#existentialism

There can be no stronger proof of the impoverishment of our contemporary culture than the popular - though profoundly mistaken - definition of myth as falsehood. ↗

— Rollo May

#myth #contemporary

At the beginning of human history, man lost some of the basic animal instincts in which an animal's behavior is embedded and by which it is secured. Such security, like paradise, is closed to man forever; man has to make choices. In addition to this, however, man has suffered another loss in his more recent development inasmuch as the traditions which buttressed his behavior are now rapidly diminishing. No instinct tells him what he has to do, and no tradition tells him what he ought to do; sometimes he does not even know what he wishes to do. Instead, he either wishes to do what other people do (conformism) or he does what other people tell him to do (totalitarianism). ↗

— Viktor E. Frankl

#conformity

Among all the creatures of creation, the gods favor us: We are the only ones who can empathize with their problems. ↗

— David Eagleman

#empathy #existentialism #god #human #empathy

Without awareness, we are not truly alive. ↗

— James F.T. Bugental

#self-awareness #self-awareness

In comparison with capitalism, which reconstituted man as an economic animal; in comparison with Marxism, which found man an object made up of organized matter; in comparison with catholicism, which saw him as the unwitting plaything of an imperious unseen power (the Divine Will); in comparison with dialectical materialism, which saw him as unwitting plaything of the deterministic evolution of the means of production- existentialism made man a god ↗

— Ali Shariati

#school-of-thoughts #catholicism

I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing. Please don't tailgate: body in trunk. ↗

— Libba Bray

#existentialism

Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes. ↗

— Phoebe Stone

#existential #loneliness #existentialism

I want to see the world without explaining away its mystery by calling things wicked, righteous, sinful, and good. I want to erase in myself the easy explanations, the always mendacious explanations about why things happen the way they do, and in this way, come to know the mystery of being–-not by any approximation in thought, but by being. I want to be and not be ashamed of being. ↗

— Therese Doucet

#existentialism #lds #mormon #existentialism

The most terrifying fact about the universe is not that it is hostile but that it is indifferent. ↗

— Stanley Kubrich

#existentialism

We lose everything because everything remains except us. And therefore any form of posterity may be an affront, and perhaps any memory, as well. ↗

— Javier Marías

#writing #existentialism