As an established educated professional who is current on international news, whom is acutely perceptive to the world around him and being aware to the dynamics of his personal reality in the same sense of being sensitive to the reality of others; I profess that my “renegade” philosophy of Mormon Existentialism is in fact not so “renegade.” Although, the headlines read, the discourses infer, all refers to a lingering 20th century based pre-WWI Heideggerian, Nietzsche-based philosophy, without doubt or question, I find my singular philosophy, grounded in academic analytics, in its application, follows the model of Jesus Christ’s Gospel to an exactitude, and in this application dispels worldly angst and epidemic anxieties of the nonexistence of truth, reality or purpose. The devout and focused Mormon will find their paths to truth and transcend this state of artifice. But this point has been sedimented countless times in this forum.
The point for this post is not to compel the worldly by a spiritual testimony most will hardly accept as far away from reality as they are, or, on the contrary, will readily accept being so far away and recognizing lucidly the truths contained. But for the lay philosopher who will not accept any analytical approach to Mormon Existentialism based on the very delineated, counter balanced and poised Christ’s Gospel; presented here are current demographics unavoidable in their context on a global and very pragmatic level.
In the day of Nietzsche where he stated to mankind the “death of God,” he was not addressing mankind. He was addressing the very tense pre WWI recently and very tenuously unified states of new German Principalities. Germany was desperate for power and what better call to power than Nietzsche’s call to all individual humanity without the moral base to connect them… the “Will to Power.” Since then, the world has undergone drastic wars and revolutions, not only Korea and Vietnam but the social revolutions of the 1950’s and 160s, that would forever change America and have led to an unquestionably more unified situation than ever before… reaching farther and farther away from the ignorance of early tribes and dwellers who knew nothing of the other tribe but to fight.
Today, thanks to these revolutions and the ‘90’s that galvanized social norms for many; intolerance and a rejection of others based on difference is unacceptable. We are currently farther along in the digital/virtual world where a young Chinese schoolgirl can be mentored in China by an English speaker from Detroit, Michigan. The phenomena of interconnectivity is literally without limit and ripe with exciting possibility in the post-Modern state of human being.
To reach a further point, there no longer exists anything close to what compelled Nietzsche to write what he did, for Sartre to write as he did. Writers are charged in their content by contexts and by their circumstances and noone today can comprehend pre-WWI Germany. This is not praise for Nietzsche, for his oeuvre, but I can understand it better after grasping its historical and ideological context. Heidegger… he was simply a visionary who wrote like a scientist and how he compiled his body of work, so abstract in content, connected as if by a thread but in actuality so monumentally fundamental to the realities of the day… this is a true revolutionary. Indeed I might, labeled a “renegade” as I have been, may be someday be known as something of a revolutionary myself. If that actuality comes to pass, the world will be in a better sphere.
The post-Modern globalized state of interconnectivity that is separated by a gulf of reality that Nietzsche could never have foreseen, that Heidegger could not have understood in their world that looked for a superior race, permits that in this day of PLURALITY of race, culture, society, politics, economics, demographics, religion, truth, faith, ethnicity, resources, realities, not debasing ourselves to relativism once again, but in the full consciousness of realism, I recognize my own private reality just as you recognize yours.
But in our post-Modern world, my recognizing my own private reality does not in the very slightest affect anything to do with anybody else’s reality and why should it, how could mankind have been so selfish and stupid? This “they,” “the other,” “the absurd,” was, and worse still, is, a sad and very pathetic nihilistic viewpoint of one's fellow man. Thinking that there was no morality was the basis for the worst of nihilism and this is just a lazy man’s excuse for an attitude of “eat, drink and be merry… and, “I don’t care.”
We as Latter-Day Saints and Christians and all whom believe in good, should follow the teachings of Christ’s that say “Love thy brother as thy self.” Literally, love all humankind, be good to those who spitefully use you. It is a christ like attitude that is not so hard once the gift of charity is implanted in your heart and you come to a reality that all mankind are the same and we are not capable and not allowed, to judge another. Only one is. This is Jesus Christ, he who has walked with each of us down our long and rugged road that we could not have walked alone, he walked it with each of us, he walks yours right now with you, just as he walks mine with me, this is the beginning of the sublime truth of Him.
