“No system can actually determine my essence unless I allow it.”
That is probably how Sartre would have replied.
I really liked your line that systems are “doing the philosophical work that was always supposed to be yours.” That captures the way modern technologies and institutions increasingly compete to shape our identities.
However, I disagree that “being an existentialist in a capitalist world is something close to a felony.” Sartre’s radical freedom is more demanding, and more hopeful, than that. Systems can make self-authorship more difficult. But can they ever truly determine our essence? Sartre would probably insist that even accepting a pre-packaged identity remains a choice, however constrained.
And perhaps Foucault would add that freedom is exercised within relations of power, not outside them. The point is not to escape the system but to remain capable of questioning it.
To me, that’s where the real philosophical tension lies: not between existentialism and capitalism as such, but between our responsibility to author ourselves and the increasingly sophisticated environments competing to do that work for us. Resistance is both possible and necessary, not by standing outside the system, but by refusing to surrender that responsibility from within it.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, I really appreciate it! When I mentioned about being an existentialist and it is close to a felony, I wanted to metaphorically point out how capitalistic tendencies are deeply internalized to the point that sometimes even an existentialist stance feels foreign or like a dissent. However, it is important to recognize this internalized bias that some of us may unconsciously have and make a choice to contradict it.
Although, I really appreciate how you tried to frame it:)
Is this a comparable message to "change the system from the inside"? That tends to be something people say when they want to benefit from the system and not deal with the hardships of being an outlier. Morally, it is an inferior choice. That's not to say we don't have to deal with things inside the system to survive; it's just to say that we are to do everything we can to act as sovereign and push the boundaries toward living a liberated life rather than making excuses for why it's ok to just keep living inside establishment control as long as we "do our responsibility" from within it.
What exactly do you mean by this "responsibility"? Can you give an example or otherwise be more specific?
"No system can determine by essence unless I allow it."
The system (ie the ruling bloodlines) does not deal in your essence at all beyond what it must to enslave you. Your core nature, insofar as it is unenslaveable, is of zero relevance to the enslaver.
Realistically, in what way does the average person have the *choice* of standing outside the system anyway? You wouldn't be able to walk away and live. So pretending it's a choice and that you're not a slave who should desire and strive toward total freedom from any establishment "system" is more of a feel-good position that doesn't reflect the dire reality of your personal situation or that of any other slave.
Regarding capitalism, the word "capital" just means "personal wealth" (from the Latin, 1610). So capitalism means that the producer keeps the wealth she creates to do with as she pleases, with no state to steal any of it.
No citizen/subject/etc of a nation-state is living in capitalism. We'd have to have a totally free market with no government intervention for that. Government must, by definition, steal and "redistribute" (mostly to the ruling bloodlines, and there's plenty of overlap between those groups), and so government can only be socialist.
Existentialism and capitalism don't inherently say anything about each other, but one can take the most advantage of her existentialist responsibilities given total freedom, which would mean being under absolutely no government, ie, in capitalism.
I think you are reading a bit too much into my comment. Saying that freedom must be exercised from within the conditions we inhabit is not the same as saying that we should accommodate ourselves to them.
The distinction I had in mind is more Sartre’s distinction between facticity and freedom. We inherit circumstances we did not choose like institutions, economic structures, technologies, social roles etc. Those constraints are very real. But facticity does not exhaust what we are. We retain our capability to reflect on those conditions, to judge them and also to resist them. That is in fact our responsibility.
Where I would perhaps revise my original comment is the phrase “unless I allow it.” Systems today do not need our permission to shape us. They structure our attention, incentives, habits and even the alternatives that we perceive as available. That is why individual responsibility alone is insufficient. We also bear some responsibility for the environments and institutions under which agency itself is formed.
And this is actually what worries me most about the present moment. Not that resistance has become impossible but that the enormous amount of dissatisfaction we see produces remarkably little resistance directed at the structures shaping our lives. In the 1960s, the critique of mass consumer society and the “culture industry” found an echo in a much broader culture of protest. Marcuse became an intellectual reference point for a generation willing to take resistance into the streets. The raised fist became one of its symbols.
Marcuse feared pacification: that comfort and consumption would dissolve the capacity for critical thought before it could become resistance. But grievance clearly hasn’t disappeared. If anything ours may be an angrier culture than his. The more troubling update, suggested for example by Joseph Vogl’s work on ressentiment, is that anger does not need to be suppressed at all. It can be captured and put to work. Ressentiment can be channelled into fragmented and conflictual online communities often directed horizontally at other groups rather than vertically at the structures producing the grievance. The energy that might once have confronted the system can then become part of what sustains it.
Perhaps that is the real difference between the raised fist and the downward swipe. A system does not have to abolish your freedom or even your anger if it can metabolise both.
So I don’t think liberation means finding some imaginary position completely outside society. Nor do I think remaining within society means accepting “establishment control.” The harder question is how we preserve and exercise genuine agency within conditions that inevitably shape us, while also changing those conditions when they begin to undermine the very capacity for agency on which freedom depends.
