Go Go Gadget Existentialism

Define the American Dream.

A house in the suburbs for all your hard work, perhaps, or the chance to make dinero hand over the fists of your subordinates, or the opportunity to follow one's heart into the great wilderness and be praised as a hero? It's a strange combination of individualistic Puritanism, but it has one glaring - epic, even - flaw.

Nothing is or ever will be perfect. You can do all the pushing, all the inventing and all the sojourning you'd like, but for all your work, chances are that you'll still feel all roiled up inside. No amount of American Dreamer-ism can free us from the human condition, from the constant to-and-fro in our guts. It cannot free us from strife, worry, pain, neurosis, or fear. We are bound by these things as we are bound by our skin. Selling ten thousand cars won't cure this, exploring the Rockies won't cure this, rearing two less-screwed-up-than-usual children won't cure this. It may be trite, but we cannot escape who we are.

So why do we bother, then? Why do we do the things we do, why do we feel ambition, hope, ecstasy? Because we are and always will be dreamers, as a people, race, and species. We have the stars in our eyes and our feet on the ground, and are forever trying to bring the great chasm between them to a close.

And it's right that we should do this, because we need something to distract us from our watery insides or we will surely drown in them. Without the quest, without even the surface meaning of trying, we would be paralyzed, forever doom and gloom. We need to move forward even if that movement is illusionary, even if the great existential crises will never be resolved.

Do not mistake this as hopelessness. Without our daily tasks, we would have almost no meaning to our existence. Am I saying all of human history is one great diversion, one great trick to try and keep the stomach settled and the mind at ease? Well, yes. And why not? What other reason motivates us? God is just as absurd, as is some innate need to create and provide. We are always driven by desire, says the 8 Fold Path, and we are always in pain because of it. Our desire is motivated by our pain, I say - we do things to block out what we don't want to feel, to distract.

But this does mean that, because we cannot reach inner peace, we should stop trying. It's all about the pursuit. But when one accepts the final truth that things will never be perfect, that enlightenment is a myth and nothing will make you feel complete for longer than a few months, that is when the final freedom is reached. If you are no longer questing for perfection, no longer hunting for the right woman, man, job, or mission, you may find that the things around you take on a greater significance, a larger importance and a higher beauty. The small things may now be satisfying, and the things that grated on you before may now be bearable.

So what then, lower your standards to keep yourself happy? No. Or only sort of. Lower you standards to quell some of the internal sloshing and make it easier to do, create, and live. Otherwise, we simply might die as frustrated as we were born, crying out for anything to save us.