframing the horrors of the Holocaust. For example, along with a public ceremony at the village of Treblinka (the second largest Jewish killing field) a memorial was being held honoring a 21-year-old Polish railroad worker who gave water to starving Jewish prisoners. Although we don't know if he was paid for providing water, we do know that many Polish individuals received money for providing water to captive Jews. The Polish government was also erecting markers commemorating humanitarian Poles over the countryside in order to restore identity and national pride. However, we do know that Poles went out looking for Jewish individuals in order to track them down , rob them, and then to get rewarded by the Nazis. This reframing undermines some realities like: 1. Close to 900,000 Jews were slaughtered at Treblinka alone 2. 80,000 Jews died in the Warsaw ghetto of starvation and/or disease, and more than 300,000 were transported to their deaths. 3. A street was named in Warsaw after a brave Polish woman who saved some Jewish children as well as a statue of a Polish underground courier 4. Before the war, there were 85 million in Poland 5. Nazi’s murdered an estimated 1.9 million 6. The Jewish population numbered well over 300 million before the war, and in 1950, only about 45,000 7. A National poll published in 2020 found nearly half of Poles thought that Auschwitz was most of all a place of Polish suffering .In essence,creating a false equivalency of victimization between Poles and Jews during World War II is a clever state-sponsored effort that downplays anti-semetic terror at the hands of the Polish nation. Once again we have a distortion of rationalism, objectivity and misleading historical facts with truth.
Third existential idea relates to the fact that scientific and technical achievements have not solved the problems of our existence, but have placed difficulties in our way affecting the non-solutions of dealing with ourselves. With science there is the belief and ascending curve that progress and human problems would disappear. That ignores irrational forces as in Covid-19. Also, humans can be easily manipulated by irrational as well as rational messaging.
An article titled "Sci-Fi Care: Can Robots Save Nursing Homes?” April 24, 2022 was used to address this existential point. This article pointed to the tremendous problems in assisted living. The pandemic accounted for more than 200,000 residents or workers in long-term facilities that have died as a result of the coronavirus virus. Also, since 2020, more than 300 nursing homes have closed and more than 400,000 workers in long-term care facilities have left according to US Bureau of Labor statistics. When asked to a group of older adults in Minnesota what they would like in a nursing home, they replied "off-color jokes." So now a trial of robots are going to eight nursing homes around the state with off colored jokes. These people believe that this technology can solve some of the problems in nursing homes and/or help people stay out of them. This technology can be used for touchless delivery of meals, groceries, video, doctor visits, smart speakers on monitoring devices and even smart toilets. Toilets are going to tell you to take your pills. For example, Best Buy offers senior friendly mobile devices that detect falls, tie in with hospital systems, assess electronic medical records and provide “One Touch “connections with the company's 3400 member call center which can contact Drs. ,order pickups from Lift and alert the owner's caregivers. Last year the center took 9 million calls from 1 million users. Wow, what an incentive to enter a nursing home!
A fourth idea of existentialism pertains to man’s psychological character. Unfortunately, because of society's emphasis on mass communication, propaganda and conformity,the individual becomes lost. These forces interfere with developing an authentic way of being. Authenticity becomes problematic because of the inertia and complacent lifestyle that pursues comfort from objects as opposed to learning about oneself. Only man makes of himself and nothing more .it's his thinking, behavior and acknowledgement and responsibility that determine who he is.The tyranny of the crowd, anonymity, not facing the fact that he is going to die ,the strong irrational forces working against him and acknowledging that he can't be comforted by religion, political, scientific or other illusions are uncomfortable challenges. One has to face the anxiety of his being and move toward perhaps self-actualization.
The few that actually reach self-actualization can be characterized as having tendencies that: 1. Have a more efficient perception of reality; able to detect falseness in others and tolerate uncertainty and ambiguity 2. An acceptance of self and others with minimal defensiveness 3. A problem-solving style oriented to social welfare 4. A need for privacy 5. Significant interpersonal relationships with a few rather than with many 6. Able to love and be loved, which includes a caring, respecting responsibility, knowledge, fun, elation, well-being and gaiety attitude. Note, the absence of pursuing happiness, power, prestige, and possession.
This fourth point was addressed by the article in the April 24, 2022 edition, titled "It's Life or Death; US Teenagers Face a Mental Health Crisis." Adolescents present a great public health challenge. United States teenagers ,in the past three decades,have gone from binge drinking ,drunken-driving, teenage pregnancy and smoking to the following: 13% of adolescents report they have a major depressive episode, a 60% increase from 2007 with the rise of emergency room visits by children and adolescents with diagnosis of anxiety, mood disorders and self harm. People ages 10 to 24, had suicide increases of nearly 60% by 2018.
