Relying on the Government Will Make Climate Change Worse
Twenty-five years ago, existentialism was a hot piece of intellectual property.
A literate public was buying up such books as William Barrett’s Irrational Man: A Study in Existential Philosophy and Viktor Frankl’s From Death Camp to Existentialism (later republished under the title Man’s Search for Meaning).
American psychologists were being introduced to the movement by a brilliant anthology entitled Existence: A New Dimension in Psychiatry and Psychology, edited by Rollo May and others. The 1958 International Congress of Psychotherapy chose existential psychology as its theme.
And the twentieth-century existentialists themselves were all still alive: Heidegger, Sartre, Camus, Martin Buber, Gabriel Marcel and Paul Tillich.
Today all six men are dead and, from all appearances, so is the movement for which they were known.
But that’s a shame. Especially if you care about climate change and peak oil.
Do it yourself
Here’s why we need existentialism so much today: It encourages people to listen to their own conscience and to take action themselves. It’s against cynicism and quietism.
A central proposition of existentialism is that the most important consideration for individuals is that they are individuals — independently acting and responsible, conscious beings — rather than an amalgamation of the labels, roles, stereotypes, definitions, or other preconceived categories into which they might fit.
The actual life of individuals is what constitutes their true essence. Thus, human beings, through their own consciousness, create their own values. People are defined by how they act and are, thus, responsible for their actions.
Freedom, from an existential perspective, cannot be separated from responsibility.
Existentialism teaches that we alone are responsible for our choices and the consequences of those choices.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/08/relying-on-the-government-will-make-climate-change-worse/#sthash.NQc1gwK8.dpuf
