According to existential psychology there are four primary existential unknown concerns that all religious and non-religious people dread and deal with throughout their lives. Freedom (personal responsibility), meaninglessness (purpose), isolation (aloneness), and death (mortality). These are emotionally important ideas that all conscious humans think about throughout our lives but may never know for certain. According to existential psychology, existential concerns are driven inevitably from living and being aware of being alive. What we learn, what we are taught, our lived experiences, and our biological cognitive capacity determines the level of awareness and dread we may feel for these existential unknowns.
For this month we will explore the difficult emotional and psychological balance of taking personal responsibility and understanding when to let go. Of all the existential dreads, I think this is the most influential and difficult throughout our lives. We will explore Erick Fromm’s conclusion that how we chose to deal with our dread of personal responsibility has profound effects on our lives. In my view, of all the existential dreads that we struggle with, personal responsibility appears to be the clearest delineation between why people evolve into secular versus religious views.
Existential concerns are inevitable, not absolute, and change over time. The existential concerns at 5 years old will potentially change at 10, 20, and 70 years old. For example, a 5-year-olds concept of a god and existential answers for feelings of isolation presented to them in Sunday school will invariably be different after 70 years of lived experience. Also, a 5-year-old may want to be a firefighter at 5 years old but later concludes at 20 years old that they want to be monetarily stable and not do dangerous jobs. The healthiest way to deal with existential concerns would be to deal with and accept change and progression over one’s lifetime. Employing effective critical thinking skills and increasing one’s self-awareness for abilities, experiences, and biases is the most ideal way of dealing with existential concerns particular to one’s lived life.
Unfortunately, many of us are taught that our existential concerns are easy, can be absolute answers, and can be figured out for us by someone else. For example, a church tells us all we must do to succeed in life is; get a job, get married, have children, retire, a god takes care of everything else, and heaven in the end. This would shortcut most of our existential concerns. Taking existential shortcuts can be appealing because people can believe and perceive that they do not have to deal with or take responsibility for their existential concerns over their lifetime. Of course, taking personal responsibility for all our decisions and perceptions of reality can be scary, intimidating, and dreadful. However, existential crises still occur for people who choose to view life through shortcuts as deeper questions build over time.
Religions sell the idea to their believers that there are absolute answers for existential unknowns. The christian religion will tell their believers that humans are created by the god, we are not alone because there is an omniscient and omnipresent god, the god has a plan and purpose for us even if we do not understand (like a 2-year-old getting cancer), and that our conscious exists forever, even after our deaths. However, there is a catch. Christianity, like many religions, teaches that the individual must abdicate personal responsibility and personal freedom to the authority of gods, priests, and kings. The abdication of personal responsibility (submission to authority) is promoted as the highest form of morality in christianity. And for Humanists, secularists, and atheists that would be an immoral stance.
People who are taught to abdicate personal responsibility struggle with small and especially large existential concerns (unknown outcomes), due to over relying on external authority and social rules, instead of learning how to personally deal with the existential unknowns and cognitively growing over their lifetime. The person will then increasingly dread and avoid their personal existential and emotional conflicts due to poorly developed critical thinking skills and self-awareness. Critical thinking skills and self-awareness help people develop their sense of personal responsibility and personal morality as well.
Some examples of religious existential avoidance might be; god take the wheel (avoid taking personal responsibility), they are in a better place (avoid finality of death), god answers my prayers when I feel alone (avoid dealing with being alone and existing alone in one’s mind), and the priest told me I am to get married and have children (avoid determining ones purpose/meaning). To exist independent of authority or absolutes creates existential dread for those that fear taking personal responsibility outside of this dependence on authority and social structure. This is a particular existential crisis that people experience leaving the religious structure but is potentially also experienced by anyone who has been in any social structure that restricts them from being able to develop and be themselves, separate from a social or physical structure.
For non-religious people, morality develops parallel with critical thinking, personal experience, neurobiological attachment to environmental interactions, and metacognitive awareness throughout one’s life. The incorrect assertions that only religion can teach morality is more accurately stated - religion teaches children from a young formative age to abdicate their personal responsibility to authority figures, unseen gods, and rigid rules, which serves to cognitively, emotionally, and existentially stunt moral development and self-awareness. By taking existential responsibility throughout one’s life, to steadily face the inevitable unknowns and challenges of living life, will build tolerance and balance for one’s perception of existential dread. To take existential responsibility is to accept that you may not know what will happen but are willing to accept consequences that are for you, morally acceptable or outside of your control.
References:
Corsini, Raymond & Wedding, Danny. (2011). Current Psychotherapies, 9th Ed. Brooks/Cole.
Fromm, Erich. (1941). Escape from Freedom. New York: Holt Paperbacks.
Solomon, Robert. (2001). Introducing Philosophy, 7th Ed. Harcort Inc.
Yalom, Irvin. (1980). Existential Psychotherapy. New York: Basic Books.
For more reading on existential psychology and Existentialism:
Soren Kierkegaard, Martin Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Albert Camus, Friedrich Nietzsche