For me that means not only cultivating the capacity to think and judge for ourselves but taking responsibility for the shared world in which that capacity develops: our institutions, our technologies and our public spaces. The task is not simply to optimise ourselves within whatever environment we inherit as some modern forms of Stoicism seem to suggest but to help create an environment in which others can exercise their agency too. In that sense, perhaps we need to recover something the ancient Stoics understood rather well: responsibility extends beyond the self to the Kosmopolis.
You still aren't being specific. You are being vague with "take responsibility". In what exact way? What do you wake up in the morning and do in order to "take responsibility" and "fight"? What anecdote or example can you share to show exactly what you mean?
"you are reading a bit too much into"
This is something people say when they want to act like the other person "cares more" about the conversation, when the truth is that you may just be dealing with someone who easily sees more deeply into your own position than you do.
Your comments are quite long, so not much "reading in" has to be done anyway. You go on at great length.
"Nor do I think remaining within society means accepting “establishment control.”
It does though. That's the point. You must succumb to some level of establishment control because if you (you personally) walk away, you will starve and die or be murdered by police. "we must choose to x" regarding that is arrogant, as you don't have a choice. That's kind of the whole idea behind your enslavement: not having a choice.
You don't have a choice until critical mass (about 10% of the population) is reached. Tables turn at that point. And even then, you will only have choice if you made sure to be on the right side.
By “taking responsibility” I mean fairly ordinary things: voting, organising, protesting, supporting independent journalism and civic institutions and pushing for institutions and technologies that enlarge rather than diminish people’s agency. But I think our disagreement is pretty clear by now. You equate living within a system with submitting to it. History suggests otherwise. Labour rights, women’s suffrage, gay rights and civil rights were all won by people contesting institutions while living within them. That is rather the point of democracy.
I also think “the establishment” is much too convenient a category here. Governments, courts, corporations, media and citizens are not one single actor pursuing one purpose. Treating them as a single “system” turns a complicated distribution of power into some all-powerful abstraction and then declares resistance impossible.
And your 10% argument actually makes my point. If nobody has meaningful agency before critical mass is reached, where does the first 10% come from?
I’m also not sure what freedom from “the system” would actually look like. Human freedom has always been exercised in a world shared with others. I’m closer to Arendt here: political freedom is something we exercise with others not something we acquire by escaping them. The question isn’t how to eliminate institutions but which institutions constrain our agency and which make it possible.
We don’t need to escape society before we can change it. Much of human history demonstrates precisely that. But since you’ve pressed me for specifics, let me turn that around: what does living outside “the system” actually look like? The moment people live together, they need ways of dealing with property, disputes, common resources and collective decisions. Whatever arrangements they come up with are institutions too. So where exactly is this “outside”?
Interestingly, most of your examples are things I would happily call taking responsibility: challenging government agencies in court, refusing illegitimate authority and building alternative businesses and institutions.
But lawsuits require courts. Businesses require property rights. Communities need ways of resolving disputes. You are not describing life outside “the system.” You are describing institutions.
I also think you underestimate how much agency democracy gives people. Many democracies have changed profoundly from within. Many of us simply don’t want to overthrow the democratic system. We broadly support it while wanting to change parts of it. The absence of revolution is not evidence of the absence of agency.
And democracy is certainly not majority rule. Majority voting is one mechanism within a system of constitutional rights, independent courts, minority protections and the rule of law.
Calling majority voting “fascist” therefore gets history almost backwards. Fascism destroyed political pluralism, constitutional limits and organised opposition. Using the term for collectively binding democratic decisions is not only historically wrong. It dangerously blurs the distinction between democratic government and its destruction.
"I mean fairly ordinary things: voting, protesting .."
Stopped there.
Majority vote forces the minority to comply on threat of violence, therefore majority vote is fascist.
Taking responsibility is much harder than just doing what you're told ("vOtE oR dIE"). That's easy. Take responsibility means filming police stops for yourself and for strangers. It means filing lawsuits against government agencies that violate your rights. It means getting vocal with "authority" and telling them NO on the spot where others can see you as an example. It means losing financial stability and social approval by refusing to step on heads or gossip or be a petty baby lackey to your boss at work to get ahead.
"Organizing" often is code for "posturing" and inserting yourself as a leader in a group of dissenters who've been at it way longer than you and have - and have a lot to teach you. Always start out volunteering to do data entry and lift heavy boxes: never start out in a field of interest thinking you will get to speak or teach or "make decisions" (and no one gets to make decisions for anyone but themselves as individuals anyway).
Protesting in the form of begging masters for something is not the right mindset. "Protests" are really most useful as places to meet like-minded people. Forget trying to beg the rulers to put socialist bandages on socialism-created axe wounds. Instead, "organize" and EXECUTE your entry into business by creating more independent parallels to current industries. For example: we need people who can grease the wheels (legwork and paperwork - and it pays!) of micro-investing into local family businesses so that people will start doing that instead of dumping money into 401ks and Roths and the S&P ect, which are bad investments long term. Just as a specific example of how to toss the rulers out of power by starving the beast.
