Existentialism is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on the lived experience of the thinking, feeling, acting individual.
In the view of the existentialist, the individual’s starting point has been called “the existential angst,” a sense of dread, disorientation, confusion, or anxiety in the face of an apparently meaningless or absurd world. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value of human existence.
Absurdism originated from the 20th-century strains of existentialism and nihilism. In philosophy, “the Absurd” refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe. The absurdist philosopher Albert Camus stated that individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence.
All three arose from the human experience of anguish and confusion stemming from the Absurd: the apparent meaninglessness in a world in which humans, nevertheless, are compelled to find or create meaning.
The three schools of thought diverge from there. Existentialists have generally advocated the individual’s construction of their own meaning in life as well as the free will of the individual. Nihilists, on the contrary, contend that “it is futile to seek or to affirm meaning where none can be found.” Absurdists, following Camus’s formulation, hesitantly allow the possibility for some meaning or value in life, but are neither as certain as existentialists are about the value of one’s own constructed meaning nor as nihilists are about the total inability to create meaning. Absurdists following Camus also devalue or outright reject free will, encouraging merely that the individual live defiantly and authentically in spite of the psychological tension of the Absurd.
Camus himself passionately worked to counter nihilism, as he explained in his essay “The Rebel”, while he also categorically rejected the label of “existentialist” in his essay “Enigma” and in the compilation The Lyrical and Critical Essays of Albert Camus, though he was, and still is, often broadly characterized by others as an existentialist.
Prometheus is an isolated being born into the universe, barred from knowing ‘why’, and he must face the absurdity of existence by trying to create his own subjective ‘meaning’ or ‘purpose’.
Imagine now Prometheus Project Plot of Ground as my philosophical angst for finding purpose, significance, and meaning in life. Every single post of mine is like wondering on a linear horizontal path, sliding on a narrow plain of thin ice, and drifting in dire straits on an abstract libra with existentialism on one side, nihilism in the opposite direction, and absurdism like a neutral factor in the middle interchanging charges accordingly and alternating between extremities.
Swans of Hope is my humble attempt to bring peace, ease, balance, stability, and equilibrium. A personal effort in creating a new dimension, meaning the parameter ascendance through the expression with poetry, which I translate as my vertical line draw that can point to the Form of Good.