"Hell is other people."

Concept File: Inauthenticity -

We have a basic choice in life. We can choose to be authentic or inauthentic. To be authentic means to experience fully the fact of your own unique being. To be inauthentic means to try to escape your own individuality, to live as if you were not a distinct person. It is called the inauthentic mode of "the they". Much of everyday life is inauthentic. Examples of 'inauthentic possibilites' everything which as a person you share with 'everybody': mass produced clothes, buses and trains, public parks, public places, public shelters.

Concept File: The Other -

"The Other" is a term for a general presence, an aspect of how each person experiences not only the world, but also their own being. "The Other" is part of 'my' consciousness. I have no way of being aware of who I am withought some sense of how I appear from another point of view. It is defined as a 'mediator between myself and me'. Perhaps the most graphic example of "The Other" is 'Shame'. It is used to define this otherness inside us all. "I am ashamed of myself as I appear to "the Other"." To feel ashamed of myself, I have to view my life from an alien perspective.

Sartre's Existentialism:
- I am conscious of my existence without having any way of justifying or even explaining it.

- To become conscious means to recognise the gratuitousness of one's existence., that is, the lack of any reason linking your existence to any wider scheme of things.

- Your existence confronts you as a blank fact, withouth origin. You cannot find the meaning of your existence by asking where you come from.

The whole system develops in response to this central disturbing vision.

Concept File: The Absurd -

The Absurd is a term for the ways in which the world defies human efforts to find coherent meaning. It arises from the fact that things, including people, co-exist without being connected.

(C) 2001 George Myerson -/|\- All Rights Reserved. Used without permission from the author...too bad.