Either actively move toward freedom from bondage to the ruling families, or be counted among those who live on the fringes of society as the tables turn.
Amazing read! It really resonated with me, thanks for sharing! I might let this sink in a bit and give it a truly deserved reread. In the meantime, I’d love to know if there’s more material to dive deeper on the topic (besides the bibliography indicated). I feel like this topic is really important and needed to find meaning in today’s society
This was fantastic. I'm far from the only one who thinks this way of course, but the fundamental opposition between capitalism and existentialism has come to be a cornerstone of how I think and this essay just beautifully and urgently lays it out.
I suppose my only quibble would be in its final words: "To practice existentialism in a capitalist world is not to escape the system; that is neither possible nor the point. It is to remain conscious within it, to keep authoring yourself even when everything around you insists the story has already been written." I'm unsure if this is saying exactly what I think it is.
Of course, merely being an existentialist by itself does not allow you to escape capitalism. Nonetheless, to the existentialist, capitalism must be transcended. A fully authentic life is, as Kalika vividly illustrates, ultimately impossible within the strictures of a system that regimentizes life and experience. Sartre, after all, spent the latter decades of his life as a communist, and some of his best work attempts to sketch a synthesis of existentialism and Marxism.
Perhaps I'm demanding a bit too much, and I am, to be clear, not trying to put Foucauldian thought in opposition to Marxism here (plenty of Marxists famously find a lot of use and insight in Foucault and integrate his thought into their framework). In fact I wonder if I am even ultimately arguing for Marxism here as much as I am trying to tease out whether there's room in the author's worldview for the collective negation (some might say the overthrow) of capitalism. Would be curious.
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reading. I really appreciate you engaging so deeply with the conclusion rather than simply agreeing with it. You're right that my essay intentionally foregrounded existentialism as an individual mode of consciousness rather than a programme for structural transformation. My point wasn't that consciousness within capitalism is sufficient, nor that capitalism ought not to be transcended, but rather that existentialism begins from the individual's lived freedom even within conditions they did not choose. I absolutely agree that Sartre's later engagement with Marxism complicates this picture in fascinating ways. You've definitely given me something to think about regarding whether the essay should make more explicit the relationship between existential authenticity and collective political action. Thank you for raising it.
Hello, first of all, congratulations on this magnificent article! It is at the very least the most thought-provoking thing I've read this whole week. And I thank Alexander too for posting his comment, a beautifully put inquiery.
I feel most grateful because the same thought crossed my mind. It is definetly not enough to have only existencialsim as our highest ambition, and I was glad to read your clarification.
However, I write this comment because I believe that the ultimate goal is action, It is of course a very complex thing, diving deeper into the murky waters of how to put theory into practice. Pheraphs my daily frustration over the state of the world, which you portrayed here perfectly;
"Ignorance, on the other hand, becomes a neutral emotional state of living that conceals catastrophic realities and projects a tailored one in their place; no wars, no atrocities, no calamities, just the illusion of soft living in an apocalyptic world"
It is due to a lack of mediums and resources to feed on how to "do" things, and not just sit with the heavy conciousness of it all. I know little of philoposhy, but I have always loved deep-thinking. Would it be possible for you to recommend some good material on how it would be possible for us to change things?
Thank you so much for your kind words. To be honest, I don't think I have an answer to how we change things completely, and I'm suspicious of anyone who claims to. My own view is that meaningful action begins with refusing the paralysis that often accompanies awareness. We cannot solve everything, but we can choose what we are responsible to. Perhaps the challenge is not changing things in their entirety, but identifying the sphere in which our actions can become concrete and consequential. As for readings, I would recommend Camus' The Rebel, Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and perhaps even Arendt's reflections on action and political life. They approach the problem differently, but all wrestle with the question of how consciousness becomes action. I'm glad the article resonated with you:)
This is a great read! I’ve been talking about it all morning. I really resonated with idea of an identity constructed through utility and consumption, facilitated through screens. This piece articulates how many of us feel. But I question the idea that capitalism is unique in preassigning an essence. Paraphrasing Beauvoir ‘our bodies are our grasp on the world’ humans are always born into situations that assign gender, faith, or utility to oppose before we have developed the autonomy to make choices. What I think the essay is steering us toward however is an articulation of how bleak capitalism’s available identities are.
Thank you Samuel! I'm glad that it resonated with you and I agree with your excerpt from Beauvoir, it aligns with a broader sense of what I'm trying to point out in the article:)
"They supply pre-packaged values, thoughts, opinions, and identities, delivered quietly and efficiently, while we float around the world carrying them as our own" If only we could get kids into Sarte and Foucault instead of Peppa Pig
Thank you for your thoughtful words! I also believe that it is not only about getting the kids into understanding Sartre and Foucault, but also making them independent agents; independent enough to discern and detach when required. The thinkers will give a foundation, but we as individuals must build on it!
This text is over-adorned and conceptually muddled, using heavy, mismatched vocabulary that sounds poetic on the surface but collapses under logical analysis. It sacrifices clear communication for a dense, pseudo-intellectual aesthetic.