But in doing so, only HE has the power to accurately judge the mentally ill homeless minority wearing dirty clothes with raggedy hair and burn skin holding a Dixie cup as well as the man who is let off in from of HIS high rise glass tower from out of his chauffeured Bentley early in the morning to be greeted by the night watchman, through for the night, who accompanies this man, mightiest of all men, to the top level of his 4 level personal residence while in office, as he begins his day with a hands free shower and then he operates the conveyor belt to choose which of the Roman handmade suits suits his needs for the day along with the right Croatian tie, the English hand sewn shirt, the diamond cuff links, the Tuscan handcrafted shoes, the diamond cut watch handmade in Switzerland, socks handcrafted from hand spun from Japan, all that remains is his toiletries and he gives care less and less to, this with the passing days. In fact, he is giving less and less care to anything these passing months, and years.
His four story pent-house club house he has tired of and prefers the comforts found from any of the women he happens to meet from the bar he locals that cater to men with Bentley key rings, diamond cufflinks, watches diamond cut and hand made from Switzerland, and whom leaves thousand dollar tips just for the few seconds of the eyes of the waitress that will linger with his when nobody else’s will.
Nothing else really matters to him. It could be any bar in any city in any country. It has all ceased to matter. There is only one thing that can still make his heart quiver and this is the attention in the eyes of a beautiful lady, but of course, for this, he has to pay a fortune for. Attention bought from a pretty lady. That is his sole remedy to cure him of his life’s misery. He spent all of his thrills years ago and all at a price where even with his empire, no one has any respect for him and openly treat him like an ATM of which their code has unlimited access and he doesn’t care. At least he is still of some use.
The person at the sidewalk below, who gets $20 at the end of the day and uses it to buy a bottle to quiet the demons screaming in her head… you think God loves her any less than he loves him? Do you think Christ loves her and appreciates her trials less than his?
He has walked and is walking both. One is a man defeated who in form, represents all that the “world" has to offer and is more miserable than anyone else. She, the bottom of the rung, she hasn’t thought about her carnal appetites in so long, she is too busy trying to stay alive and enjoy her agency while she has it. There is one like him. Countless millions around the globe are like her. Who will Christ judge more harshly... we cannot say? But we can say who is the most miserable there is. And it is he who has all that there is and would just as rather die but is far too cowardly for that, while she gives every energy to fight to live.
We all have our own reality, it is not relative, it is real. Christ’s love is the state of pure reality and we will get there someday. But I can be an existentialist and believe in my reality in 2013 just as much as Nietzsche was an existentialist and disbelieved his in 1900. The difference between the two is that no matter the conditions of my existentialism, your existentialism, the existentialism of an Eskimo in Alaska, I embrace your real reality with you and just because Nietzsche doubted his own reality does not mean that if I doubted mine that I would have to doubt yours. That is ugly, cold, solipsism and it is the ultimate weak-mindedness.
I embrace my reality and I embrace yours and I embrace ours. I embrace my truth and I embrace your truth and I embrace ours. I embrace my absolutes and your absolutes and I embrace ours. Because the world who says their are no absolutes, and this is the thinking, intellectual world, has said that “God is dead.” To even write the words is sickening and if ever there was a declaration made that was based on absolute truths, that is the statements that contradicts its own purpose and in doing so proves the existence of truth and thus supports the reality of each of us.
I said I would not delineate my Mormon Existentialist philosophy academically as this can only be broken down, but I will conclude by delineating it substantively.
There is a God, without him we would have no prior notion of God in coming to this earth, there would be no order, and this universe of harmony of such beauty we cannot be ready for it yet in our mortal pre-divine state, is of such a magnitude that we must progress, we must greater ourselves, be must better ourselves, we must obey the laws of Christ if we expect ourselves to have a place in this post-mortal realm… the man whose life means nothing to him and whose reality is incomprehensible in its worthlessness other than the size of its bank account… still… meaning nothing… will find a very shallow hole and find a rock to crawl under it… but the transient who is mentally ill, who has no control over her faculties, whose every day is a battle for survival, whose every day fallen asleep is a battle won, she, she is mighty and she has great kingdoms which she can rule over and the limits of her mind we cannot know but put to good health AND given their fullness and this is a divine creature unlike anything we are aware of. Think of that when you see your next transient.
Today’s existentialism is not mine it is everybody's. Mine is called Mormon Existentialism because that is my own creation but it is the Lord's. If you wish to follow in that, be my guest, read my posts and be a Mormon Existentialist, it is truly amazing as it is today’s curative for all of the ugly anxieties and insecurities of an outmoded existentialism. If your existentialism is rooted in nature, or people, or animals, or the stars, or gender, or art, or history, or humanity, or yourself, be it, but be it not the same old same old. “God is not dead, Nietzsche is Dead!!!!!!!"
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