TTW: Purpose Of Life - Existentialism

What's the purpose of life and why do we live in an Universe devoid of meaning... 

THOUGHTS ON EXISTENTIALISM.

“If you can hold a flower and see life in its tender petals, vibrant colors and complex design to inevitably give birth in it’s dying, to another sustainable life, then that is Living. But if you can love the flower’s beauty, care for its ‘being’, however temporal and fragile, and ensure that it blooms into thousand flowers within your love, that’s The Purpose of Life. Remember, Love is what transcends death, even after you die. You still flower into thousands of hearts and live forever in their thoughts. So Love.” – V.E.D

 

Thought Of The Week @ Sept 2014

At some point of life, most of us, face the inevitable question ‘What’s The purpose of life?’ and then we try to answer either with our own day to day efforts of living or just leave it to be answered by the society / culture / religion to which we belong. Yes, I have faced this question too and slowly I have come to realize that it’s really not a question about Living but about Dying. It’s really hard for consciousness to hold on to the idea that each one of the steps that we take in living, is one more step closer to our dying. But then I think, it’s one thing that we rarely forget…

 

Living and the Dead | The Existentialist
Hemu's Art Blog

Recently one of my friend, Architect Hemalatha Venkatraman, from Chennai Blogger’s Club (CBC), posted one of her paintings, what she describes as, “… a personal outlet after a person of mine committed suicide after he could take no more of it, simply because he felt it to be pointless, as an existentialist”. This triggered a chain of thoughts on Existentialism, The purpose of life, Who Am I etc. which I am putting across here, in this post.

But before I go further, I deeply share the anguish and pains suffered by Hemalatha and hope these thoughts will some how lessen her pain.

To begin with, let me try to give some back ground on Existentialism.

As the science progresses with more and more theories, scientific proofs on how the Universe, mankind and ‘thinking self’ evolved, each one of us are slowly losing the comforting legacy of faith and hope as the back bone of living one’s life and the inevitable coldness of eventual death of our ‘being’ creeps deeper into the depths of our living. In past, it was religion, culture and society that gave us faith and hope; i.e. there is something beyond our dying, and our Righteous actions, Ethics and Morality, gave us some kind of direction to move forward. But these relics of past are slowly being eroded from the foundations of our thinking, either by science, or by the modern philosophy that says, well there was nothing before and inevitably, there nothing will be in the hereafter. Universe was created with a Big Bang and like wise will die one day. So some of us don’t see the point of living meaninglessly, toiling away either in suffering or bliss, pain or pleasure along with the constant anxiety of being a ‘being’ who are inevitably going to die. All this drama of life just because we were born, which was not even our own doing?

 

From Gifted Eyes of Eames, a legendary designer and Architect

So What’s The Purpose Of Life?

SørenKierkegaard, who is generally considered to be the father of Existential Philosophy, (Though he did not use the word existentialism), said that each one of us is solely responsible for giving a purpose or meaning to his / her life and to live it sincerely and truthfully.

“People are so smart that we actually come to realize that we exist.” - Kierkegaard

After the age of four or five we are aware of our existence. Not only we are aware of the fact that we exist, but also we are aware of that fact. We know about our freedom to chose our actions, type of morality that we want to live with as well as whether to jump off a cliff or not. However, as Kierkegaard explains in his book ‘The Concept of Anxiety’, this freedom, far from being a reason for happiness, provokes a feeling of anxiety and dread within us, which in turn increases our self-awareness and a sense of ultimate personal responsibility.

But you see, this is a very disturbing thought. Unlike any other living thing, e.g. animals, we also realize that we are inevitably going to die too. This gives our highly evolved brain an anxiety that, as the brain goes, needs to be removed or minimized. In old times, faced with this kind of existential crisis, we created cultures to belong to; have faith in religion and Gods; in effect erecting scaffoldings for the idea that there is a meaning to one’s life. This kind of culture, society gave us a reason to live and in the case of belief in a particular cult, religion or a personal God, to live beyond dying too. In effect, all these gave us, instead of a cold and empty universe, a ‘meaningful’ universe to live in.

 

To the Top - Vladimir Kush

However, as the history progressed to modern times, existentialist like Nietzsche defined all these structures of culture, society and religion as something that inhibits our life from living wholly as one should be living.

“As a result, we have come to see the world we live in as a world that we should resent and disdain, a world from which we should turn away, transcend, and certainly not enjoy. But in doing so, we have turned away from life itself in favor of the myth or an inventions, an imagined ‘Real world’ that is situated elsewhere” - Nietzsche

While anther existentialist, Sartre says that we are the kinds of beings who are compelled to assign a purpose to our lives. With no divine power to prescribe that purpose, we must define ourselves.