Thank you for reading and for the feedback. I am originally oriented towards literature and poetry and I've embedded conceptual analysis. Clarity is something I'm always working on as a writer, and I appreciate your perspective!
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I usually come across a lot of people who take a while to understand my writing. And personally, I don't believe that it is a flaw, because there are certain ideas and notions which require a lot of nuance. And I believe that lucidity sometimes becomes a challenge to write with. My primary language style is surrounded around complexity and a lot of my work reflects that. And I appreciate your concern, however, it is not that easy to put across complex ideas in the simplest language without compromising on the nuance. I could write it in a simple language, but then it would be a much longer essay, because I always try to corroborate every relevant aspect of the concept. As of now, I believe that accessibility is not my concern. Meaning is my concern. And once the meaning reaches people, either by navigating the complexity or through lucidity; my main goal is to convey my philosophy in a meaningful manner. And even the philosophers that I have cited, they have a predisposition towards complexity in their writings as well. So I am doing my level best to concise those nuanced ideas to something readable, something that could be pondered upon, something introspective without taking out the crux of those concepts. And that is my attempt here. If you don't appreciate it, I completely understand. Curiosity always beats performative intelligence, so I don't need to justify myself further:)
This is a great read. It reassures my belief that there's meaning in the attempt, no matter how little. The dilemma, though, is that merely existing in the system is extractive enough to tire me out at the end of the day that I've found making room within the mundane to define my own individuality even more laborious. Not always, but most days, it comes down to capacity. This is the more pessimistic side of me talking.
You believe you are the author of yourself. But who is the you that is author? It can’t be your self. If it were, nothing would be authored. But if it is not yourself, who are you?
Very nice piece! Made me think of the fall of the Roman Catholic Church and its hold on Europe back in the day, which led to the rise of humanism. Super interesting read!
Oh that's a really cool and apt analogy, it's one of the prominent examples of how systems have the power to hegemonize societies… I'm glad that you resonated with the piece:)
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
Kalika, this is an extraordinary essay but you're from a culture that has seen systems of knowledge that have gone far beyond existentialism. 'Freedom' was understood in pockets of that culture as transcending all cultural frameworks and structures by deeply understanding how they're constructed in mind. This isn't woo woo but traveling upstream from existentialism.
"Understanding refers to understanding all aspects of conditioned existence (impermanence, insubstantial self, unsatisfactoriness); how it works; how we create it; how we make ourselves victims of our own creation. " Tarthang Rinpoche
This is a fascinating point, and I think you're right to question the assumption that existentialism should be treated as the endpoint of the question of freedom. What you've described introduces a very different conception of liberation, particularly in its treatment of conditioned existence and the construction of the self. I hadn't intended to suggest that existentialism exhausts the possibilities of thinking about freedom, but your comment makes me wonder whether some of the questions I approach through existentialism could be pushed further by placing them in conversation with Indian philosophical traditions. I especially appreciate the distinction between working within a structure and understanding the conditions through which that structure, and our experience of ourselves within it, comes into being. Thank you for this. You've given me quite a lot to think about.
I believe this article closely correlates to another issue I have been thinking about lately: the rise of technology and ai. Social media recycles what already is while embedding new preconceptions for our subconscious to feed upon. Not only is it incredibly dangerous when it comes to individuality, time preservation and attention span, but it also tires our brains out to the point where we not longer can create: thus returning us back into a state of passiveness and conformity. I think it is important to schedule time within our day, outside of our physical and mental routine to create something new to liberate ourselves from this limiting loophole.
“When systems pre-assign your values, your ambitions, your definition of a life well-lived, they are not merely influencing you; they are doing the philosophical work that was always supposed to be yours.”
While I agree that building an identity around consumption and productivity is harmful, I do not believe we can escape systems that pre assign values because we exist in communities. When we are born, we are automatically given an identity, morality, and an understanding of the good life. Later we can assess the presumed philosophical work given to us by our community but we can’t get to the point of examination without originally being given implicit philosophical grounds to work upon. I really love your piece and agree with most of it but I think it overemphasizes individualism and disregards the community.
Thank you for your thoughtful take! If through my writing, I came across biased to some specific line of thought, I don't mean it. I do agree that we're born with a foundation, what Sartre refers to as "facticity" but after all, it's our job to transcend this and make an identity of our own. Sometimes we actively do this work, sometimes systems do this for us and we passively accept it. It is here, that it becomes important to witness and become aware and act upon it:)
Thank you, I'm glad that it's reaching so many people! And yes... being a writer since a very young age, it's safe to say that I passionately despise using ai for writing. So yes, I'm glad that I don't use ai:)
“No system can actually determine my essence unless I allow it.”
That is probably how Sartre would have replied.
I really liked your line that systems are “doing the philosophical work that was always supposed to be yours.” That captures the way modern technologies and institutions increasingly compete to shape our identities.
However, I disagree that “being an existentialist in a capitalist world is something close to a felony.” Sartre’s radical freedom is more demanding, and more hopeful, than that. Systems can make self-authorship more difficult. But can they ever truly determine our essence? Sartre would probably insist that even accepting a pre-packaged identity remains a choice, however constrained.
