Utopia: The Problem Is That There Is No Problem
This blog discusses the importance of a value system that helps us to cope with the existential problem. The downfall of Christianity in Europe left people with the choice of nihilism or a totalitarian utopia. In order to avoid nihilism, existentialist philosophers encouraged people to create their own value system. Existentialists opposed the concept of utopia and showed that the theoretical utopia is practically a dystopia as it undermines the importance of human’s free will. In a society where there is no economic problem, as it is based on rationality and optimized for only happiness, people will create new problems just to prove that they have free will.
Existentialism
If you want to find out about the beliefs of a person, would you inquire them about their beliefs or just look at how they act?. The way an individual act can tell you more about the beliefs than words that are mostly used just to muddy the waters. Existentialism assigns more weight to action than to a set of statements.
Existentialists would describe human existence as being thrown into the world. Why you were born in the 21st century instead of earlier centuries?. Why you were born rich or poor?. What determines your fate of being born in a privileged or unprivileged community? Our situation is like being thrown into the world which causes an existential problem. You being limited and helpless in the face of the infinitely complex reality is an existential problem. This whole situation is a good enough reason to make you pathological.
Yes, it’s true that the sense of being thrown into the middle of nowhere gives us anxiety. But the best thing we could do is to muster up some courage and fight in the face of the adversaries. However, in order to do that you need a value system. If you ponder, what else can help you to prioritize the matters of life which would finally lead to some concrete action.
Because you were thrown into the world, a world with seemingly no purpose, existentialists would go ahead to disagree with Aristotle by saying that “existence precedes essence” which essentially imply that there is no ultimate meaning and we have to create our own value system in order to incorporate meaning in life and be a man of action.
I do not subscribe to the concept of creating ultimate meaning. The values are not created but rather discovered. It is certainly possible to create “meaning in life” but the “meaning of life” is to be defined by who has created the life in the first place. This topic needs a separate treatment.
Nietzsche’s Nihilism
Nietzsche, who claimed to write an idea in a sentence that others could not even write in a whole book, had a couple of words to say about Christianity. Christianity was able to provide a value structure that gives meaning to the existential problem. However, the Late 19th century marks the downfall of Christianity, primarily due to its dogmatic teachings. The belief system is built in a way that we have some core axiomatic beliefs and all the other beliefs are contingent upon the axiomatic beliefs. The people came to realize that their axiomatic beliefs provided by the dogmatic teaching are doomed to crumble and the domino effect will only lead to complete meaninglessness in life i.e Nihilism. That is why an alternative value system was needed to cope with the demise of the previous value system.
Dostoevsky and the Critique of Utopia
Communist’s Utopia
Right after the abandonment of the Christian value system, people started to preach a dream of a utopia where everything will be purely rational and where all the people will contribute to the society according to their ability and everybody will be provided resources according to their needs. Everyone will be on the same social strata and there will be no poor and needy people. Hence, everybody will be full of bliss and there will be no suffering. Who would not want to live in such a society?. But the communist regime has shown us that a theoretical utopia is in fact a practical dystopia. Dostoevsky indicated the perils of such a society ahead of his time.
Are We Only Rational Beings?
Existentialists would argue that rationality is not the only thing governing human behavior. In addition to being rational beings, we are also emotional beings. Our rationality is constantly informed by our emotions. If you are losing in an argument and you want to put an end to it then displaying emotion of anger is the only way out which is essentially informing your quasi rational decision to get out of the argument. If we peak at our history then we come to realize that it is anything but rational. We have used science that is supposed to be based on rationality and came up with weapons of mass destruction. I want to ask you about that child who just throw stones at birds for seemingly no reason. What do you think about the doctor who smokes cigarettes?. Maybe there is something more to humans than just being rational.
Rationality and Freedom
If you abide by the materialist philosophy that everything is just matter and there is nothing more to humans than just matter then human life can surely be captured in a set of mathematical formulas. However, the truth is that there is much more that makes us human than just cold and dead matter. The proponents of Utilitarianism have tried to reduce human beings into a set of calculations that are optimized to achieve happiness for the greatest number of people. The claim is that if each person acts rationally and we can create an economic condition where everybody had what they needed, then we will avoid suffering and become happy. What if the point of life was not happiness?. What if this life was just meant to be a test?. What if free will was more important than happiness?.
Humans don’t like the feeling of being a puppet attached to strings. Free will is important, sometimes even more important than happiness. A system designed on the basis of pure rationality renders the outcome predictable which goes against the freedom of humans. Are you really free, if out of all the things you could choose, you chose to be rational and reasonable all the time?. If we create such an environment where everything is predictable, an individual will go out of his way to do something irrational and stupid just to prove the point that he is a man and not a robot.
“Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in bliss so that nothing but bubbles would dance on the surface of his bliss, as on a sea…and even then every man, out of sheer ingratitude, sheer libel, would play you some loathsome trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish, the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive rationality his fatal fantastic element…simply in order to prove to himself that men still are men and not piano keys.” — Notes from Underground
Role of Suffering
So, You want to remove suffering from your life?. You really don’t want to live in reality anymore?. Let’s be honest and try to recall a moment when you learned anything worthwhile without struggle and suffering. The inability to find such a moment indicates the possibility of dissatisfaction part of being satisfied. Maybe suffering is a necessary precondition for happiness. Maybe that’s why you slept like a baby after crying that night. Maybe suffering is what makes us human.
Recall the time when you knew, yes, you knew that the best you could get out of that relationship is hopeless suffering and you should stop chasing it, you chose to suffer. And then the time came, when it was as clear as day that mustering up the courage and approaching that person was the only sane option, you chose to suffer again. Now tell me, what’s the point of recollecting your thought and jotting them down. Do you want to suffer even more?. Maybe you are fond of suffering. Maybe it was never about being rational and happy. Maybe all that matters is freedom, freedom to be rational, and more importantly, being irrational.
References
2017 Personality 11: Existentialism: Nietzsche Dostoevsky & Kierkegaard