#existentialism

[existential-fox]

If I had a nickel for every time an Indie game gave me existential emotions so strong that when I think of certain moments from them I become overwhelmed with phenomenological thoughts and feelings that grow into something I perceive as larger then both myself and the world around me...

I’d have two nickels but its weird that its happened twice.

[metamorphesque]

― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[text ID: I am going to outlive myself. Eat, sleep, sleep, eat. Exist slowly, softly, like these trees, like a puddle of water, like the red bench in the streetcar.]

[mayanhandballcourt]

Photographer Ian Howorth

[linkinmoon]

Charles Bukowski, Pulp

[forlornalbatross]

I prayed that amongst my flaws , my hard shell & my firmness that I am soft enough to be understood — that I am tender enough to be thought of — that I am gentle enough to be loved unconditionally —  but that’s a lot to ask , that’s too much expectation & this too will remain in a message unsent -

D C de Oliveira |A journal of Rejects, Pathos | January 20, 2023 | Friday, 3.37am

[tenderfaery]

Søren Kierkegaard, Diaries 1813-1855

[albertcamusofficial]

The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus / Untitled, Sung Hwa Kim l

[glitchphotography]

Gregor Samsa (cp_13) //  Chrome Period Drawings // ( Deluxe Paint IV // 2022 )  

[willknightauthor]

What happens in the Dolorian church in Martinaise is a profound bit of worldbuilding. At first Elysium seems like a normal, secular world, and if anything it's surprising how absent religion is from it. Liberalism has become the religion. The only real reminder that Moralism was once a fully functioning world religion is the abandoned and broken church west of the lock.

But learning about the pale point, the history of the churches, it makes sense now. The pale is directly interacting with human thought and society because they are both manifestations of information in the universe, in an evolving dialectic. Dolores Dei pulled information from the future and literally expanded the world by inspiring others with her dream. She was, by the standards of our world, a prophet. The churches, built around nascent points of pale particles, are a social attempt to control the pale through the collective act of ritual dreaming. By dreaming the divine, humanity pushes back the death of the world, for a moment.

By the time the game takes place, that side of Moralism is long dead. The churches have been abandoned and their function forgotten. Moralism has degenerated into liberalism. The Revolution was a moment of mass dreaming, of the future manifesting itself. It was the best hope to push back the Pale, but the MoralIntern crushed it, and restored global stagnancy. Growing entropy is accelerating the consumption of the world by the Pale, and no-one knows what to do because there is no future, only past.

Harry though, depending on how you play him, has the potential to start the reversal of this process, if just in Martinaise. The man who has effectively dedicated himself to a kind of monastic worship of the Pale (unknowingly) is the first one to start the process. (Never give anyone too much credit, even Harry.) But if Harry helps the homeless ravers start a club in the Church, he is effectively helping to start a new ritual community with the same properties as the old Moralist Church, right under the pale point.

If you get Noid to warm up to you, you learn he's a kind of organic existential philosopher. He even discourses with Tiago. He and the others don't just party as a hedonistic act, they maintain partying as a kind of ritual act of life affirmation and contemplation, an attempt to transcend themselves and realize something new and powerful. In short, they are reaching into the future to create something new. It's ridiculous 90s Euro club music, but the way they do it it's as ritually powerful as any church service.

This ties into the more general theme of Disco Elysium, that the human power to dream of a new future and then collectively act to bring it about is a powerful act of creation that pushes back the boundaries of the universe, and is necessary for our species to even survive. To crush the revolution, to crush democracy, is to crush the future. Elysium has killed God, but they haven't gotten to the next stage of becoming gods.

Dolorian humanism ironically does not end up elevating human beings. Only the communards had a chance at elevating humanity to a level of creative consciousness that would allow them to tame the Pale the same way they used to with religion. And the revolutionaries, even though the Moralists never recognized them as such, were likely pulling from the future as much as Dolores Dei. Kras Mazov will never be recognized as an Innocent, but in terms of prophesying and inspiring people with a dream which could push back the Pale, he effectively was.

Now with the revolution at a low point, the world is in a kind of existentialist limbo, lacking the conviction of faith in either the divine or the future. The old is dead, but the new cannot be born. What happens in Martinaise is the beginning of the return of that faith.

[i-merani]

[theoptia]

Albert Camus, from The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

Text ID: that irreplaceable voice of the heart,

[3eanuts]

June 16, 1955 — see The Complete Peanuts 1955-1958

[metamorphesque]

― Jean-Paul Sartre, Nausea

[text ID: I exist. It is soft, so soft, so slow. And light: it seems as though it suspends in the air. It moves.]

[mayanhandballcourt]

Photographer Jo Haberman

[forlornalbatross]

When suddenly it hits you that the existence of your existence actually does not exist at all - not here , not there , not anywhere , not everywhere , not somewhere , not elsewhere not even nowhere as you thought all along -

D C de Oliveira | Unsang, Nihility | February 01 2023 | Wednesday, 11.35am

[skarmazenuk]

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

Albert Camus