And perhaps Foucault would add that freedom is exercised within relations of power, not outside them. The point is not to escape the system but to remain capable of questioning it.
To me, that’s where the real philosophical tension lies: not between existentialism and capitalism as such, but between our responsibility to author ourselves and the increasingly sophisticated environments competing to do that work for us. Resistance is both possible and necessary, not by standing outside the system, but by refusing to surrender that responsibility from within it.
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback, I really appreciate it! When I mentioned about being an existentialist and it is close to a felony, I wanted to metaphorically point out how capitalistic tendencies are deeply internalized to the point that sometimes even an existentialist stance feels foreign or like a dissent. However, it is important to recognize this internalized bias that some of us may unconsciously have and make a choice to contradict it.
Although, I really appreciate how you tried to frame it:)
Is this a comparable message to "change the system from the inside"? That tends to be something people say when they want to benefit from the system and not deal with the hardships of being an outlier. Morally, it is an inferior choice. That's not to say we don't have to deal with things inside the system to survive; it's just to say that we are to do everything we can to act as sovereign and push the boundaries toward living a liberated life rather than making excuses for why it's ok to just keep living inside establishment control as long as we "do our responsibility" from within it.
What exactly do you mean by this "responsibility"? Can you give an example or otherwise be more specific?
"No system can determine by essence unless I allow it."
The system (ie the ruling bloodlines) does not deal in your essence at all beyond what it must to enslave you. Your core nature, insofar as it is unenslaveable, is of zero relevance to the enslaver.
Realistically, in what way does the average person have the *choice* of standing outside the system anyway? You wouldn't be able to walk away and live. So pretending it's a choice and that you're not a slave who should desire and strive toward total freedom from any establishment "system" is more of a feel-good position that doesn't reflect the dire reality of your personal situation or that of any other slave.
Regarding capitalism, the word "capital" just means "personal wealth" (from the Latin, 1610). So capitalism means that the producer keeps the wealth she creates to do with as she pleases, with no state to steal any of it.
No citizen/subject/etc of a nation-state is living in capitalism. We'd have to have a totally free market with no government intervention for that. Government must, by definition, steal and "redistribute" (mostly to the ruling bloodlines, and there's plenty of overlap between those groups), and so government can only be socialist.
Existentialism and capitalism don't inherently say anything about each other, but one can take the most advantage of her existentialist responsibilities given total freedom, which would mean being under absolutely no government, ie, in capitalism.
I think you are reading a bit too much into my comment. Saying that freedom must be exercised from within the conditions we inhabit is not the same as saying that we should accommodate ourselves to them.
The distinction I had in mind is more Sartre’s distinction between facticity and freedom. We inherit circumstances we did not choose like institutions, economic structures, technologies, social roles etc. Those constraints are very real. But facticity does not exhaust what we are. We retain our capability to reflect on those conditions, to judge them and also to resist them. That is in fact our responsibility.
Where I would perhaps revise my original comment is the phrase “unless I allow it.” Systems today do not need our permission to shape us. They structure our attention, incentives, habits and even the alternatives that we perceive as available. That is why individual responsibility alone is insufficient. We also bear some responsibility for the environments and institutions under which agency itself is formed.
And this is actually what worries me most about the present moment. Not that resistance has become impossible but that the enormous amount of dissatisfaction we see produces remarkably little resistance directed at the structures shaping our lives. In the 1960s, the critique of mass consumer society and the “culture industry” found an echo in a much broader culture of protest. Marcuse became an intellectual reference point for a generation willing to take resistance into the streets. The raised fist became one of its symbols.
Marcuse feared pacification: that comfort and consumption would dissolve the capacity for critical thought before it could become resistance. But grievance clearly hasn’t disappeared. If anything ours may be an angrier culture than his. The more troubling update, suggested for example by Joseph Vogl’s work on ressentiment, is that anger does not need to be suppressed at all. It can be captured and put to work. Ressentiment can be channelled into fragmented and conflictual online communities often directed horizontally at other groups rather than vertically at the structures producing the grievance. The energy that might once have confronted the system can then become part of what sustains it.
Perhaps that is the real difference between the raised fist and the downward swipe. A system does not have to abolish your freedom or even your anger if it can metabolise both.
So I don’t think liberation means finding some imaginary position completely outside society. Nor do I think remaining within society means accepting “establishment control.” The harder question is how we preserve and exercise genuine agency within conditions that inevitably shape us, while also changing those conditions when they begin to undermine the very capacity for agency on which freedom depends.
For me that means not only cultivating the capacity to think and judge for ourselves but taking responsibility for the shared world in which that capacity develops: our institutions, our technologies and our public spaces. The task is not simply to optimise ourselves within whatever environment we inherit as some modern forms of Stoicism seem to suggest but to help create an environment in which others can exercise their agency too. In that sense, perhaps we need to recover something the ancient Stoics understood rather well: responsibility extends beyond the self to the Kosmopolis.
