This past week in class, we have discussed socially created structures that give life order and meaning. Most prominently, love, family, friendship, and knowledge are at the forefront of the dominant narrative of what gives life importance. However, despite this narrative, existentialism states that all of these values are arbitrarily created by society in order to associate certain events with feelings.
What if life is all an illusion? What is all physical and mental perceptions are just creations of the mind? What if the mind does not exist at all? What if MY being does not mean anything in the grand scheme of the world?
The fact it is that all of these are probably true! Think about it: the universe has existed for 13.8 billion years. The average human lives 79 years. That means that each human lives for approximately 6x10^-7 % of the overall life of the universe. If you look at it this way, the humans are the ants of the universe. When humans pass an ant on the street, they often step on it or fail to notice it at all. Ants appear to be completely arbitrary in the general order of the earth. They neither contribute nor take away from the day to day operations of humans. They just exist.
I can't speak about the complexities of the brain because I am not a neurological scientist, but I can speak to what feelings I have as a human. Whether these feelings are constructs or not does not particularly matter to me because they make me feel like I matter. If the social constructs of society such as love, family, friends, and knowledge went away, humans would reconstruct new systems because it is human nature to organize and categorize. If it wasn't, then the current social constructs would not exist. Therefore, the discussion of existentialism is more about being capable of having human feelings. These feelings are what make humans human. These feelings are what make us feel bigger than the ants we really are.
I like how you compare a human's life to an ant. I think that this makes a lot of sense because existentialism explains how our lives don't really matter in the grand scheme of things. The social constructs that we have made up help us feel like everything happens for a reason. But, these values are only there to help us feel comfort in our meaningless lifes.
ReplyDeleteI love this comparison. I completely agree with the idea that social constructs are created to give more meaning to our existence. Ironically, I think that they end up taking away meaning in some ways, for with knowledge, love, friends, and families, comes the inevitable pain and disappointment. This suffering often makes us feel meaningless.
ReplyDeleteI really like this comparison and have actually thought about "being an ant" countless times. In the grand scheme of the universe, we really are nothing and have no purpose. However, we confront this idea through our lived experiences and emotions. No matter the magnitude of influence the media has on our ideas of love, happiness or any other social constructs, it doesn't diminish our capability to feel.
ReplyDeleteThe statement "What if MY being does not mean anything in the grand scheme of the world?" immediately made me think of the butterfly effect theory, where the smallest changes can amount to huge events. It is interesting to take into account this theory when considering existentialism, where nothing adds up to be everything.
ReplyDelete