View allAll Photos Tagged existentialism
I had a close relative die recently. I also lost a friend who was my own age last month. Makes you think. (Self-portrait.)
They sit under the dim, flickering candles and the glow of a dusk-soaked horizon. Their faces are drawn tight with the weight of unspoken truths. The city below sprawls like a labyrinth of enchanted uncertainties, its lights starting to blink like fractured stars as if taunting them with the chaos they’ve chosen to leave behind or perhaps walk into. Their glasses, half-empty or half-full depending on one’s disposition, quiver in their hands with every shallow sip.
The man, his jacket glinting as though armoured against his hesitations, stares at the woman with a tender and probing gaze. But his eyes don’t rest entirely on her; they pierce through her, reaching toward a reflection of himself.
She, wrapped in the blood-red softness of her dress, sits poised but restless. Her lips parted slightly, perhaps to say something, but the weight of their journey and the choice to abandon one life for another seals her words before they can escape.
Perhaps it is a subtle act of rebellion for them to sit together, sharing their time over the remnants of the past. They will raise their glasses in a tentative toast to a future that may prove as fragile as the amber liquid within them. And, arrive at the crushing realisation that freedom does not equate to instant salvation; rather, it forges the endless burden of choice yet to come.
Neuroscientist and Author Abhijit Naskar at TEDxIIMRanchi, 2019, during his talk entitled "Neurons Giveth, Neurons Taketh Away"
Obsessive Compulsive Strange Thoughts of Life & Existentialism
A film about a man with a very serious problem. A man who sometimes forgets where he is and has obsessive strange thoughts about life and existentialism which usually comes out of nowhere.
He starts to panic because he doesn’t understand what is happening to him. He is also afraid to go to sleep at night because he believes he won’t wake up. He ponders how strange life is that he exists.
After he left the military and the 2001 attacks, the man now identified as Ping Pong, sees life like something out of a bad horror movie. He needs to go to sleep but knows what is coming. He starts freaking out.
Evidence points to him having a mild dissociative condition, possibly related to stressful conditions he encountered and an underlying anxiety disorder plus the Chinese made medications he is taking and the lack of true wonder “recreational drugs”.
Life to him is really strange and odd but most people around him don’t notice this because they remain deeply embedded in American culture which encourages it’s citizens to focus on mundane things such as watching television and the grim reality of providing for one’s own family by getting ahead in a dead-end job.
After graduating from Harvard University, Ping Pong realizes that thoughtfulness in the USA is not encouraged and neither is noticing the strangeness and arbitrariness of life by frightening people so he does not get noticed or labeled as odd or mentally ill.
He seeks a different way to cope so he becomes a photographer and writes comments about his subjects which interacts with his artwork.
His dissociation is a mental phenomena in how attention, memory, and emotions work in the form of “spacing out”, so he decides to become an astronaut in China’s new space program after being influenced by Neil Armstrong and Navin Johnson.... BUT in fact it turned out that he had been a gifted and talented child raised in a classless society which turned him to experience a type of depression referred to as existential depression.
Existential depression is a depression that arises when an individual confronts certain basic issues of existence such as the four issues--death, freedom, isolation and meaninglessness.
Humans do not enter a world which is inherently structured but given a world structure created by other humans. And most of these humans are messed up.
Isolation is not possible on earth and existential concerns occur disproportionately among gifted persons, because gifted people as idealists are able to consider how things should be, however, they see the world is falling into how it should not be.
Ping Pong becomes disassociated, disappointed, and frustrated when such ideals are not reached. He notices the inconsistencies and absurdities in society and the behaviors of those around them. Traditions are ultimately questioned and challenged.
When he shares these concerns with others, he usually met with reactions ranging from puzzlement to hostility. He attempts to find some sense of meaning to grasp and pull himself out of the mire of "unfairness”, acutely aware that his life is finite and brief, and that he is alone as one small organism in a quite large world, and that there is a frightening freedom regarding how one chooses to live one's life in an absurd, arbitrary, and capricious world where his life will have little impact and then die.
Breaking the "failure to thrive" syndrome came with no need for daily hugs or physical connection. Just apeirophobia: the fear of eternity and knowing everything will be wiped out.
He had forgotten due to having to pay for his phone and cable bill why he was here and that it was all a waste of time. The most important question was to make the most of what he has. How was he going to go about given his developed talents and time spent would make the difference.
Looking back on his life on board the new and improved Chinese space ship, “Firecracker”, right before blast-off, sitting alongside fellow astronauts, Clink Clack, Pritt Pratt, and Charlie Chan, he regrets his former life and time spent on earth, but now not the past, nor the future, but now, everything will have a massive effect on what happens later knowing that nothing easy is going to make him happy. Anything that is worth it in life is never going to be easy. He dismisses existential questioning because it will only waste the time he has left to live his life as a true space cadet basically ignoring Aristotle for Confucianism …
He believed that it was cool to reflect the principles upon which the United States was founded, especially after men from earth walked on the moon.
He believed in cultural and ethnic diversity, the free exchange of creative ideas, and an entrepreneurial spirit that lifts all citizens in a community.
