The Human Condition

We are subjective beings. We experience the world, experience ourselves, experience Qualia* (a quality or property as perceived or experienced by a person). We are conscious. This goes beyond being affected by things – we experience phenomena.

We sense our mortality, and seek to overcome it. We are always striving to rise from below to above, to overcome our fundamental state of inferiority, smallness, weakness, and vulnerability in the face of the universe.

We have a sense of our own agency. Regardless of one’s rational philosophical belief, including even the most hard nosed determinist, each of us thinks, feels, and acts as if she is, or desires to be a free agent. We act pragmatically as if we have free will, and we strive to exercise this implicit free will. We have the capacity to respond to the world around us, and a sense of choosing how we respond. We resist efforts to limit this autonomy.

In our subjectivity we are born into this world alone and so we die.  Yet we are also in connection. Our ability to overcome is dependent on our connection to others. No one can survive or flourish in isolation. We sense our solitude and strive to overcome it, yet at times we also come to sense others as potential dangers to our autonomy and freedom.

We are impelled to make sense and meaning out of the world around us. We need to do this as a means of overcoming.

These interconnected facts form our fundamental existential condition. They are because we are.

 

 Life Tasks

On the path toward overcoming we are faced with three central challenges or tasks in life. Through engaging these tasks we exercise our agency, enter into connection with others, and thereby rise above our previous limits and sense of inferiority. How well one succeeds at these challenges determines one’s well being, happiness, and fulfillment in life. The degree of success in meeting these challenges is commensurate with how meaningful one’s life becomes. The tasks are Intimate Love, Friendship, and Work.

Intimate Love

Alfred Adler referred to this task as Marriage, but really what he described was a primary relationship that involves forming an intimate bond from which we experience some measure of unconditional positive regard. This involves being connected in a state of empathy, compassion, and vulnerability. It involves a strong desire to be connected with the other, and a strong desire for the well being of the other. It is based on mutuality. It usually, but not necessarily, arises in conjunction with erotic desire and falling in love. It does involve a narrowing of focus toward another human being.

Friendship

Because no woman or man is an island, our well being as individuals is caught up with each other. The capacity to form positive bonds is essential to forming cooperative relationships. We are socially embedded, and any one’s success in overcoming one’s self and one’s inferiority and insignificance, is dependent upon one’s social relationships. We form a sense of identity through friendship. It is how one finds a place in the world, from where one can extend one’s self to grow and overcome. Without a measure of social connection any individual will become alienated, empty, bored, and despairing. This why solitary confinement is such torture. It is through the sharing of effort that any of us is able to create. The physical materials, ideas, language we use to think with, our ability to reflect upon our own experience, and our ability to rise up at all are dependent upon contributions made by others. Intentional contribution takes place in the context of positive affiliations- from good will toward each other. A sentiment of community, a desire for the well being of others, Gemeinschaftsgefühl (community feeling), or Ubuntu, is the expression of Friendship.

Work

Work is about getting something done and is the expression of creativity. It is an exercise and transfer of energy that transforms the state of what ever is being worked upon. This often involves an economic exchange whereby the worker is able to procure basic resources for survival and growth, in other words: to put groceries on the table and pay the rent. The need to work goes beyond that however, and at a more fundamental level addresses the question of what does one do with oneself in the world. It is an expression of the creative urge, the formation of meaning which serves the need to rise up and overcome. It may involve building a bridge, painting a picture, digging a ditch, taking out the trash, discovering the mysteries of the universe, healing the sick, singing a song, climbing a mountain, playing a tennis match, or sailing across the ocean. All of these are manifestations of work. It may be engaged in as a solitary exercise or in conjunction with others, but it always involves some kind of transformation, and thereby transforms the worker who is relation to others, and so thereby transforms others as well. It also necessarily builds upon the work of others. No one is able to work on anything without drawing upon what has come before. So work always has a social aspect.

 

The Path Toward Well Being

To overcome one’s self, one must feel good about one’s self. This is variously referred to as self esteem, self worth, holding an existential position of “I’m O.K.”, feeling like a prince versus a frog, positive self view, self acceptance, or loving one’s self. Self acceptance enhances a sense of agency, self confidence, and what Robert Pirsig referred to as “gumption”. Three kinds of experience contribute to this state of heart.

The first is feeling unconditional positive regard (love) from another. The second is contributing to the well being of others, which can be thought of as exercising love toward others. The third is the exercise of creativity. All three of these experiences enhance connection to the world outside of one’s self at a fundamental level. Each amplifies capacity for the other two experiences. Receiving unconditional love and making contribution are specifically social functions involving other humans, and creativity directly or indirectly incorporates the social aspect as well. Any and all three of these experiences lead to a sense of self confidence, agency, belonging, and significance. They enhance the sense of being-in-the-world. They lend meaningfulness to life and make one feel alive and happy, even in the face of severe tribulation as Viktor Frankl has so eloquently shown us.

We are born with a great capacity and inclination to love and be loved, and to create. It is the essence of who we are. It is the essence of life.

Mistaken Paths

One may become discouraged in the pursuit of loving, being loved, and being creative whenever one experiences disconnection and alienation. However, the need to overcome, to rise from a minus to a plus is still active, as this is the most primary of motivations. Disconnection, alienation, and discouragement follows from a sense that one’s self is insignificant, unworthy, or bad in reference to the social milieu one is embedded in. One feels less than and disregarded by others. The natural strategy any individual is drawn to adopt in this circumstance is to attempt to rise up by establishing superiority over others. The corollary to being superior to others is to establish others’ inferiority, or put others down. Instead of overcoming one’s self, one attempts to diminish others. The superiority thus gained is illusory and leads to problems, does not ultimately contribute to one’s own well being, and clearly is detrimental to the well being of others.

This unhappy state of alienation and discouragement gives rise to most of the human generated misery through the ages. It stimulates fear, greed, hatred, anger, jealously, resentment, cruelty, willful ignorance, depression, arrogance, and the array of other disjunctive emotional states that tend to power most human destructiveness.

Encouragement

Courage is the willingness to act. It comes from the latin root ‘cor’ which is ‘heart’ which suggests motivation that comes from deep within, from the core of one’s being. Courage isn’t imposed from the outside although it may arise in response to external conditions. Courage leads to action that originates from one’s own agency, from a free will, and as such manifests all the power inherent in the individual that is acting. While courage originates from inside the individual, we are in connection with each other and thereby one can give courage to another. To encourage is to give heart – to stimulate the heart. This is done from one to another by conveying unconditional positive regard, and by being in connection with, or present to another’s experience. This cannot be affected or performed as a technique. It can only be done from a place of authenticity, from the heart. I am convinced that the necessary and sufficient conditions for psychotherapy are, as Carl Rogers described: unconditional positive regard, active empathy, and authenticity. Everything else, however valuable, is an adjunct. These are also the conditions for encouragement in all relationships: parenting, teaching, marriage, managing or supervising, working together, playing together, friendships, and so on…

 

*Qualia (pron.: /ˈkwɑːliə/ or /ˈkweɪliə/; singular form: quale (Latin pronunciation: [‘kwa le]) is a term used in philosophy to refer to individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term derives from a Latin word meaning for “what sort” or “what kind.” Examples of qualia are the pain of a headache, the taste of wine, or the perceived redness of an evening sky.