I have seen a lot of anger, mental anguish, and defeat on the many social media platforms as of late. Whereas I have no concrete solution to this I think many minds of the past have given us a nice framework on how to conquer our existential crises and I hope in some small way this helps.
Prepare for a long one. Nietzsche in Thus Spoke Zarathustra laid out what he believed to be a map of human growth. The stages being Sheep, Camel, Lion, and Child.
sheep
The sheep takes no risk for fear of discomfort, many of us know people resigned to live in such a state and often it will alleviate the burden of discomfort but forces the life to be forgettable and squandered in many regards.
camel
The second stage is that of the camel, evolving into a beast of burden who is no longer afraid of discomfort but bends the knee to the sense of accepted social norms in the form of things it is supposed to do, cursed to live in the cage of ‘thou shall.’ Thou shall get a higher education, thou shall have children by 25, thou shall get a real job, thou shall follow this religion, thou shall have manners. A strong creature but it lives never questioning the rules and regulations that it has been told are universal and inarguably true.
lion
Some camels eventually awaken one day and see the ridiculousness that is this beautiful playpen it has been locked inside of, and evolve to the next stage where it becomes a lion. Angered at the conditions and rules, it now demands to fight, the absurdity of being forced universal truths makes it crave true freedom. It now knows that it has the will to power to destroy the pen it has been locked in, to create its own truly free existence that only it can decide what is true and meaningful. Eventually after slaying the beast known as ‘thou shall’ the lion has earned its freedom and is truly without external bonds. This comes with a crisis of its own though, having destroyed everything it knew to be true it is left utterly and truly alone with nothing of previous meaning attached to it.
child
This brings us to the final stage, the child. Having crushed its entire previous world it is left to create one of its own liking, one where life can be free and joyful. One where its own will is the absolute and its own dreams and passions are the true guide through existence. No longer does it care what the external world tells it to be true, it knows its own truths and gleefully plays through life enjoying every moment and crafting a reality that was always available. Existence is now personalized and the true will to power exists only from within, no longer is it forced into a concrete identity, it constantly lets bad ideas go in order to build new more precious values. Many argue this concept is not a straight line, more of a cyclical process that we must be conscious of and accepting of.
All of this long statement just to get the point across that we are all growing no matter what stage we’re at, stop letting the external world decide your internal reality. Hope this is valuable to someone who has never seen this concept before.
—logan shepard
Flommist Logan Shepard is a philosopher at heart, an artist in spirit, and a dictator in thought. You can think of him like a modern Diogenes sans the whole being homeless thing. Copyright © 2018 Logan Shepard.
PLEASE SUPPORT FLOMM
TIPS + DONATIONS DISCREETLY ACCEPTED