Silent Disco: A Study on the Sense of Self
[A person first of all exists, encounters themselves, surges up in the world – and defines themselves afterwards.]
Eyes tend to roll when discussion about the greater good of humanity (and what humanity even means) is brought up at the common get-together. It’s often mocked in popular culture; the lackadaisical circle, all inebriated on their pick of poison, finally open up when it’s time for a dialogue of grand proportions.
Why do we do this?
Cathode rays and fluorescent tubes erode the prattle in most homely gatherings. A fear of spotting the abyss in one’s self can very easily ignite within philosophical chatter. One could also be dealing with a roundtable of mushed minds, temporarily softened by socially acceptable drug use. The latter is not meant to be frowned upon, of course. A polite dabble in the narcotic unknown can widen the being. Besides, a group could just as easily end up winding themselves into a crisis, detached from all else surrounding.
However, there is a picture of health to be found of any talk that involves those contemplating their own existence. To live a little by learning what it means to exist in one’s own language, one’s ideologies, makes for a great tête-à-tête.
At the pit of most humans, it is likely that they too may seek a chance to talk about the way their brain is wired, the way their routine in existing unfolds slowly. Or maybe it unravels quickly. The joy in immersing oneself in the game of broken telephone lies the cure of curing one’s fear of thinking too highly of themselves, that they need to prove their personal advancements in any discussion of the self: the urge to tune in.
To engage in a high-end heart-to-heart benefits the talker and listener greatly — it warrants a sure-fire way to understand oneself more by learning how others cope with the bedheadedness of living, and the great sleep that surely follows.
“Only the lower natures forget themselves and become something new. Thus the butterfly has entirely forgotten that it was a caterpillar, perhaps it may in turn so entirely forget it was a butterfly that is becomes a fish.”
― Søren Kierkegaard
What existentialism means to some, is an excuse to relish in debauchery, all in the pursuit of heightened self-worth. To have once fallen like an onlooker of mundanity, and grow into a reckless purveyor of living for merely oneself. At the end of any moderately popular term or phrase, the definition is always flung to the dregs of society to do with it as they wish.
Simply put; it was not the egotistical facade the majority once made it out to be. In fact, if anything, it lacked ego in both swagger and consciousness by inviting the willing and keen to experiment with analyzing the very body and mind that cooperates to allow for a human being to exist. To call it a lifestyle seems like an eager attempt to label by the skin of one’s teeth as it’s merely a phase in mild solipsism that benefits the self in finding worth for all by examining their worth. Appreciation of others is but a branch grown from the soil of self-admiration.
A trait in the philosophy running rampant within most of its literature is the difference and similarities between the self and the other. Social constructs were once considered to be the pillars of how our species functioned; stiff and militant— but since humankind has spent eons learning to figure itself out as a whole, we have grown more accustomed to realizing how the interior matters a great deal more than the exterior. The way that the self thinks and feels, behaves and socializes, should shed the other of all their labels to incite a peek beyond the curtain.
It is important for obvious reasons that one defines themselves through their actions and dialogue. To understand is as painless as halting oneself from saying one more word and taking a hand out of the puppet head, possibly made in it’s owner’s likeness intentionally…
Jean-Paul Sartre once made an analogy likening a paper knife and its maker to how existence precedes essence, stating that, “Let us say, therefore, that the essence of the paper knife-that is, the sum of formulae and properties that enable it to be produced and defined-precedes its existence. Thus the presence before my eyes of that paper knife or book is determined. Here then, we are viewing the world from a technical standpoint, whereby we can say “production precedes essence.”
The focal point of existentialism does not serve to benefit someone attempting to use the philosophy for personal gain. The ultimate goal is to hand a fraction of whichever accepting portion of the population a new outlook, a new approach to finding meaning in the automatic passing of events that revolve around the living. A study in the sense of self; mapping out the complex relationship between brain and body, soul and skin. If there were a sentient being out there, responsible for the mass-creation of those born and buried, why would their lore ask of us to praise them? Or commit any action at all besides keeping ourselves, the products of this autocracy, alive and well-content?
In a crowded place is where the fascination with the animated began. They are people, much like any other group of people, who just so happen to be in the same allotted patch of space with us. We are serving our needs and benefiting our difficult routines together, by celebrating our newly-found set of free hours together.
If the music were not playing and the lights were not flashing, we would still be enjoying ourselves just as much, albeit a bit awkwardly, although we wouldn’t be hating ourselves for it. Most of leisure and liability pans out a similar way — the difference between a quiet room and a loud one is all the same when we’ve earned it by living out our needs to grant ourselves the prize. The prize being: decompression.
Living is tiresome. Being around the living is tiresome. The assumption that our species thrives in motion because the endgame revolves around complete success makes one wonder if this is all just a recreation of the pre-birth race towards the egg. Sink through decompression, and the focus will stop casting its light on the noise but rather the group. Subtract the facilitation of noise; the distraction will be apparent as ever.
People in large quantities can serve to freak out others in lesser quantities, as it’s often the leading ingredient of consternation. However, once you learn that the panic is well-known and often commonly shared amongst any given demographic, the dread might shrink. Take away the conception that the masses exist to strive for monetary gain or the holy afterlife, and all of a sudden we are at once acquainted with mass relief of various kinds.
A sudden nothingness frightens the being at first, but slowly is learned to be lived with, accordingly.
“Old age is life’s parody, whereas death transforms life into a destiny: in a way it preserves it by giving it the absolute dimension. Death does away with time” — Simone de Beauvoir
Blankness is often considered a negative aspect of living. The easily excited are prone to find the word itself derogatory, as if it will in some way infringe upon their creator’s given right to let them enlist in whichever worthwhile activity they pursue. However, there is much optimism to be found in the notion of an empty canvas; the apex of being blank. Comfort. Youth. To erase all that was once present in your daily routine and have it all replaced with something new, something foreign… It weighs heavy on the heart to let go, but to meander in a state of replication, the process is known to age the mind to mush.
To create, and to cease replicating might just be the key to thinking clearly. Of course the way that each brain in existence is wired proves that no one remedy works just as well as it did for the last person’s illness. The inner workings of the blood-filled body is easy to fix, simple to cure of all its ailments, but the brain of every living thing all bears different types of ideas in sickness and health. No migraine throbs the same for another creature. But we bear on, and keep on finding medication to ease the vessels and soothe the muscles of the modern human being; overworked and riddled with the common chronophobia.
The source of one’s status in studying existentialism is not questioned; it is infact ignored. It is merely to analyze the mental separation between the self and the sentient nearby, not the roles or titles. It is not meant to question the existence of the maker of our kind in bulk, but rather to examine a specific purpose for each conscious being and if such a purpose even exists.
It is to inspect the blood drawn by covenant to seek a difference between such ties to that of water shared in womb. At last, it is to consider one’s own brand of morality; what is good and bad to us as individuals and how a lack of meaning for the dawn of our genus makes not for a negative reality.
Despite all of the coping we work with to endure the weight of a few decades in being, we learn soon enough that the whole burden is common enough to relieve our worriment. At first there is the unconscious quarter-life, the conscious mid-life, and the seemingly preconscious end. We make of ourselves what we must to define who we are. There is no one to prove ourselves to, but that is the point of a courteous living. To define ourselves through our actions and nothing else is the quintessential way of the existential human...
The greater good of humanity would surely dawn before us from widespread self-clarification, as far as the eye might see.
