Originally Posted by roachboy

i dont know if this is intentional or not but the op is mostly a mangled restatement of one of pasal's pensées--we do no keep to the time that is proper to us, we always get lost in dreaming of the past or future. the "real drama"--that of the soul and its relation to its god-buddy is that of the present. god---you know, the Big Inflatable Fellow. for pascal, there's probably an actual god back there somewhere--but you cant know that god either way because you're stuck in human cognition and with its limits and one of them is you think this god character and you see only the Big Inflatable Fellow. this is a Problem. there's no way out of it. so pascal says people squirm about, pretending that this is not the State of Affairs.

but the thing is that the pensées are not descriptions of the world but a long sequence of arguments about what constitutes a description of the world involving a voice that claims to know something of that condition and another that doesnt believe him.

the angst-schema (the game that explains angst) works much the same way in kierkegaard except its scarier somehow. heidegger connects angst to the effects of this profound boredom he pulls apart in his lecture course on the notion of "life" on the one hand and to "being-toward-death" on the other--so they are elements of "authentic being" the orientation that causes dasein to vibrate...this is about the least interesting dimension of his earlier work if you see in its displaced christianity an obstacle to understanding rather than a tool. anyway, you can play this game in a parallel manner with sartre and camus, but for original sin substitute a range of passivities from accomodation-to-collaboration with the nazi occupation of france during world war 2.

i am not sure that i understand the appeal of this--and particularly not the existentialism-lite that seems to animate the op. its structure is basically christian (well, it's nominalist, which is the most interesting variant of christianity, one that it'd be nice to find fundy-type discovering, of only so they would stop talking as if they know what they cannot possibly actually know--one can dream). so unless this christian framework at one level or another resonates with you--perhaps because of your family background (which makes this an aesthetic matter)----why would you accept it as legitimate, much less as given as self-evident, requiring no argument or justification?

so the basic problem with the op is that it is a potted summary of one dimension of existentialist theory that is fobbed off as a description of this illusion called "the human condition."
having taken on this curious framework, the op proceeds to whine about the consequences.

well, following the logic of these texts--you would choose committments arbitrarily, knowing they are arbitrary. but the frame itself puts you in a position of not being able to make these committments precisely because you know they are artificial. it's straight pascal again. the wager.

but this is all a frame-effect.
the notion of angst is a response to a restatement of the problems generated (for christians) by the absurd notion of original sin. if you think about it in terms of original sin, of course you cant do anything about it because you did not commit it--original sin is imputed to you by way of adam and the microchip of adam that augstine claims every human being carries with him or her because they are human. so unless you accept a fundamentally christian claim as a description of the world, what you outline above is not a description of your responses to "the human condition" at all. but the "dilemma" is entirely christian: for augustine, the way out is faith--for the existentialists, way out consists of arbitrary committments.

but why would you drag something as ridiculous as the notion of original sin from its already equally ridiculous religious framework and into the secular world?

if you believe this, you might as well just revert to being christian--its not like you are escaping its basic traps, so why bother pretending you are outside of it?
or if you dont want to work that hard, you can always watch tv and feel bad about doing it.
same thing.

so you choose to enter the intellectual game that results in claims about angst and the heap of poop this notion of angst reduces your life to. it's hard to feel much of anything in response to your running in textbook manner the effects of this framework. you must derive some sense of pleasure from it--perhaps from the illusion of Singularity it provides you, that of being a Great Hero Exposing Himself to the Cruel Winds of the Absurd.

james thurber once either recieved or made up a letter which said:
"dear sir: i have 100 cats."
to which he responded:
"dear madam: t's hard to tell from your letter whether you are complaining or bragging."

so it is here.