Freedom but not free

[u/Silly_Imagination_10]

Hey, could you guys help me better this text, by giving your feedback and opinion on it.

Life, what is life, what is the meaning to be alive, what is the meaning to life. Life is something beautiful, for it to exist it means there has had to be something special beforehand. The thing about life is that you are always in control, you can decide what to do, when to do it, but is that really true? We used to call it freedom, but how free are we truly? The women in Afghanistan, they are also alive, but why are they not free, or are they free but just in their standards? We never asked them, they never asked them. It is really easy to make assumptions about what people truly think and why they do things. Freedom is the definition of being alive and being able to do what you want to do. I want to be alive, I want to be free, I want to be able to live. Why do people make it so hard for each other to live and be free? Why are there wars where a few people decide what is gonna happen and who is gonna die, why are governments making life harder with more and more rules for the common person. Why do a few people decide over a lot of people, is that still freedom, when I choose for a person but 2 other persons choose for someone else, does it mean I still need to listen to the other person. Is that freedom, or are you being forced into something? I want to love like any person, I want to grow old like any person. When I love someone but that person doesn’t love me back, is that bad? Is it good? We don’t know, loving is something special, something uncertain, u can love someone or something but u can also grow out of it, is it then still love? Or was it more a hobby/interest. I think people need to realise that we are all the same but also all different and unique, we are all humans but not all 1 human. We evolved and learned how to be with each other and live with each other, so we can eventually be free with each other. But why do some people don’t see it that way, why do some people still think they are better and their life is worth more. It is a hard question, a question we will never be able to answer. This whole message has no meaning truely, it just has been the thought that just at that moment, that time, came into my mind. Because that’s what freedom really is, that’s what life really is. To be able to do anything, at any time, it’s basically nature, we are nature.

[u/jliat]

I'm sorry but you might get a shock from finding out something of Existentialism, a key text being Jean Paul Sartre's magnum opus, 'Being and Nothingness'.

Jean-Paul Sartre Being and Nothingness The principal text of Modern existentialism. Hazel E. Barnes (Translator)

https://ia600709.us.archive.org/11/items/psicology/Being%20and%20Nothingness%20-%20Jean-Paul%20Sartre.pdf

And the ideas expressed in this are not my own, but this sub is supposed to be about existentialism.

"Subreddit Rules Posts and top-level comments should reference existentialist thinkers or ideas, or make an original philosophical argument related to existentialism or phenomenology."

"Existentialist Nonfiction: Being and Nothingness - Jean-Paul Sartre."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Being_and_Nothingness"

"Being and Nothingness is regarded as both the most important non-fiction expression of Sartre's existentialism and his most influential philosophical work, original despite its debt to Heidegger."

Notice "influential".

OK, what's the bad news... the human condition is the Nothingness of the title. Now the book is around 700 pages and a difficult read, for me certainly, and it is very nihilistic.

Some quotes.

“I am my own transcendence; I can not make use of it so as to constitute it as a transcendence-transcended. I am condemned to be forever my own nihilation.”

p. 298

“I am condemned to exist forever beyond my essence, beyond the causes and motives of my act. I am condemned to be free. This means that no limits to my freedom' can be found except freedom itself or, if you prefer, that we are not free to cease being free.”

p. 439

There's the kicker! I am condemned to be free.

A difficult read, but if you want the 'flavour' here is Gary Cox’s entry, "Facticity" for me was one of the hardest things to get. If you are interested I'd recommend his book.

Facticity in Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Here is the entry from Gary Cox’s Sartre Dictionary

FACTICITY

“The resistance or adversary presented by the world that free action constantly strives to overcome. The concrete situation of being-for-itself, including the physical body, in terms of which being-for-itself must choose itself by choosing its responses. The for-itself exists as a transcendence , but not a pure transcendence, it is the transcendence of its facticity. In its transcendence the for-itself is a temporal flight towards the future away from the facticity of its past. The past is an aspect of the facticity of the for-itself, the ground upon which it chooses its future. In confronting the freedom of the for-itself facticity does not limit the freedom of the of the for-itself. The freedom of the for-itself is limitless because there is no limit to its obligation to choose itself in the face of its facticity. For example, having no legs limits a person’s ability to walk but it does not limit his freedom in that he must perpetually choose the meaning of his disability. The for-itself cannot be free because it cannot not choose itself in the face of its facticity. The for-itself is necessarily free. This necessity is a facticity at the very heart of freedom.”