You still aren't being specific. You are being vague with "take responsibility". In what exact way? What do you wake up in the morning and do in order to "take responsibility" and "fight"? What anecdote or example can you share to show exactly what you mean?
"you are reading a bit too much into"
This is something people say when they want to act like the other person "cares more" about the conversation, when the truth is that you may just be dealing with someone who easily sees more deeply into your own position than you do.
Your comments are quite long, so not much "reading in" has to be done anyway. You go on at great length.
"Nor do I think remaining within society means accepting “establishment control.”
It does though. That's the point. You must succumb to some level of establishment control because if you (you personally) walk away, you will starve and die or be murdered by police. "we must choose to x" regarding that is arrogant, as you don't have a choice. That's kind of the whole idea behind your enslavement: not having a choice.
You don't have a choice until critical mass (about 10% of the population) is reached. Tables turn at that point. And even then, you will only have choice if you made sure to be on the right side.
By “taking responsibility” I mean fairly ordinary things: voting, organising, protesting, supporting independent journalism and civic institutions and pushing for institutions and technologies that enlarge rather than diminish people’s agency. But I think our disagreement is pretty clear by now. You equate living within a system with submitting to it. History suggests otherwise. Labour rights, women’s suffrage, gay rights and civil rights were all won by people contesting institutions while living within them. That is rather the point of democracy.
I also think “the establishment” is much too convenient a category here. Governments, courts, corporations, media and citizens are not one single actor pursuing one purpose. Treating them as a single “system” turns a complicated distribution of power into some all-powerful abstraction and then declares resistance impossible.
And your 10% argument actually makes my point. If nobody has meaningful agency before critical mass is reached, where does the first 10% come from?
I’m also not sure what freedom from “the system” would actually look like. Human freedom has always been exercised in a world shared with others. I’m closer to Arendt here: political freedom is something we exercise with others not something we acquire by escaping them. The question isn’t how to eliminate institutions but which institutions constrain our agency and which make it possible.
We don’t need to escape society before we can change it. Much of human history demonstrates precisely that. But since you’ve pressed me for specifics, let me turn that around: what does living outside “the system” actually look like? The moment people live together, they need ways of dealing with property, disputes, common resources and collective decisions. Whatever arrangements they come up with are institutions too. So where exactly is this “outside”?
Interestingly, most of your examples are things I would happily call taking responsibility: challenging government agencies in court, refusing illegitimate authority and building alternative businesses and institutions.
But lawsuits require courts. Businesses require property rights. Communities need ways of resolving disputes. You are not describing life outside “the system.” You are describing institutions.
I also think you underestimate how much agency democracy gives people. Many democracies have changed profoundly from within. Many of us simply don’t want to overthrow the democratic system. We broadly support it while wanting to change parts of it. The absence of revolution is not evidence of the absence of agency.
And democracy is certainly not majority rule. Majority voting is one mechanism within a system of constitutional rights, independent courts, minority protections and the rule of law.
Calling majority voting “fascist” therefore gets history almost backwards. Fascism destroyed political pluralism, constitutional limits and organised opposition. Using the term for collectively binding democratic decisions is not only historically wrong. It dangerously blurs the distinction between democratic government and its destruction.
"I mean fairly ordinary things: voting, protesting .."
Stopped there.
Majority vote forces the minority to comply on threat of violence, therefore majority vote is fascist.
Taking responsibility is much harder than just doing what you're told ("vOtE oR dIE"). That's easy. Take responsibility means filming police stops for yourself and for strangers. It means filing lawsuits against government agencies that violate your rights. It means getting vocal with "authority" and telling them NO on the spot where others can see you as an example. It means losing financial stability and social approval by refusing to step on heads or gossip or be a petty baby lackey to your boss at work to get ahead.
"Organizing" often is code for "posturing" and inserting yourself as a leader in a group of dissenters who've been at it way longer than you and have - and have a lot to teach you. Always start out volunteering to do data entry and lift heavy boxes: never start out in a field of interest thinking you will get to speak or teach or "make decisions" (and no one gets to make decisions for anyone but themselves as individuals anyway).
Protesting in the form of begging masters for something is not the right mindset. "Protests" are really most useful as places to meet like-minded people. Forget trying to beg the rulers to put socialist bandages on socialism-created axe wounds. Instead, "organize" and EXECUTE your entry into business by creating more independent parallels to current industries. For example: we need people who can grease the wheels (legwork and paperwork - and it pays!) of micro-investing into local family businesses so that people will start doing that instead of dumping money into 401ks and Roths and the S&P ect, which are bad investments long term. Just as a specific example of how to toss the rulers out of power by starving the beast.
Either actively move toward freedom from bondage to the ruling families, or be counted among those who live on the fringes of society as the tables turn.
Amazing read! It really resonated with me, thanks for sharing! I might let this sink in a bit and give it a truly deserved reread. In the meantime, I’d love to know if there’s more material to dive deeper on the topic (besides the bibliography indicated). I feel like this topic is really important and needed to find meaning in today’s society
Thank you for you thoughtful words, I am glad you resonated with the article! Few good reads might be...
