Amerika

Few people understand that behaviorism is individualism rebranded, just as egalitarianism is. For us to be individualistic, we must all be equally important; that requires that we remove any differences between us, like internal qualities such as analytical, creative, and moral abilities.

That in turn requires that we see each human as a stupid animal to be controlled with a carrot/stick. If we are all equal, and many of us are doing horrible things, we must make the bad pretend to be good by using means-over-ends manipulations to force them to behave as if they were good.

Not surprisingly, the bad learn to pretend to be good, breed, and soon outnumber the good. Individualism via equality and its tool behaviorism is dysgenic. Any focus on something other than the whole of reality will have negative consequences, but this focus is what most humans crave.

In other words, people fear destiny. If we each have a different destiny, we have to embrace it but even more, discover it, and this is a process at which we can fail, so we prefer to deny destiny and insist that the successful simply got the right indoctrination and the poor somehow did not.

It is comical watching humonkeys afraid not of death but of social irrelevance to the point that they ban social relevance and force people to participate in lowest common denominator rituals instead. But, we have invented many justifications for individualism, which is the cornerstone of the modern or democratic era.

We cannot escape how much this was fueled by the rise of the bourgeois middle class. In cities, the people smart enough to be clever but not smart enough to be long-term, holistic, and idealistic thinkers tend to dominate, and they bring with them a society ruled by commerce and socializing. This is a middle class era.

One of these justifications, existentialism, essentially serves to justify the bourgeois conceit that we are self-created and therefore, equal because genetics does not have an influence:

According to existentialism: (1) Existence is always particular and individual—always my existence, your existence, his existence, her existence. (2) Existence is primarily the problem of existence (i.e., of its mode of being); it is, therefore, also the investigation of the meaning of Being. (3) That investigation is continually faced with diverse possibilities, from among which the existent (i.e., the human individual) must make a selection, to which he must then commit himself. (4) Because those possibilities are constituted by the individual’s relationships with things and with other humans, existence is always a being-in-the-world—i.e., in a concrete and historically determinate situation that limits or conditions choice. Humans are therefore called, in Martin Heidegger’s phrase, Dasein (“there being”) because they are defined by the fact that they exist, or are in the world and inhabit it.

With respect to the first point, that existence is particular, existentialism is opposed to any doctrine that views human beings as the manifestation of an absolute or of an infinite substance. It is thus opposed to most forms of idealism, such as those that stress Consciousness, Spirit, Reason, Idea, or Oversoul. Second, it is opposed to any doctrine that sees in human beings some given and complete reality that must be resolved into its elements in order to be known or contemplated. It is thus opposed to any form of objectivism or scientism, since those approaches stress the crass reality of external fact. Third, existentialism is opposed to any form of necessitarianism; for existence is constituted by possibilities from among which the individual may choose and through which he can project himself. And, finally, with respect to the fourth point, existentialism is opposed to any solipsism (holding that I alone exist) or any epistemological idealism (holding that the objects of knowledge are mental), because existence, which is the relationship with other beings, always extends beyond itself, toward the being of those entities; it is, so to speak, transcendence.

Starting from such bases, existentialism can take diverse and contrasting directions. It can insist on the transcendence of Being with respect to existence, and, by holding that transcendence to be the origin or foundation of existence, it can thus assume a theistic form. On the other hand, it can hold that human existence, posing itself as a problem, projects itself with absolute freedom, creating itself by itself, thus assuming to itself the function of God. As such, existentialism presents itself as a radical atheism. Or it may insist on the finitude of human existence—i.e., on the limits inherent in its possibilities of projection and choice. As such, existentialism presents itself as a humanism.

Existentialism arises from the idea of “existence before essence,” or the notion that people are malleable things which make themselves into what they are, instead of having destinies or genetic trajectories; they are also assumed to have “minimum equal reason” in order to make themselves into what they want to be.

In this way, existential is just one of many justifications for individualism by arguing for the essentially similar human individual, or equal souls, who then make themselves via philosophy:

Existentialists hold widely differing views about human existence, but there are a number of recurring themes in their writings. First, existentialists hold that humans have no pregiven purpose or essence laid out for them by God or by nature; it is up to each one of us to decide who and what we are through our own actions. This is the point of Sartre’s definition of existentialism as the view that, for humans, ‘existence precedes essence’. What this means is that we first simply exist – find ourselves born into a world not of our own choosing – and it is then up to each of us to define our own identity or essential characteristics in the course of what we do in living out our lives. Thus, our essence (our set of defining traits) is chosen, not given.