He believed it was cool to welcome and celebrate a diversity of visitors, the way Provincetown, Massachusetts, has been welcoming LGBTQ+ travelers for decades.
He believed it was cool to live in harmony with nature, the way Pacific Grove, California, became Butterfly Town USA and Saranac Lake, New York, and its neighboring towns in Adirondack State Park have pursued a sustainable tourism industry that respects the region’s pristine lakes and mountains and rips off dumb-ass tourists.
He believed it was cool to live in a community where he would be able to boast of a vibrant downtown, with cutting-edge cuisine, and a community spirit that makes visitors feel like friends, as all the towns on the 'A' list do while paying high property taxes for the liberal schools who house the children of illegal immigrants who have never paid taxes so they can learn to be either good sheep or cattle..
He was no longer Ping Pong but now known as Ding Dong to the men at space command back on earth, believing to himself he would create such a life beyond Pluto reflecting upon his favorite american movies, "It's a Wonderful Life" & "The Best Years of Our Lives".
Enjoying the Moment surrounded by super polished calibrated light mirrors.. precision laser light beams.. stretching space... gravity waves… they cannot be seen or heard.. . a dense universe where light cannot travel.. it cannot be caught.. a nice idea.. but no one detected it.. the last frontier.. cosmic ice age light disappears in the last burning star.. it’s a degenerate era.. he eventually disappears into a black hole wondering ‘What else makes a small town cool”?
Okay, well I'm Jacob. I've already posted one picture of all the book shelves, here's a smaller one of a single shelf.
Thinking about this Guardian project made me realize just how many rules and sub-rules I have for categorizing my books. It looks a bit untidy but there's a kind of labyrinthine logic underlying it all. I think.
- All these books fit into 'Philosophy, Religion and the History of Thought'.
- From there, they're organized by height.
- All the books I don't own, haven't read, or don't care much for, go on the top.
- 'Time: A User's Guide' is a tricky one because I haven't read it yet, and don't know whether to stick it with my 'Science and Psychology' books.
- Anyway. Oppy, Kant and Descartes go together, because they're all serious philosophers. Kant and Oppy feel more at home, because they're more technical than Descartes. Descartes feels good next to Kant, because he was rigorously critiqued by him.
- Other examples - The black Penguin editions are together because of their colour. My white Oxford Beyond Good and Evil can go next. He goes next to Hume because, although Nietzsche didn't like him, he would I suspect hold less contempt for Hume than say, Sam Harris - a man who has attempted to come up with a 'science of morality' (exactly what Nietzsche despised). Hume finds good companionship next to Blackburn, a Humean philosopher - and Blackburn sits well next to Dawkins, a man Blackburn respects. Dawkins and Harris go well together as being part of the 'New Atheist' movement.
So here you have about six things all precisely determining where a book should go - the subject matter, whether I've read it, whether I like it, whether it's mine, the height, the colour of the spine, and whether I feel the book authors would agree with each other.
To take one more: Soloman's book 'Continental Philosophy Since 1750'. It's actually the shortest on that shelf, but I wouldn't put it next to Dawkins or Harris on the end, because Dawkins' book contains an essay attacking late continental philosophy, and Harris is similarly unimpressed. Thus I slightly relax my height rule to put him next to Mary Warnock's 'Existentialism' - a far better shelf-mate. However, I can't move 'Six Existentialist Thinkers' along to join its kindred books because that would mess up my height rule just a little too much - and I'm not inclined to go out my way for it anyway, as I'm not overly impressed with the book.
Guarding all of this is the faithful Jean-Paul, a meerkat I picked up at Newquay Zoo. He's been there since this collection was much smaller, still looking out intently as ever.
Søren is sitting on the chair, but you can have the park bench behind him. You can sit there and think that existentialism is a humanism. Or something else.
Library Garden, The Royal Library, Copenhagen
Born and raised in Ireland, but spending most of his adult life in France, this is the final resting place of Samuel Beckett. Note the appropriately minimalist offering from an admirer - a pair of stones (Pozzo and Lucky, perhaps?) - Montparnasse cemetery, Paris.
Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (French pronunciation: [saʁtʁ], English: /ˈsɑrt/; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Existentialism, and his work continues to influence further fields such as sociology and literary studies.
me in the sixties / "SIXTIES" = AMERICAN RESTAURANT BAR - 5x in BERLIN - visit my wordpress blog at flickrcomments.wordpress.com/2011/01/21/berlin-blues/ featuring the same photo and some further interesting links ...
some days before the LoveParade mass panic near my hometown in DUISBURG (death toll 21 victims, 510 persons injured) they organized another festival - idea: to block the car highway / Autobahn "A 40" / Ruhrschnellweg for one Sunday; allowed only: pedestrians, bicycles, roller blader, skater - and musicians; it has been a nice festival, though 3 million visitors came; length of the event, closed highway section: 60 kilometers! in DUISBURG they organized the awful situation leading 1.4 million visitors into a train-station area for only 250.000 people - with no opened exit - to break a visitor-quantity record; I am still shocked by such a great stupidity ...
