A Climax of Ages?

As each day passes I am drawn more and more into existentialism. I never really read them, but through the post-modernist programming tool that is the Media (movies, books, even accepted social practices) Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, and Jean Baudrillard are scribbling on my tabula rasa.

Got es tot (God is dead) declared Nietzsche. "Subjectivity is truth" said Kierkegaard. Sartre cried "Existence precedes and rules Essence" (an idea I think I understand but haven't entirely digested as yet). Baudrillard waxed eloquent about simulacra and simulation. And their inheritors, these hordes of hegemonistic conformity, and the bastard children of genius (from the "Matrix" Wachowski's to Philip K Dick to Philip Pullman to your's truly and Epicurus Sybariticus) carried forth their deafening chorus to drown out any sense of meaning and certitude I may have had...

Bring it freaking on.

Got es tot

I kind of agree, metaphorically. But then again, maybe not... looks at the resurgence of the Christian right in the US, the waxing and waning of the Hindu right in India, the persistent waxing of Islamic fundamentalism in the Middle East (driven no doubt by geopolitical considerations that have little to do with religion).

Antecedent - read Why - an inductive Tale, by yours truly.

Truth is subjective/ Subjectivity is truth

When I read Kierkegaard's bio on Wikipedia, I was a bit spooked. There is that snippet about his funeral and the ruckus his nephew Henrik raised there... sound familiar? It will to anyone who's read my novella. Anyway...

Subjectivity as truth. More I think about it, more I am convinced of it...

I've said it before and I will say it again - what if there is no ultimate truth?

Existence precedes and rules Essence

This could actually be the key to my Solipsist puzzle :) Beyond that, all I can say is it rings true, but I haven't fully understood it.

Simulacra and simulation

Need to read further on this. But it is an interesting idea that I think contributes hugely to any serious inspection into epistemology and its repercussions.

Criticisms of Existentialism

The two I was totally sold on (another wonderful quote from Wikipedia)

1. Marcuse criticized existentialism... for projecting certain features, such as anxiety and meaninglessness, of the modern experience of living in an oppressive society, onto the nature of existence itself...

2. Logical positivists... claim that existentialists frequently become confused over the verb "to be" in their analyses of "being". The verb is prefixed to a predicate and to use the word without any predicate is meaningless. Borrowing from Kant's argument against the ontological argument for the existence of God, they argue that existence is not a property.

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Now allow me to quote M Baudrillard once more, a tad out of context. One of his contentions (in several ways a complementary hypothesis to the death of God) is the death, or more precisely, the end of history.

And it really is the end in several ways isn't it? The 20th century was the age of rising hegemony. The so called "settled" questions of capitalism vs communism and free trade vs protectionism (amongst others), while far from settled, were chewed so thoroughly as to be tasteless. Authoritarian forms of governance went out of fashion (though not practice), liberal values were net net on the upsurge...

A vapid sense of consumerism and dilettanteism overtook generations (starting perhaps with the hippy/ yuppy divide) and in some sense every part of the world came to sit at one stage or another of the predictable "democracy" event history; Africa is a couple of hundred years behind the rest of the world, the US perhaps at the forefront, and India at varying locations depending on the parameter under consideration. (I know - this is a not entirely accurate application of a generalization, and the rub is in the details, but bear with me)

Sidebar: In an incredible instance of synchronicity, I read an interesting Africa special National Geographic issue (Sep 05) today... illuminating thoughts on how geography, flora, fauna, and climate conspired to make Africa the poorest, most exploited, and most disease ridden continent (albeit one where humanity as we know it has had the most time to prosper/ develop).

And so we return to the question Epicurus Sybariticus worried about. If this, the world as it is today, or as it will be in a hundred years or more, is the climax of ages - is it good enough?

Translate that to a more personal statement (since every one of us really worries only about one's own event history as opposed to that of the whole universe): If the life I am/ you are leading is the life that every generation of humanity from proto-history has aimed to achieve, individually and socially - is it worthwhile?

If this is the climax of civilization, and of the individual search for meaning, its a pretty lousy one isn't it? Hmm... lets chew on that for a bit.

Never before in human history have we had so much free time (savings from the survival rat race) to question life's purpose... to really dwell on the existential dilemma as it applies to individuals and to civilizations.

But really, the best minds have been at this for an age now... and no result? What a shame...

(to be continued - maybe; its 1 freaking AM now...)