Life is full of bi-polar choices,
Opposing choices...
We can choose this,
Or we can choose that..
We can do this,
Or we can do that...
If we are starting to feel like the main character...
In a Franz Kafka (The Trial) or an Albert Camus novel (The Stranger)...
That we are living in a strait-jacket...
Or that we are living our life devoid of feeling..
And/or meaning...
That we are the puppet in someone else's play...
The pawn in someone else's game...
It is perhaps time to review our choices...
And break out of our self-defined prison...
Our own 'house arrest'...
Or 'out of house arrest'.....
In the end, our choices define us....
Regardless of the factors and powers that impinge upon us...
Either we find our own 'essence'...
And 'water' this essence,
And give it sun...
Like a plant or flower in our house garden...
Or we don't....
We leave our 'essence' stifled inside,
To wither away in the darkness of our soul...
How strong is our 'will to power'?
Our will to 'self-empowerment'?
Are we going to define our selves?
Or are we going to let others define our selves for us?
Until we have no self...
Sartre was wrong...
'Existence precedes essence' -- or so he proclaimed...
Wrong!
We are each born with an 'essence'...
And it is up to each of us to 'find' this essence...
In our selves...
To bring it to the light of day...
Embrace it....embrace our selves...
And nourish it...nourish ourselves...
Nourish our essence...
Like the plant, the flower, in our garden...
To be the person God meant us to be...
And/or we were/are meant to be ourselves...
Regarding religion -- and God -- I can't, or won't, even claim to be a tightly defined religious person...
In any orthodox sense of the meaning of the word 'religious'...
But like Einstein before me...
And Schelling...and Holderlin...and Schiller...before Einstein...
And Spinoza and Heraclitus before the birth of German Idealism and Romanticism...
I can't help but look around me, and look within me...
At the wonder of God's Creation...
And/or the Creation of Evolution...
To me, these concepts, these ideas are not opposed to each other...
But harmonize each other, embrace each other....
Creative Evolution....perhaps in the metaphorical Hands of God...
Something -- or Somebody -- Created Us....
There is too much 'Intelligent Design' all around us...
And in us...
For this not to have been the case...
Somebody -- or some Creative Genius -- created us with a unique, individual blue print...
For how we should -- for how we need to -- let our lives unfold...
To be the person we were meant to be...
To let God's -- and Evolution's -- creativity unfold...
In the words of the humanists -- we all need to 'actualize' our selves...
To actualize our 'essence' -- our humanistic, and/or God-given, blueprint...
We all need to actualize our God-given, creative genetic talents...
Sartre wasn't meant to be a brick layer...
He was meant to be a philosopher...
He was meant to use his gifted intellect...
Not to let it rot in the mud...
Of human slavery...
Or 'economic necessity'...
Kafka was not meant to be an 'insurance agent'...
He was meant to be a writer....
To talk about 'existence before essence'....
Is to talk about a potentially meaningless, directionless...
Existence...
Devoid of essence...
Devoid of an underlying game plan...
Devoid of an underlying blueprint...
God's creative, genetic blueprint of the life we were/are 'designed' to live in harmony with...
However you want to view or define 'God'...
I define 'God' as the 'underlying intelligence and blueprint of life'...
Yes, Mr. Sartre...
We all can choose who, or whatever, we want to be...
But just trying being someone, or doing something, you are not...
You called that 'Bad Faith'...
Here I totally agree with you...
But in order to label a particular choice and/or action as 'Bad Faith'...
You have to have some basis -- some underlying blueprint -- by which to compare and contrast...
Our choices and actions with...
That, Mr. Sartre,
Is the 'Unique, Individual, Essence' that lies deep -- like a 'seed' -- within each,
And everyone of us...
The 'seed'...the essence...the blueprint...that precedes existence...
And that should give our existence meaning and direction...
The type of meaning and direction that helps us avoid Sartre's label of...
'Bad Faith'...
Throughout our individual lives...
There should be a dynamic, dialectic interplay...
Between our existence and our essence...
Always seeking to harmonize the one with the other...
When we lose our essence in our existence...
Then we become a 'walking dead person'...
Living the life of 'The Stranger'...
And at some point, we all must go on Trial...
If we continue to choose to live the life of...
The Stranger...
Right now...
At least when I am not here writing in Hegel's Hotel...
I am living the life of a Stranger...
And for that...
I now stand...
On Trial...
-- dgb, April 30th, 2010.
-- David Gordon Bain
-- Dialectic Gap-Bridging Negotiations...
-- Between my Existence and my Essence...
-- Are Still In Process...
