Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?

Existentialism is a philosophical movement which claims that individual human beings create the meanings of their own lives.

An existential crisis is a state of panic or feeling of intense psychological discomfort about questions of existence.

Sartre believed that people who cannot embrace their freedom seek to be "looked at," that is, to be made an object of another's subjectivity. This creates a clash of freedoms whereby person A's being (or sense of identity) is controlled by what person B's thoughts about him are.


WOODY ALLEN: That's quite a lovely Jackson Pollock, isn't it?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Yes it is.

WOODY ALLEN: What does it say to you?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: It restates the negativeness of the universe, the hideous lonely emptiness of existence, nothingness, the predicament of man forced to live in a barren, godless eternity, like a tiny flame flickering in an immense void, with nothing but waste, horror, and degradation, forming a useless bleak straightjacket in a black absurd cosmos.

WOODY ALLEN: What are you doing Saturday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: Committing suicide.

WOODY ALLEN: What about Friday night?

GIRL IN MUSEUM: [leaves silently]


The truth is that everyone is bored, and devotes himself to cultivating habits."
~ Albert Camus, 1948, The Plague (Trans. Stuart Gilbert), p. 4



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3 Comments:

At 2:16 AM , Blogger alexis said...

I just read the plague. Can't say I totally understood it.

You're have a crisis about whether you exist or not? "I blog, therefore I..."

 
At 3:36 PM , Blogger stennie said...

Dishy! I sense some ennui from you. Call me clairvoyant. I don't know whether to say "are you okay?" or to say "buck up, lil camper," or both. You need to IRC more often, that will make you feel better.

Also, I got my birthday present today! Thank you!!

 
At 11:05 PM , Blogger Michelle said...

Thanks ladies - actually, I'm ok - if I "am" at all. (That depends on what your definition of "is" is.)

I'm just having an existential crisis of sorts. Reading Sartre doesn't tell me how to fix it, but I like what Camus has to say. And let's face it, a little Woody makes everyone feel better.

 

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