Page 48 - Liberating Liberals V2

Meaning-Making Maestros
be it religious, political or social. Then we define our meaning by our choices throughout life. Since by Existentialism’s reckoning, these choices are our only meaning, they are very agonizing and cause a constant stress so great that only the word “nausea” could describe it. And even if you can deal with that stress, to act “authentically” you have to act as if you wanted the rest of humanity to behave the same way.
There is a popular definition of the word “existential” these days which suggests that the word deals with whether you survive or not, as in “an existential threat.” In this book we are not talking about that definition but the more classical one, that existence precedes essence.
Camus’ drama The Fall is as oppressively guilt-obsessed as the colonial Jonathan Edward’s sermon, Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God. Camus’ “judge-penitent” narrator wallows in omnipresent self-loathing despite dancing an accelerating waltz with meaninglessness. One might think that the more meaningless life seems, the less stress there would be for the choices involved in life. Somehow the Existentialists turn this around and conclude meaninglessness causes more stress.
Though sometimes classified as an Existentialist, Nietzsche went beyond the Existentialists in exploring meaninglessness. He smuggled in philosophical Valium to relieve the stress of choice, saying you
can take it or leave it. Self-judgment and society’s
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