Running to catch the sun
Running to catch the sun
We are all heading for the grave in an indifferent universe. How do we cope with such existential concerns?
So you run and you run to catch up
with the sun but it's sinking,
Racing around to come up behind you
again.
The sun is the same in a relative way,
but you're older,
Shorter of breath, and one day closer
to death.
‘Time’ by Pink Floyd
The Dark Side of the Moon, 1973
HUMAN vanity often drives us to exalt our unique intellectual abilities – for language, culture, abstract thought, and conscious self reflection. In part, they are what makes human existence so rich. Combined with an unmatched capacity for thinking about the future, they enable us to draw on past experience and think about our long-term goals, meaning we can function more effectively in the present.
Yet these cherished gifts come at a price. Our self-awareness and unparalleled foresight mean that we humans, unlike other animals, realise that we will all shuffle off this mortal coil sooner or later. This poses a potentially devastating challenge to our psychological equanimity – the prospect of annihilation threatens to rob life of ultimate purpose, and render the pursuit of a meaningful life a futile effort.
Facing up to the facts of life
The fear of death is far from being the only existential concern about which we exercise ourselves. Irvin Yalom, an existential psychotherapist and emeritus professor at Stanford University (see p.584), has described three other potent ‘givens of existence’ or facts of life that can lead to existential distress: freedom – whether we are really in control of our choices, and the responsibility that comes with making those decisions; existential isolation – the need to be connected to others, and the fundamentally isolated nature of our subjective experience of the world; and, finally, meaninglessness – the desire to believe that our lives are meaningful, even though the slings and arrows of life’s fortunes often seem random and in violation of the bases that imbue our lives with meaning.
These issues have historically been addressed by existentialist philosophers such as Jean-Paul Sartre and novelists, including Albert Camus, who have tended to rely on introspection and armchair rumination. In recent years, however, the questions posed by these givens of existence have increasingly been subjected to the experimental techniques of modern psychology, and given rise to a new subfield: experimental existential psychology, or XXP as it’s more snappily known.
Full article is attached in PDF format, or you can access the site here.
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Comment by Steve M on January 17, 2011 at 7:51pm -
It's a long way around the block to say something that I have always thought about myself. I have a defective denial mechanism. That's what led me to atheism in the first place.
I had the almost the exact experience described about being upset that I would not be welcome in a group that I thought was idiotic in the first place. Some one I considered a friend at work was able to join The Sons of the Confederacy. You have to have ancestors that fought for the Confederacy in order to join. Being second generation Italian-American I obviously don't qualify. And as stupid as it sounds I felt a twinge of disappointment and had a feeling of being left out. That's just weird. But this article validates those feelings.
Good read. Thanks for posting it.
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Comment by Dallas the Phallus on January 18, 2011 at 1:35pm -
I think you and I are a lot alike, Steve. At a very young age I found myself incapable of "pretending" to about such things as an intangible god, like the adults I saw around me were doing.
Belonging to a group is important to social animals like humans, and it is this very need that theists and cultists exploit when recruiting new members.
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Comment by Steve M on January 18, 2011 at 8:52pm
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Worse yet I am a bad liar. Not that I don't lie . I'm just bad at it. I could not lie about my feelings on such matters even when it cost me socially. It continues to cost me socially but I just can't help myself. I just have to say something about the elephant in the room. At 54 I am still a social moron when it comes to not commenting on idiotic stuff.
I had to re-read the article to get most of it. I was especially intrigued by the idea of the defense of ones world view in the face of anxiety. It explains a lot about how certain cults or political movements seem to gain so much steam in a very short period of time during times of perceived crisis.
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Comment by Dallas the Phallus on January 19, 2011 at 9:48am
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Exactly, Steve. A lot of people are willing to "lie" by ignoring the cognitive dissonance they have about the improbability of, and lack of evidence in, theistic beliefs, for the sole reason of fitting in, being accepted, or punishment avoidance.
Yes, the article should be reread several times, I think. There is a lot of good info there, and it needs to be absorbed and internalized.
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