Friday, April 19, 2019

Existentialism

When you think about the world, it becomes really difficult to find meaning in anything at all. Religion, family, society used to be the pillars on which the world used to stand upon, they served the purpose of providing meaning and guiding the people, not anymore. The most obvious thing that looks logical is to acknowledge the meaninglessness of the world. The absurdity of it all, that there is no meaning and ultimately it is you that has to create your own meaning. This realisation is really daunting  as well as empowering at the same time.

It removes the crutches that you were using in life to make decisions like family, religion because if no one knows anything then every choice is right which means there is no right choice.There is no  one hand holding you.You are on your own. You do not have the comfort cushion of a long standing line of thoughts agreed upon  by a large number of people to fall back upon. You have to make your own rules, values, morals.This can lead too the dilemma that Ivan had to deal with in Dostoevsky's last novel Brother's Karamazov. If anything is right then a criminal can  use this argument to justify his crimes saying that if everything is right then so am i, whatever I may do. It is really a difficult thing to deal with with no right answers.Everyone has his own morals and you can just hope and expect that they might be having similar morals consistent with your own but yes you can not force anything on anyone.

On the other hand it can be liberating as hell that you do not have to confirm to some one else's standards and that you can make your own decisions.It frees you up to make any decisions that you might want to make but it also puts the onus squarely on you that what you are doing is only by you and you are the only one responsible for it.


In the end it is about the perspective that you have.