I'm bored. Really really bored. Out of this boredom comes the curiosity of the meaning of life. Yes, I'm a bit weird...Anyhow, I've come to the conclusion that I'm a mixture of Existentialist and Absurdist. Now, since I'm still bored (this all starting last night) I will explain this all in hopes that someone as bored as I will want to debate or discuss this stuff with me .

Being Existentialist means that I believe individuals create the meaning and essence in their lives, not a deity or authority. This also means that the individual is entirely free and completely responsible.

"The refusal to belong to any school of thought, the repudiation of the adequacy of any body of beliefs whatever, and especially of systems, and a marked dissatisfaction with traditional philosophy as superficial, academic, and remote from life" - Walter Kaufmann

The idea is to embrace existence to counter the fact that there is nothingness in the core of human existence. There is NO meaning to life besides what we give it. The main ideas also stemming from this philosophy are: Existence precedes Consciousness and Existence precedes Essence.

The first one is a direct opposition to the statement "I Think, therefore I am" (Cogito ergo sum). That philosophy is the idea that the only unquestionable truth is that of our consciousness. Existentialism puts forth that the ultimate and unquestionable reality is that we exist. The idea is that all consciousness is consciousness of something.

Existence precedes Essence asserts that as I mentioned before, people make their own meaning in life. This makes Existence conceptually precede Essence, or meaning that may be given to life.

"If man, as the existentialist conceives him, is indefinable, it is because at first he is nothing. Only afterward will he be something, and he himself will have made what he will be."- Jean-Paul Satre

This philosophy also states that humans are not primarily rational. People make decisions based on what has meaning to them, not what is rational. People use rationality to counter existential anxiety, which is the fear of being in the world. The world is fundamentally irrational and random, and rationality is an attempt to give it structure. This rationality makes us give up our freedom to counter anxiety and dread concerning death and the ultimate freedom.

The last part of Existentialism that I will go into is the Absurd, which will lead me to Absurdism. Existentialism holds that humans are subjects in an indifferent, objective, often ambiguous and absurd universe, in which meaning is not provided, but created by human action and interpretation. The absurd is the idea that all attempts to find a meaning of life will ultimately fail, and therefore absurd. It is born out of the confrontation between human need and want for logic and order, and the reality of an illogical and random world.

This brings me to Absurdism. The philosophy states that the efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because no such meaning exists, at least in relation to humanity. It isn't logically impossible, but rather humanly impossible. The attempt to find the meaning of life often follows two paths, one concluding that life is meaningless and that all we have is the here and now, or filling the void with a purpose set forth by a higher power. Following the latter leads to the question "What is the purpose of God", to which there is no human-comprehensible answer to, making faith in a God absurd. The principle goal of humans in this philosophy is to engage in living and reconcile the fact that we live in a world without meaning.

The final little thing about Absurdism is that, when confronted with the futility of living a life devoid of purpose, some people will commit suicide. Absurdism states that suicide is not a worthwhile solution because if life is veritably absurd, then it is even more absurd to counteract it.

To reach the total acceptance that life is purposeless is one of my life goals. If I'm not Existentialist or Absurdist yet, I hope to be. It should also be noted for those interested that my poem "Rainstorm" contains Absurdist ideas, which is cool considering I didn't mean to put it in there and didn't learn about any of this until last night.

I got basically all of my info from wikipedia, so I plan to read up more later on.
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