Why This Publication?
Loneliness, anxiety, unexplained feelings of guilt, the loss of meaning, doubts about the purpose of life, questions about the nature of reality itself, despair over the future, the inability to love, to connect with intimacy, the inability to express who you are, feelings of inadequacy, of losing control over your mind, of being not good enough, the inability to really experience joy in the classical sense…
These symptoms are endemic — so much so — that they have come to define our society’s condition en masse! And their prevalence is on the rise! (especially among millennials).
It’s as though we’re yearning to ask questions that we don’t have the words for or are too ashamed to pose for fear of seeming strange to others.
When you think of how much progress we’ve made in mental health research and awareness, all of this seems astonishing, it doesn’t make any sense?! That is until you realize that these are existential states, not mental states.
They require an examination of the human condition to determine a person’s existential health — this examination requires wisdom not knowledge.
Dealing with them requires philosophical research and inquiry into what it means to exist in a condition called human — a human being (being as a verb not as a creature).
An exploration to uncover existential wisdom, as opposed to the abundance of empirical knowledge that we have today. But in our modern, fast-paced way of life, who has the time?
For the longest time, religion served that purpose. It communicated existential truths and wisdom about what it means to be human, through stories that reflected the way of life of way back when. Early humans attempting to communicate something they lacked the word for — and in the absence of a word, you tell a story. That’s what they did through biblical stories, Greek myths, and tragedies.
It’s a very difficult exercise to extract the existential wisdom buried deep beneath connotations of myth, tragedy, and religion — seemingly irrelevant to the context of our modern way of life.
Fortunately, the world of humanistic and existential philosophy & psychology is rife with thinkers who asked these tough existential questions and published their complex potential answers. It’s definitely not a walk in the park to read and to decipher the works of great thinkers like Abraham Maslow, Rollo May, Albert Camus, Paul Tillich…etc.
So how do we make it easier for us to read and communicate very abstract ideas? we tell stories of course! just like the early human attempts…
Enter Gonzo philosophy — inspired by Gonzo journalism. Gonzo journalism is a style of journalism that is written without claims of objectivity, often including the reporter as part of the story via a first-person narrative. The word “gonzo” is believed to have been first used in 1970 to describe an article by Hunter S. Thompson, who later popularized the style.
This forum revolves around explaining complex ideas, translated through the lens of the writer’s experience. It could be in any form & style you wish as long as there’s an underlying profound idea.
A story, journal entry, a philosophical joke, musings, ruminations, poem, a stream of consciousness, creative prose, an essay…come what may!
In creating this platform and exposing myself to new ideas, my secret agenda is to ultimately learn about who I really am and what it means to be.
Avoiding a Death of a Salesman scenario; where Willie dies having never really known who he was, in an embodiment of the human tragedy that is to fail to achieve one’s own humanness!
“He died never knowing who he was and he was one who took seriously his right to know”
The Adastrian
The word Adastrian is inspired by the Latin phrase per aspera ad astra, which means; through hardships, to the stars.
The Adastrian explores maddening philosophical ideas of what it means to be human. An exploration down the rabbit hole, deep into Wonderland to conduct philosophical investigations — Gonzo Style.
A philosophical inquiry into Wonderland is no walk in the park — the ideas you encounter can trigger panic, mania, depression, loneliness, melancholy, anxiety, guilt, shock…etc. I mean, are you truly prepared to face ideas as crazy as Alice facing the Jabberwocky? We can use all the help we can get.
Adastrian is a reminder of your role in Wonderland, to help you find your way back, which hopefully endows you with confidence to venture out further chasing curiosity like it’s a white rabbit (“curiousor and curiousor!” as Lewis Carroll says) in the pursuit of scarier and even deeper insights, all the way to the stars and back…like some sort of an Adastrian!
“To venture causes anxiety, but not to venture is to lose one’s self…and to venture in the highest sense is precisely to become conscious of one’s self
― Kierkegaard
If this is your cup of tea, join the tribe on this journey and follow the publication.