While Existentialism is a philosophy that guides us to look deeper into the reasons of our existence, it definitely does not provide any means to exist. So this is where one should consider the thought from Dr. Earnest Becker, Cultural Anthropologist - Pulitzer Prize Winner for his book 'Denial of Death' who says, “In order to stand up in the morning, one needs to believe that life has a meaning. We, in addition, also need to believe that each of us as individuals, that we're valuable contributors to the culturally constructed drama to which we subscribe.”

Don Justo - Man with a purpose of life, took 60 years to single handedly build
his 131 ft high Cathedral in Madrid, Spain (here he is with my brother Animesh)
 Click here to read more...

And what Becker asks us to think about is, that culture gives us opportunities to feel like we are valuable people, through social roles with associated standards of conduct, the satisfaction of which gives you the sense that you're a person of value in a world of meaning. We design goals to achieve, ideas of what we can be, etc.

And there're a lot of other theorists like AbrahamMaslow and Carl Rogers, putting forward the idea of self-actualization – the higher self as they said.

While throughout the history, there have been thinkers who proposed a meaningful way of life…

“In case of humans, a ‘good’ life is therefore one in which we fulfil our purpose, or use all the characteristics that make us human to the full”. - Aristotle c. 384 – 322 BCE

“(A good life) can be achieved by being content to live a simple life” – Diogenes Of Sinope c.404 -323 BCE

“The universe and everything in it is an endless flow of life, in which God is an eternal presence. Man, as part of the universe is also a part of this continuum” - Rumi c 1207 - 1273

 

Stopped Moments - Vladimir Kush

If you really look closer, these are thoughts that shield us from constantly being aware of death, which will immobilise us in living. We do have proclamations from people like Richard Dawkins in his book “The God Delusion” and one that is on the top of my list of Grand Proclamations, from really a true scientific genius, Stephen Hawkins “The God Does Not Exist”. Scientists say things one day and when faced with a new evidence, they change, which is alright with me but that also makes me not to take their proclamations as final reality about things they are not equipped to understand as of now, like matter, consciousness, God etc. So till the time we don’t have conclusive proof against our own faith in the goodness of “just being”, I find these props a great and meaningful way to continue to live.

And the most important of these are self esteem (Be good at something, Help other people, Find a problem and solve it), loving deeply – a close personal relationship with family, friends and people, a certain intuitive belief in the existence of our own sub-consciousness, inter connected with the supreme consciousness. These altogether make, however un-quantified, our life purposeful in this cold expanse of empty space.

For me the way of living has always been the way of Karma Yogi, which comes from Krishna in Bhagwat Gita…

 

Sculpture of Krishna, explaining life to Arjuna from Bhagwat Gita
At Triveni Ghat in Rishikesh, Himalaya

“Performing action (Karma) is our only duty (about things that comes our way, with 100% dedication, sincerity and focus), we should not think or worry about the fruits of our actions”. – Bhagwat Gita Chap. 2 verse 47

Here is what a third grader says about "Meaning of life"...

In the end I will again go back to the thought in the beginning, which I truly believe in…

“Remember, Love is what transcends death, even after you die. You still flower into thousands of hearts and live forever. So Love.” - V.E.D

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I will be very grateful to receive your thoughts on this topic and discuss further, do leave a comment.

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Shashi

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Farther Reaches of Human Nature - Maslow        Satan's Letter from Earth

UP, Close & Personal : Sigmund Freud

Remembering Sigmund Freud on his birthday today...

Sigmund Freud

Sigmund Freud (6 May 1856 – 23 September 1939), was an Austrian neurologist who founded the discipline of psychoanalysis. Freud went on to develop theories about the unconscious mind and the mechanism of repression, and established the field of verbal psychotherapy by creating psychoanalysis, a clinical method for treating psychopathology through dialogue between a patient (or "analysand") and a psychoanalyst. Though psychoanalysis has declined as a therapeutic practice, it has helped inspire the development of many other forms of psychotherapy, some diverging from Freud's original ideas and approach. Freud postulated the existence of libido (an energy with which mental process and structures are invested), developed therapeutic techniques such as the use of free association (in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so), discovered the transference (the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings based on their experience of earlier figures in their lives) and established its central role in the analytic process, and proposed that dreams help to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awake the dreamer.

Freud's theories have been criticized as pseudo-scientific and sexist, and they have been marginalized within psychology departments, although they remain influential within the humanities. Critics have debated whether it is possible to test Freudian theories. Some researchers claim evidence exists for some of Freud's theories. Freud has been called one of the three masters of the "school of suspicion", alongside Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche, while his ideas have been compared to those of Plato and Aquinas.

