Existentialism

I refute this notion of existentialism that we are "thrown into" existence, that we find ourselves suddenly in this or that place or time, that even at the dawn of consciousness we find ourselves suddenly with a story or interpretation. No, this idea too easily suggests that "I" somehow pre-exist, that it is "I" who am thrown into something, that there is something or Someone there to throw in the first place. It makes too much of consciousness, as if it arrives a completed project from somewhere else. I detect here also the modern mechanical notion of the human subject.

I counter this with the immortal Watts who rightly criticizes the mechanistic worldview of modernity, the implication of the notion of the great Architect who constructs the universe, the idea that reality is a kind of machine. Human consciousness is not uploaded to a body, or installed into a biological machine, ready to run like a software program. No, for Watts organisms should not be said to be "put together", but to grow, like (using Watt's example) an acorn into an oak tree. In this sense development is organic. We see these perspectives played out in the difference between a child asking "How was I made?" (the typical Western question) and "How did I grow?" (the Eastern child's equivalent- to generalize). Consciousness then is as organic as the brain it arises from. It is not "thrown into" existence, it grows out of it and is it.

This then is the solution (elaborated by Watts) to the state of mind produced by our human confrontation with the vastness of the cosmos (see comments previous blog). For the one who believes in a separation, a fundamental difference between what's "out there" and that which is the essence of the human subject, there can only be fear and trembling when faced with such vast cosmic being (as separate from my own being). But when one realizes that humans themselves grow out of this cosmos, as an oak tree out of an acorn, or an acorn out of an oak tree, does the fundamental attitude not shift? The cosmos loses its sense of otherness, becoming instead the very ground of our existence, the very substance of the human subject. To put it another way: We are the stuff of stars.