Existentialism

Was having an online chat with a friend who asked me to provide a concise description of existentialism.

That is a very good existentialist question.

In short, we arrive here not knowing our purpose. Much of our conditioning (by family, culture, religion, education) is aimed at helping us understand “something” about our “purpose.”

As we form our understanding, if any, about the reason for our existence, there seem to be three main routes of acceptance–some of us accept through faith, some of us look to reason and/or science, and some of us guess that it is just unknowable.

When there is some intersection of these three routes, or when these routes twist back on themselves and seem to lead us to contradictory or complementary conculsions, that is existentialism.

Or, in other words, it’s just that we like to keep pondering.

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