IDEAS

Early Works

The goal of Freudian therapy, or psychoanalysis, was to bring repressed thoughts and feelings into consciousness in order to free the patient from suffering repetitive distorted emotions. Classically, the bringing of unconscious thoughts and feelings to consciousness is brought about by encouraging a patient to talk about dreams and engage in free association, in which patients report their thoughts without reservation and make no attempt to concentrate while doing so. Another important element of psychoanalysis is the transference, the process by which patients displace on to their analysts feelings and ideas which derive from previous figures in their lives. 

Cocaine

As a medical researcher, Freud was an early user and proponent of cocaine as a stimulant as well as analgesic. He believed that cocaine was a cure for many mental and physical problems, and in his 1884 paper "On Coca" he extolled its virtues.

The Unconsciousness

The concept of the unconscious was central to Freud's account of the mind. Freud believed that while poets and thinkers had long known of the existence of the unconscious, he had ensured that it received scientific recognition in the field of psychology.

The Dreams

Freud believed that the function of dreams is to preserve sleep by representing as fulfilled wishes that would otherwise awaken the dreamer.

Way to Freud's Chamber in Vienna

Psychosexual development

"I found in myself a constant love for my mother, and jealousy of my father. I now consider this to be a universal event in childhood," Freud said. Freud sought to anchor this pattern of development in the dynamics of the mind. Each stage is a progression into adult sexual maturity, characterized by a strong ego and the ability to delay gratification (cf. Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality). He used the Oedipus conflict to point out how much he believed that people desire incest and must repress that desire. The Oedipus conflict was described as a state of psychosexual development and awareness. He also turned to anthropological studies of totemism and argued that totemism reflected a ritualized enactment of a tribal Oedipal conflict. Freud also believed that the Oedipus complex was bisexual, involving an attraction to both parents

Id, ego, and super-ego

In his later work, Freud proposed that the human psyche could be divided into three parts: Id, ego, and super-ego. The id is the completely unconscious, impulsive, child-like portion of the psyche that operates on the "pleasure principle" and is the source of basic impulses and drives; it seeks immediate pleasure and gratification.

The super-ego is the moral component of the psyche, which takes into account no special circumstances in which the morally right thing may not be right for a given situation. The rational ego attempts to exact a balance between the impractical hedonism of the id and the equally impractical moralism of the super-ego; it is the part of the psyche that is usually reflected most directly in a person's actions.

Life and death drives

Freud believed that people are driven by two conflicting central desires: the life drive (libido or Eros) (survival, propagation, hunger, thirst, and sex) and the death drive.

Religion

Freud regarded the monotheistic God as an illusion based upon the infantile emotional need for a powerful, supernatural pater familias. He maintained that religion – once necessary to restrain man’s violent nature in the early stages of civilization – in modern times, can be set aside in favor of reason and science.

LEGACY

Verdicts on the scientific merits of Freud's theories have differed. Gilbert Ryle calls Freud "psychology's one man of genius" and the influence of his teaching "deservedly profound" even though its allegories have been "damagingly popular", while David Stafford-Clark calls him "a man whose name will always rank with those of Darwin, Copernicus, Newton, Marx and Einstein; someone who really made a difference to the way the rest of us can begin to think about the meaning of human life and society."

In contrast, Lydiard H. Horton calls Freud's dream theory "dangerously inaccurate" and Eysenck claims that Freud "set psychiatry back one hundred years" and that "what is true in his theories is not new and what is new in his theories is not true", while Peter Medawar, a Nobel Prize winning immunologist, made the oft-quoted remark that psychoanalysis is the "most stupendous intellectual confidence trick of the twentieth century", and Webster calls psychoanalysis "perhaps the most complex and successful" pseudoscience in history.

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TEXT and Image from Wikipedia, click here to read more

To further read some of my thoughts on Sigmund Freud and related interesting topics, please check these out.

A-    Is Human Nature Basically Selfish? – A brief note on Sigmund Freud’s idea of Oedipal Complex: An infant’s twofold attitude towards both Parents: on the one hand a wish to ELIMINATE the jealously hated father and take his place in a SENSUAL relationship with the mother (or vice versa in case of girl child).

Click here to read more…

B-    “When Nietzsche Wept” is an interesting movie based on the real life story of Nietzsche and Lou, where Sigmund Freud has played an interesting part in their lives, click below to read more…

Lou Andreas-Salomé - Love Interest of German Philosopher Nietzsche

ॐ नमः शिवाय

Om Namah Shivaya

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Why We Love & Cheat