Montreal QC - A scene on a bookshelf in Nader Hasan's apartment. January 2011.
taken on a Canon F-1 slr w/ 50mm FD f1.8 lens. Fuji Neopan iso 400 film pushed to 1600.
Loc East Norfolk VI Form College, Gorleston
This is Jean-Paul Sartre, what a man. I'm studying his book Existentialism and Humanism for my philosophy A Level and I'm loving it. I think his theories are wonderful and so similar to my philosophy on life.
1. Turchese/Turquoise, 2. Untitled, 3. non è mai troppo tardi per innamorarsi.., 4. ..., 5. patatE, 6. existentialism, 7. Untitled, 8. me and my friend,
Created with fd's Flickr Toys.
self-portrait with mirror - I've added a mirror to visualize my double playback method: at first I play the rhythm guitar chords; secondly I try to create some melody lines; equipment (blue): JamMan LOOP by DigiTech, Utah
PH: Lilia Pereira Fotografías
Serie analógica, toma directa, Año 2003/2004
"El Alma de la Ausente" nace como un proyecto expositivo que va mas allá de la mera exhibición de imágenes religiosas. La obra pretende una reflexión hacia ciertos temas introspectivos, tales como la muerte, el juego de los dobles, el trauma, el placer, lo sagrado, el vacío, la metamorfosis, etc.
Estas fotografías dialogan tácitamente con una de las obras mas grandes del cine sueco "Det sjumde inseglet", 1957, (El séptimo sello) de Ingmar Bergman. El cine de Bergman siempre se caracterizó por la introspección y el tratamiento de los temas que mas afectan al ser humano. En "El séptimo sello" se expresa el existencialismo, la eterna búsqueda del ser humano por darle sentido a su vida, la vida, la muerte y todo lo que ello conlleva.
"El Alma de la Ausente" intenta plantear la ambigüedad de los temas antes mencionados, como característica principal, proponiendo al espectador que apele a su subjetividad para conectarse con lo mas oculto de su ser. Lilia Pereira.
Series analog, direct, Year 2003/2004
"The Soul of the Absent" was created as an exhibition project that goes beyond the mere display of religious images. The book is intended to reflect certain introspective themes such as death, the game of doubles, the trauma, pleasure, the sacred, the vacuum metamorphosis, and so on.
These photographs tacit dialogue with one of the greatest works of Swedish film "Det sjumde inseglet", 1957, (The Seventh Seal) Ingmar Bergman. Bergman's films are always characterized by introspection and treatment of the issues that most affect humans. In "The Seventh Seal" is expressed existentialism, the eternal human quest to make sense of life, life, death and everything that entails.
"The Soul of the Absent" attempts to raise the ambiguity of the aforementioned issues, as its main feature, offering the viewer that appeals to their subjectivity to connect with the most secret of your being. Lilia Pereira.
A portrait by his cousin Christian Kierkegaard made about 1840. In:
SHARP, Dennis (1966). Modern Architecture and Expressionism. George Braziler, New York. LCCCN 67-15596
Quadralectic Architecture - Marten Kuilman (2011), p. 905:
The theme of anxiety and fear is closely related to the existentialism of the Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813 – 1855). He placed in his book ‘The Concept of Anxiety’ (1844) the psychological entity of unfocused fear in an environment of sin, with a reference to Adam, who was forbidden to eat the apple (of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil). The prohibition implied a form of freedom, either to eat or not to eat. Kierkegaard drew the conclusion that Adam’s state of initial bliss was the result of ignorance, which ended with the predicament of losing his freedom when consuming the ‘knowledge of good and evil’. The result is a state of anxiety, and a lost innocence.
The events unfolding around the ‘first sin’ can be compared to the philosophical-quadralectical implications of the ‘first division’ – and touches in many aspects the same psychological bedrock. The First Quadrant (I) was visualized as the place in a communication without any boundaries or divisions. The First Quadrant embodied - on a psychological level – an unknown situation before division (choice). The very moment of division – seen in Kierkegaard’s terminology as a ‘leap’, when ‘sin’ suddenly comes into the world – creates the freedom to choose (i.e. the type of division thinking). The position of this event is in a quadralectic communication situated at the border of the First and Second Quadrant. The Second Quadrant (II) is characterized by freedom and experimentation in a ‘state of innocence’ (of division thinking). Kierkegaard’s anxiety is produced by a state of ‘nothing’, which holds ‘a possibility of the repetition of the originary forced choice prior to its actualization’ (CAMERON, 2007; p. 99).
CAMERON, Ed (2007). The Ethical Paradox in Kierkegaard’s Concept of Anxiety. COLLOQUY text theory critique 13 (2007). Monash University, Melbourne, Australia.
as sent to my group www.flickr.com/groups/abc-visualized for the letter "M": modern times, Mexican dancer, Mekong River, motorcycle construction - 1. 3749, 2. Sadness, 3. ++little boy blue++, 4. Eénwielige motorfiets / One wheel motor cycle