Great Minds (and..Existentialism)

For those who are unfamiliar with this philosophical movement that began in 1940s, Existentialism asserts that man creates his own world and the meaning that surrounds it. The concept of existentialism is itself ironically subject to one’s own definition of its meaning in the sense that it has many different interpretations dependent on the philosopher whom one’s outlook is the closest to. The prevailing definition of existentialism seems to be, however, that existence precedes essence, which means that we exist initially without any fateful path in life; our existence develops a meaning by our own doing, by our own creation of this meaning. In short, we create our own meaning of reality.
To some philosophers, such as Nietzsche who wrote the famous words “God is dead”, atheism is a premise to existentialism. Yet to others it is merely a part of existentialism. As one is free to create one’s meaning of life, this meaning may incorporate the belief that the world began by chance and existence just manifested itself out from nothingness. One could alternatively believe in an omniscient entity that has already traced our entire destiny and therefore has predetermined in some way the meaning that we are to attribute to life itself. Or one could also believe in an omniscient entity that has left the part of creating meaning to our will. I find myself more in agreement with the latter belief. However there are boundaries to this power to create, and these boundaries are created by humanity itself. This is mainly due to the following phenomenon. Man seems to have a substantial need to be understood and therefore to have their personal meanings validated by others. This need is exactly what prevents us from losing touch with “reality”. We tend to embrace the meanings that we share with others and reject the ones that we find no validation from others; in order to stay within the confines of what is considered sane and rational. However this is merely a safeguard put in place by nature itself to prevent us from straying too far away from the human connections it intends for us to develop. Otherwise there would be an enormous gap between the way one man perceives the world and the way another man does. This would result in an inability for men to communicate with each other because of the radically different paradigms that each human mind would create for their own reality. The consequences of such an event would be simply chaos. In the interest of maintaining order, humanity’s consciousness therefore advances as a whole to become what we call “general wisdom”. This collective wisdom is merely the generally accepted meaning of all things. One is considered sane and/or rational if one’s personal expressed meanings belong to this collective group of meanings.
Occasionally a great mind will emerge from the human lot. This mind will aim to comprehend and be aware of the existence of this collective wisdom however without totally embracing it. It will dare to stray from the beaten path of thinking patterns and indulge itself in ones that are far and beyond the confines of generally accepted human line of thought. Their meaning and understanding of life becomes truly unique and even contagious. For due to the fact that they are still in touch with “reality” as is generally accepted, the average mind is incapable of writing them off as irrational or insane. People are only left to marvel at the novel possibilities that the new meanings brought forth by this great mind have opened up for humanity. Examples of these minds are Gandhi, Einstein, Freud, Carl Jung and many others who have lived our world. The great minds themselves are evolving just as collective unconsciousness is; after all they are a part of the collective unconsciousness (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_unconsciousness). This enables great minds to work on the back of others. The powerful thing about great minds is that any human being has the potential to be one. All that is needed is a genuine desire and honest effort to find out what one’s reality means to oneself. This perception of reality needs to be pure however. By pure is meant that it must be unadulterated, by our selfish desires of how we wish it to be, or by others’ coercively expressed beliefs of what reality is or by the greedy desire to use the expanded perception that this greater view of reality provides for selfish or worst destructive ends. Evidently a great degree of self knowledge is necessary for this purity of perception to be possible, because without self knowledge and profound self awareness, one can never be sure that one is not being influenced by his or her environment to accept a meaning or reality that is not the true reality.
One may argue that to agree with existentialism is to deny the existence of a true and absolute reality. Yet this is not the case. Reality happens to be so vast and so complex that we are merely constructing models of infinitesimal aspects of it. And I suppose these models are what I was calling hitherto “our own reality”. These models are essentially the meanings we give to the different parts of this absolute reality that we are part of. They are effective to the degree that they fit within our ever evolving puzzle of life and make reality seem intelligible to us. These models of reality are ours to change and alter in order to synchronize with the absolute reality. Great minds create better and better models of this absolute reality and in turn give a great push to the collective human wisdom.