Second, existentialists hold that people decide their own fates and are responsible for what they make of their lives. Humans have free will in the sense that, no matter what social and biological factors influence their decisions, they can reflect on those conditions, decide what they mean, and then make their own choices as to how to handle those factors in acting in the world. Because we are self-creating or self-fashioning beings in this sense, we have full responsibility for what we make of our lives.

Finally, existentialists are concerned with identifying the most authentic and fulfilling way of life possible for individuals. In their view, most of us tend to conform to the ways of living of the ‘herd’: we feel we are doing well if we do what ‘one’ does in familiar social situations. In this respect, our lives are said to be ‘inauthentic’, not really our own. To become authentic, according to this view, an individual must take over their own existence with clarity and intensity. Such a transformation is made possible by such profound emotional experiences as anxiety or the experience of existential guilt. When we face up to what is revealed in such experiences, existentialists claim, we will have a clearer grasp of what is at stake in life, and we will be able to become more committed and integrated individuals.

In this neurotic simian view, humans make their own destinies by choice alone and are not influenced by their past, physical bodies, or personalities. They are blank slates which can be programmed through a doctrine of the sovereign, cultureless, genetically equal, and perpetual individual:

Given these disparate threads and the fact that there is no unifying doctrine, one can nonetheless distill a set of overlapping ideas that bind the movement together.

• Nihilism: The emergence of existentialism as an intellectual movement was influenced by the rise of nihilism in late nineteenth century Europe as the pre-modern religious worldview was replaced with one that was increasingly secular and scientific. This historical transition resulted in the loss of a transcendent moral framework and contributed to the rise of modernity’s signature experiences: anxiety, alienation, boredom, and meaninglessness.
• Engagement vs. Detachment: Against a philosophical tradition that privileges the standpoint of theoretical detachment and objectivity, existentialism generally begins in medias res, amidst our own situated, first-person experience. The human condition is revealed through an examination of the ways we concretely engage with the world in our everyday lives and struggle to make sense of and give meaning to our existence.
• Existence Precedes Essence: Existentialists forward a novel conception of the self not as a substance or thing with some pre-given nature (or “essence”) but as a situated activity or way of being whereby we are always in the process of making or creating who we are as our life unfolds. This means our essence is not given in advance; we are contingently thrown into existence and are burdened with the task of creating ourselves through our choices and actions.
• Freedom: Existentialists agree that what distinguishes our existence from that of other beings is that we are self-conscious and exist for ourselves, which means we are free and responsible for who we are and what we do. This does not mean we are wholly undetermined but, rather, that we are always beyond or more than ourselves because of our capacity to interpret and give meaning to whatever limits or determines us.
• Authenticity: Existentialists are critical of our ingrained tendency to conform to the norms and expectations of the public world because it prevents us from being authentic or true to ourselves. An authentic life is one that is willing to break with tradition and social convention and courageously affirm the freedom and contingency of our condition. It is generally understood to refer to a life lived with a sense of urgency and commitment based on the meaning-giving projects that matter to each of us as individuals.
• Ethics: Although they reject the idea of moral absolutes and universalizing judgments about right conduct, existentialism should not be dismissed for promoting moral nihilism. For the existentialist, a moral or praiseworthy life is possible. It is one where we acknowledge and own up to our freedom, take full responsibility for our choices, and act in such a way as to help others realize their freedom.

Some sources even attribute existentialism to the rise of bourgeois middle class theory which tried to explain “the customer is always right” as a life-philosophy:

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rapid expansion of industrialisation and advance in technology were often seen in terms of an alienation of the human from nature or from a properly natural way of living (for example, thinkers of German and English romanticism).

Individualism depends heavily on means-over-ends philosophies because these assert the equal individual different only in terms of the methods he uses. In that mindset, if an idiot is properly educated and instructed, he will be wise or even a king.

The last few decades have shown us that this is peak democratic feeling and more properly known as a mental illness.

Modern people fear to accept what they are because they want to control their self-image. They want to reject everything but their own desires and judgments so that they are in control, and they want to be in control in order to perpetuate the sensation of solipsism and therefore, safety.

In its final form, this produces the existentialist or postmodernist, an antihero egoist who is isolated and independent, motivated only by his judgments and desires, living with all the dials turned up to eleven because his self is so fascinating that nothing can compare to it.

Saner times would view this as contraindicated by both natural and divine order, which would mean that those embracing it have something wrong with who they are inside. Maybe this is what the existentialists, individualists, codependents, and narcissists are always trying to hide.

Tags: codependency, egotism, existentialism, individualism, narcissism