The Burnout Society by Byung Chul Han
The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
One dimensional Man by Herbert Marcuse
As of Foucault and Sartre, their individual works are obviously very remarkable, but secondary references can be very helpful:)
This was fantastic. I'm far from the only one who thinks this way of course, but the fundamental opposition between capitalism and existentialism has come to be a cornerstone of how I think and this essay just beautifully and urgently lays it out.
I suppose my only quibble would be in its final words: "To practice existentialism in a capitalist world is not to escape the system; that is neither possible nor the point. It is to remain conscious within it, to keep authoring yourself even when everything around you insists the story has already been written." I'm unsure if this is saying exactly what I think it is.
Of course, merely being an existentialist by itself does not allow you to escape capitalism. Nonetheless, to the existentialist, capitalism must be transcended. A fully authentic life is, as Kalika vividly illustrates, ultimately impossible within the strictures of a system that regimentizes life and experience. Sartre, after all, spent the latter decades of his life as a communist, and some of his best work attempts to sketch a synthesis of existentialism and Marxism.
Perhaps I'm demanding a bit too much, and I am, to be clear, not trying to put Foucauldian thought in opposition to Marxism here (plenty of Marxists famously find a lot of use and insight in Foucault and integrate his thought into their framework). In fact I wonder if I am even ultimately arguing for Marxism here as much as I am trying to tease out whether there's room in the author's worldview for the collective negation (some might say the overthrow) of capitalism. Would be curious.
Thank you so much for such a thoughtful reading. I really appreciate you engaging so deeply with the conclusion rather than simply agreeing with it. You're right that my essay intentionally foregrounded existentialism as an individual mode of consciousness rather than a programme for structural transformation. My point wasn't that consciousness within capitalism is sufficient, nor that capitalism ought not to be transcended, but rather that existentialism begins from the individual's lived freedom even within conditions they did not choose. I absolutely agree that Sartre's later engagement with Marxism complicates this picture in fascinating ways. You've definitely given me something to think about regarding whether the essay should make more explicit the relationship between existential authenticity and collective political action. Thank you for raising it.
Hello, first of all, congratulations on this magnificent article! It is at the very least the most thought-provoking thing I've read this whole week. And I thank Alexander too for posting his comment, a beautifully put inquiery.
I feel most grateful because the same thought crossed my mind. It is definetly not enough to have only existencialsim as our highest ambition, and I was glad to read your clarification.
However, I write this comment because I believe that the ultimate goal is action, It is of course a very complex thing, diving deeper into the murky waters of how to put theory into practice. Pheraphs my daily frustration over the state of the world, which you portrayed here perfectly;
"Ignorance, on the other hand, becomes a neutral emotional state of living that conceals catastrophic realities and projects a tailored one in their place; no wars, no atrocities, no calamities, just the illusion of soft living in an apocalyptic world"
It is due to a lack of mediums and resources to feed on how to "do" things, and not just sit with the heavy conciousness of it all. I know little of philoposhy, but I have always loved deep-thinking. Would it be possible for you to recommend some good material on how it would be possible for us to change things?
Thank you so much for your kind words. To be honest, I don't think I have an answer to how we change things completely, and I'm suspicious of anyone who claims to. My own view is that meaningful action begins with refusing the paralysis that often accompanies awareness. We cannot solve everything, but we can choose what we are responsible to. Perhaps the challenge is not changing things in their entirety, but identifying the sphere in which our actions can become concrete and consequential. As for readings, I would recommend Camus' The Rebel, Freire's Pedagogy of the Oppressed, and perhaps even Arendt's reflections on action and political life. They approach the problem differently, but all wrestle with the question of how consciousness becomes action. I'm glad the article resonated with you:)
This is a great read! I’ve been talking about it all morning. I really resonated with idea of an identity constructed through utility and consumption, facilitated through screens. This piece articulates how many of us feel. But I question the idea that capitalism is unique in preassigning an essence. Paraphrasing Beauvoir ‘our bodies are our grasp on the world’ humans are always born into situations that assign gender, faith, or utility to oppose before we have developed the autonomy to make choices. What I think the essay is steering us toward however is an articulation of how bleak capitalism’s available identities are.
Thank you Samuel! I'm glad that it resonated with you and I agree with your excerpt from Beauvoir, it aligns with a broader sense of what I'm trying to point out in the article:)
"They supply pre-packaged values, thoughts, opinions, and identities, delivered quietly and efficiently, while we float around the world carrying them as our own" If only we could get kids into Sarte and Foucault instead of Peppa Pig
Thank you for your thoughtful words! I also believe that it is not only about getting the kids into understanding Sartre and Foucault, but also making them independent agents; independent enough to discern and detach when required. The thinkers will give a foundation, but we as individuals must build on it!
This text is over-adorned and conceptually muddled, using heavy, mismatched vocabulary that sounds poetic on the surface but collapses under logical analysis. It sacrifices clear communication for a dense, pseudo-intellectual aesthetic.
