Think about it: There is no experience you’ve had that you were not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is right there, in front of you or behind you, to the left or to the right of you, on your TV, or on your monitor or whatever.
-David Foster Wallace
All experience is individual, everything we experience, is ultimately our own. A great illustration of this is in suffering, which gives the individual experiencing this the impression the world is crumbling right before them, but we are to remember, it is not the world that is in dismay, rather our own individual worlds, and, as such, only we perceive everything around us to be falling apart. The frustrations you might have, the pain you might feel, the restlessness, anxiety, anger, sadness, is all your own, no one can share in any of these with you, you might suffer as a couple or group, however, we are to imagine this type of suffering as multiple individuals experiencing distinct pains, in a similar environment, with other individuals experiencing their own separate and completely different suffering, rather than collectively defining their sufferings as one suffering, they might suffer in a similar way, but the degree to which they experience that suffering and their response to it, is an entirely unique individual experience.
We might be able to communicate these experiences, through the use of language, but this is merely an effort to try and elucidate a similar feeling in the mind of the individual we are communicating these experiences to, this, however, is ineffective if the individual whom you have presented your experiences to, has never had a similar experience.
Most people genuinely believe they are the center of the universe, one does not necessarily have to have a narcissistic personality to believe this, most normal socially functioning humans believe the world and all its contents revolve around them, they might believe they are the greatest animal of the species, the most intelligent, but ultimately that the world revolves around them.
People also tend to believe in their immortality, not necessarily based on religious doctrine or spiritual conviction, rather, humans simply do not want to believe in their own mortality, we don’t want to imagine that one day we will die, be buried decay and have our once vivid and succulent flesh be reduced to nothing more than a hollow shell infested by maggots and numerous other organisms that feast on the decaying remains of organic matter, and eventually, ultimately be forgotten as if we had never existed at all. To combat this quite crippling awareness, we develop illusions, illusions that allow us to continue living and not address the issue of our impending, unavoidable deaths.
In Ernest Becker’s book, ‘The Denial of Death’, he states:
We don’t want to admit that we are fundamentally dishonest about reality, that we do not really control our lives. We don’t want to admit that we do not stand alone, that we always rely on something that transcends us, some system of ideas and powers in which we are embedded, and which support us. This power is not always obvious. It need not be overtly a god or openly a stronger person, but it can be the power of an all absorbing activity, a passion, a dedication to a game, a way of life, that like a comfortable web keeps a person buoyed up and ignorant of himself, of the fact that he does not rest on his own center. All of us are driven to be supported in a self-forgetful way, ignorant of what energies we really draw on, of the kind of lie we have fashioned in order to live securely and serenely.
Ernest, describes how the human animal represses this “death anxiety”, pays no attention to it whatsoever, although he may verbally acknowledge his own mortality. He does not really feel it, he is repressing the anxiety, he may also find solace in other material things, or people, that may distract him in a sense, keep him away from further searching his conscious for the root, the source of his anxiety, he therefore, refuses to address the issue entirely.
The individual develops a character, which Becker describes as:
Character is a face that one sets to the world, but it hides an inner defeat. The Child emerges with a name, a family, a play world in a neighborhood, all clearly cut out for him. But his insides are full of nightmarish memories of impossible battles, terrifying anxieties of blood, pain, loneliness, darkness; mixed with limitless desires, sensations of unspeakable beauty, majesty, awe and fantasies and hallucinations of mixtures between the two, the impossible attempt to compromise between bodies and symbols.
Character develops in an individual as a result of a fixation at a particular stage in psychoanalytic theory.
The human animal has a rather paradoxical obsession with individuality, he wishes to be different, to be unique, to stick out, whilst also finding comfort in conformity, in being part of the herd (Which can be seen in the Asch Conformity Experiments), so we’ve fallen into social groups, which are given to us by culture, we hide away and dissolve in the waters of society.
Culture is a blanket a scared child hides under, during a stormy night. Instead of building our own ‘protections’ and ‘meanings’, we can just as easily hide in those already set for us by culture. This, is the fundamental flaw of culture, the sacrifice of individuality, a man so engrossed in the meanings provided to him by culture is more likely to fall into deep depression, when he is taken away from those meanings, shattering the fabricated lies of a man who finds the greater part of his self-worth from culture, is equivalent, if not worse, to killing him. This man lives a trivial life.
As Becker states:
Why does a man accept to live a trivial life? Because of the danger of a full horizon of experience, of course. This is the deeper motivation of philistinism, that it celebrates the triumph over possibility, over freedom. Philistinism knows its real enemy: Freedom is dangerous. If you follow it too willingly it threatens to pull you into the air; if you give it up too wholly, you become a prisoner of necessity. The safest thing is to toe the mark of what is socially possible.
However, a man who finds the greater part of his meanings from within himself has quite little to worry about, he has a lower risk of suffering from anxiety, he is sure of himself, his life, therefore is not contingent on any exterior objects, people or places.