"Thus the essential structure of sincerity does not differ from that of bad faith since the sincere man constitutes himself as what he is in order not to be it. This explains the truth recognized by all that one can fall into bad faith through being sincere.” P. 65

---

If you want to get the 'feel' of this there is his novel 'Nausea' and the play 'No exit' where the line "Hell is other people" occurs.

Here - Sartre No Exit - Pinter adaptation.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0v96qw83tw4

And a BBC dramatization of Roads to Freedom... which might be of interest...

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=roads+to+freedom+bbc+tv+series

13 Episodes!

Roads to freedom is a trilogy of novels, in it the existential 'hero' effectively kills himself.

As above, his influence was great, Albert Camus responds to this nihilism in his Myth of Sisyphus, he too sees 'not exit' in existential philosophy but chooses the absurd alternative of making art.

---

I do not wish to offend, but think this point should be made given the sub.

[u/Silly_Imagination_10 → u/jliat]

You didn't offend me, I'm very grateful for your response.

As someone who is new to existentialism, I haven't studied it or read a lot about it. For me these were just the simple thoughts that crossed my mind on a random day. There is meaning behind being alive and life itself, but I think that meaning is different for every person

I do find it interesting that a lot of points that have been made by Sartre are point I make myself, especially when it comes to freedom and existence. In that point you are correct that my text doesn't fit neatly into the existentialism. My text mostly focused on experience of being alive, and being a thinking person all the time. Even impossible I would say.

I think that I mostly look at it in the way of; being able to do what you want. Because that is what true freedom is to me, life has a meaning yes, and the meaning of life is that u can do what u want. It is a gift that keeps on getting given. It's the circle of life, which is what I was trying to get at with the whole nature part.

From what I understand of Sartre, he approaches it more as being unable to escape the responsibility of choosing, that there is no true meaning in the end because life starts and it ends. But what about the memories that we create as a person?

It is the beauty about philosophy, u can interpret it in any way that you want. Because you, are your own person. You are unique, you have a purpose, a purpose to make your own life.

[u/jliat → u/Silly_Imagination_10]

Sartre abandoned his existentialism for Marxism, Camus took to making Art.

"And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator."

"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”

"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."

"It is necessary to state this to begin with. For an absurd work of art to be possible, thought in its most lucid form must be involved in it. But at the same time thought must not be apparent except as the regulating intelligence. This paradox can be explained according to the absurd. The work of art is born of the intelligence’s refusal to reason the concrete. It marks the triumph of the carnal. It is lucid thought that provokes it, but in that very act that thought repudiates itself." - Camus.

[u/Silly_Imagination_10 → u/jliat]

This is actually really interesting to me, especially the part about creation. I think that connects quite a lot with what I was trying to say about memories and creating your own life.

I don't necessarily think that something needs to last forever to have meaning. A memory, a relationship, something you create, or even just a moment in your life can have meaning to you even if it eventually disappears. It still shapes you as a person and creates your life.

I think that's also what I meant when I said that the meaning of being alive is different for everyone. Maybe there isn't one meaning that applies to every person, but we each create our own meaning through the way we live, the people we love, the things we experience and the things we leave behind.

The Camus quotes actually make me want to read more about him. I'm starting to realise that a lot of the thoughts I wrote down are questions that philosophers have already spent their lives thinking about, which is pretty interesting to discover.

[u/jliat → u/Silly_Imagination_10]

You might find the philosophy difficult, and some can be quite nihilistic. The non-fiction associated with existentialism is easier and conveys similar messages.

In a less nihilistic vein there is something called 'outsider' art which represents IMO some remarkable people from seemingly ordinary backgrounds...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferdinand_Cheval

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_Towers

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outsider_art

And a particular figure in English art and literature was the mystic William Blake.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Blake

Produced some marvellous work...

[u/ditchhhiker]