It Makes No Difference

Existentialism states that we can only truly be free if we are entirely independent of the systems of society. These systems effect us both conscientiously and sub-conscientiously in almost every aspect of our lives whether we choose to accept it or not. Even if we believe that we have unique and personalized relationships and friendships they are still shaped by systems. This is apparent if you just examine your relationships. Do you kiss you friends like you would your boyfriend/ girlfriend? Do you obey them as you would your parents? Well why not? The answer is because those relationships are already defined by society and you act only within them. Similarly you can claim that everyone has their own individual ethics and no two people have the same, because they arise through personal experience. However society has still created the idea of morality, the idea that there is a right and a wrong. This concept does not exist within nature. Because these systems shape arguably all of our actions, we are not truly free, but rather slaves to society and the social norms of the systems. The only way to them set yourself free is to question everything about the world and about yourself and reject all of the worlds systems. You become truly free to define yourself, this is most human you can be. In this case identity is closely related to purpose or meaning. If you look at an object like a pen you can see its purpose, to solve our writing needs, it was created for that reason, it's purpose preceded its existence. Humans are totally different however, we must gain our purpose through our existence, it does not inherently exist. Existentialists believe that the systems of society define our purpose for us before we even exist, because of course they are so constraining. Therefor we are most human when we are outside of these systems and are free to define ourselves. The meaning of life then becomes for each person to gain their own subjective meaning through living life.

While I agree with a lot of things in existentialism but I think that there are some flaws and hypocrisies within it. To start, the idea that death is bad is itself a system, this was brought up in class by Isabel. And it is very true, we all just assume that death is this bad scary thing. But why? Ask yourself why you think death is bad? It's an inevitability, and this can't be avoided, everybody will die eventually, and countless people have done so already. So why is it this  big scary thing that almost everyone fears? It's because society has posited it this way, though various different notions, some stemming from separate systems entirely, such as religion. So the fact that the fundamental idea of existentialism, namely that in the world there is only pain and suffering- culminating in death, is itself a system, is a pretty big hole. Next is the problem of reaching the sort of existentialist goal of freedom from all systems. It is impossible to never be exposed to these systems as after we are born we are immediately expose to the system of parenthood and the relationship is often the first of our many experiences. So then if you cannot avoid these systems then in order to achieve this you must fully accept all systems and immerse yourself in all of them. Only then can u fully understand them and begin to comprehend what it means to be free. It reminds me of the idea in Marxism that says in order for society to become communist it must first be capitalist, so as to create the strife that starts the revolution and creates the communist society. In order for the good to happen (existentialist freedom), you must first accept the exact opposite, the every thing that the good posits is the problem (slavery of systems). And finally when you do achieve this state of "freedom" are you truly "free"? You are still effected by all of the systems in that you must rejects them, they still effect you just in different ways. Existence within systems can be defined by X, if you were to suddenly achieve a truly existential existence you would still be constrained by these systems by your forced rejection of them, your existence then can just be defined as -X. All of the opposite properties of X but still with all the same limitations, just in the inverse. Look at Meursault, his only character trait is that he is an existentialist, and all he does is just bounce from one system to the next forced to reject them all. The fact that they still exist means that he must avoid them and that becomes his identity. So it is all sort of futile.