Thank you for reading and for the feedback. I am originally oriented towards literature and poetry and I've embedded conceptual analysis. Clarity is something I'm always working on as a writer, and I appreciate your perspective!
I am sure , language is made complex here just to sound more intelligent.
Same ideas can be expressed in 10x simpler language !!
Thank you for your thoughtful feedback. I usually come across a lot of people who take a while to understand my writing. And personally, I don't believe that it is a flaw, because there are certain ideas and notions which require a lot of nuance. And I believe that lucidity sometimes becomes a challenge to write with. My primary language style is surrounded around complexity and a lot of my work reflects that. And I appreciate your concern, however, it is not that easy to put across complex ideas in the simplest language without compromising on the nuance. I could write it in a simple language, but then it would be a much longer essay, because I always try to corroborate every relevant aspect of the concept. As of now, I believe that accessibility is not my concern. Meaning is my concern. And once the meaning reaches people, either by navigating the complexity or through lucidity; my main goal is to convey my philosophy in a meaningful manner. And even the philosophers that I have cited, they have a predisposition towards complexity in their writings as well. So I am doing my level best to concise those nuanced ideas to something readable, something that could be pondered upon, something introspective without taking out the crux of those concepts. And that is my attempt here. If you don't appreciate it, I completely understand. Curiosity always beats performative intelligence, so I don't need to justify myself further:)
This is a great read. It reassures my belief that there's meaning in the attempt, no matter how little. The dilemma, though, is that merely existing in the system is extractive enough to tire me out at the end of the day that I've found making room within the mundane to define my own individuality even more laborious. Not always, but most days, it comes down to capacity. This is the more pessimistic side of me talking.
Thank you for your thoughtful words!
You believe you are the author of yourself. But who is the you that is author? It can’t be your self. If it were, nothing would be authored. But if it is not yourself, who are you?
Very nice piece! Made me think of the fall of the Roman Catholic Church and its hold on Europe back in the day, which led to the rise of humanism. Super interesting read!
Oh that's a really cool and apt analogy, it's one of the prominent examples of how systems have the power to hegemonize societies… I'm glad that you resonated with the piece:)
To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best day and night to make you like everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.
~E.E. Cummings
Thank you, wonderful read and enlightening. You underpinned what I’m sure many of us feel.
Thank you! It truly means a lot:)
Kalika, this is an extraordinary essay but you're from a culture that has seen systems of knowledge that have gone far beyond existentialism. 'Freedom' was understood in pockets of that culture as transcending all cultural frameworks and structures by deeply understanding how they're constructed in mind. This isn't woo woo but traveling upstream from existentialism.
"Understanding refers to understanding all aspects of conditioned existence (impermanence, insubstantial self, unsatisfactoriness); how it works; how we create it; how we make ourselves victims of our own creation. " Tarthang Rinpoche
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Thank you for your thoughtful perspective!
This is a fascinating point, and I think you're right to question the assumption that existentialism should be treated as the endpoint of the question of freedom. What you've described introduces a very different conception of liberation, particularly in its treatment of conditioned existence and the construction of the self. I hadn't intended to suggest that existentialism exhausts the possibilities of thinking about freedom, but your comment makes me wonder whether some of the questions I approach through existentialism could be pushed further by placing them in conversation with Indian philosophical traditions. I especially appreciate the distinction between working within a structure and understanding the conditions through which that structure, and our experience of ourselves within it, comes into being. Thank you for this. You've given me quite a lot to think about.
Thank you for such an incredible read!
I believe this article closely correlates to another issue I have been thinking about lately: the rise of technology and ai. Social media recycles what already is while embedding new preconceptions for our subconscious to feed upon. Not only is it incredibly dangerous when it comes to individuality, time preservation and attention span, but it also tires our brains out to the point where we not longer can create: thus returning us back into a state of passiveness and conformity. I think it is important to schedule time within our day, outside of our physical and mental routine to create something new to liberate ourselves from this limiting loophole.
“When systems pre-assign your values, your ambitions, your definition of a life well-lived, they are not merely influencing you; they are doing the philosophical work that was always supposed to be yours.”
While I agree that building an identity around consumption and productivity is harmful, I do not believe we can escape systems that pre assign values because we exist in communities. When we are born, we are automatically given an identity, morality, and an understanding of the good life. Later we can assess the presumed philosophical work given to us by our community but we can’t get to the point of examination without originally being given implicit philosophical grounds to work upon. I really love your piece and agree with most of it but I think it overemphasizes individualism and disregards the community.
Thank you for your thoughtful take! If through my writing, I came across biased to some specific line of thought, I don't mean it. I do agree that we're born with a foundation, what Sartre refers to as "facticity" but after all, it's our job to transcend this and make an identity of our own. Sometimes we actively do this work, sometimes systems do this for us and we passively accept it. It is here, that it becomes important to witness and become aware and act upon it:)
Excellent piece. And thankyou for not using AI...I can tell. Cheers.
Thank you, I'm glad that it's reaching so many people! And yes... being a writer since a very young age, it's safe to say that I passionately despise using ai for writing. So yes, I'm glad that I don't use ai:)