It was also stated , we have a national emergency with rising levels of mental illness, a severe shortage of therapists and treatment options and insufficient research to explain the trend. It’s important to note that the more educated are less likely to get pregnant, use drugs and are unlikely to die from accident or injury. Related, although the data is limited, the findings on social media suggest that some adolescents appear to be more vulnerable than others regarding the effects of viewing time. However, teenagers,as a group, are getting less sleep, exercise and are spending less in person time with friends. Interpersonal interactions are crucial for healthy emotional identity development .Anxiety, depression, compulsive behavior, self-harm, and even suicide are troublesome statistics. On the positive,30% of high school-aged teenagers report having had sex at least once compared with roughly 50% in 1980. Teen birth rate also has plummeted, so has cigarette and alcohol use.
Rise of loneliness appears to be a key mental illness factor in that teenagers report they feel lonely even after internet use. Although Internet use has exploded ,they hang out with friends but no friends are there. A second article "The City Has a Loneliness Problem," In the April 24, 2022 edition pointed out the effect of loneliness on adults. This article suggested the pandemic only exacerbated the epidemic of loneliness driven by the accelerated pace of life and the spread of technology into all our social interactions.Further, loneliness is damaging not only to mental health but also physical health as well. Being lonely increases the risk of emotional disorders like depression, anxiety and substance abuse and also puts people at greater risk in terms of heart disease, cancer, stroke, hypertension, dementia, and premature death. In lab experiments, lonely people that were exposed to cold virus were more likely to develop cold symptoms than people who were not normally lonely. There are more struggling with loneliness than even diabetes. Tissues from the brains of older adults, in their final years, answered questions about their levels of loneliness. The results suggested the physical cellular nature of loneliness was distinctly different when comparing the brains of lonely people to the brains of non lonely people. Some genes that promote prolific proliferation of cancerous cells were more activated in lonely people.Genes that regulate inflammation were turned off in lonely people. Depending upon how lonely these people felt , they were associated with cancer,inflammation, heart disease, as well as cognitive function . Article pointed out the pandemic underscored how important casual connections are for emotional well-being. So a healthy diet,medication and exercise might not cure the problem of loneliness. Loneliness in our culture is reinforced by technology. Once again, technology, Internet use can not treat loneliness. Are Geeks less lonely?. We know that connected people live longer, happier, healthier lives, and that the workplace and home environments have to be reevaluated. If we truly want to be healthy, well being and fulfilled, we have to restructure lives around people,not things or fiction.
In summary, existentialism pertains to thinking and behavior. It's cognitive in the sense that irrationality is acknowledged with a danger that man's thinking can be easily influenced with the primitive, supernatural, wishful ,conspiratorial, self-defeating fictional ideas. We know that emotional needs mislead man and interfere with thinking and choices. Currently man,within our society, has produced the inauthentic and recorded over 1 million Covid-19 deaths; with 5% of the world’s population, we have 45% of armed citizens; number one in school shootings; enormous economic disparity; number one in defense spending; 50 or so elected Republican's saying no to bills that protect and help the majority; the evangelicals saying yes to restricting women's health issues, what’s taught in schools, who can be a member of their group, who can purchase an assault rifle, and who can vote; decrease in life expectancy; healthcare crisis; exploitive insurance industries; increase in hate groups; excessive obesity and neurotic disturbances etc.with models that include the likes of Kardashian’s,Bezos, Musk, Putin,Trump.It’s obvious that man has difficulty with his reality which is how,what and where the use of drugs, games ,dream vacations, pornography etc. are employed as distractions. Being part of the crowd with many social media followers has not solved the problem of loneliness. The number of followers does not at all indicate friendship quality. The existentialists suggest we are not pursuing happiness but something else. For what it’s worth : Learning never exhausts the mind stated Leonardo da Vinci ; according to Epicurus, nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so; every negative belief weakens the partnership between mind and body wrote Deepak Chopra and when health is absent, wisdom cannot reveal itself, art cannot become manifest, strength cannot be exerted, wealth is useless, and reason is powerless said Herophilus, ancient Greek physician.
References
Ellis, Albert and Harper, Robert. A Guide to Rational Living
Maslow, Abraham H. Motivation and Personality
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