Finding Personal Meaning in an Indifferent Universe

📊Daily Poll📊 💭Which branches of philosophy bring you the most joy? Image 📷 Artist Google image search says Adria Fruitós Gemini said Emiliano Ponzi🫩 But as a side note here, I purposely avoid AI art for my daily poll because even tho I am techno-optimistic, I like to be human-centric🥰 (It’s a cool illustration of a dark silhouette totally lost in a book. The bright blue cover replaces their face, with eyes drawn on it to show how deep they’ve dived into the story.) ✨️Inspiration✨️ I came across a fb memory on my main, it said: "Basically what existentialists believe is that even though this world is a meaningless place it's our duty and responsibility to give it personal meaning and that is the difference between suffering and existing versus actually experiencing things and being alive" 🥹 It's mostly right but existentialism believes the world is indifferent, not meaningless, making meaning is one's own responsibility 🖤 Its key themes are authenticity & being true to oneself, also embracing the subjectivity of truth being lived & felt (not just known & taught) Untangling this status from 3 years ago, I realized there are two other branches of philosophy in this quote 👀❤️‍🔥 Absurdism & Logotherapy 😁💭 Absurdism goes a lil further noticing that while humans crave meaning, the universe is quite meaningless & that tension is to be celebrated 🫠🎉 But while I am familiar with existentialism & absurdism, Logotherapy was new to me...🥲 But the most simple grasp of etymology makes the concept immediately clear 😅 Anyway I found the writer Viktor Frankl, a Holocaust survivor (who lived until 1997) and saw he wrote a book called "Man's Search for Meaning"🥰‼️ The most beautiful thing I have ever seen is this quote of his❤️‍🔥💯 "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms—to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." & to answer my poll question 📊✨ Logotherapy, Absurdism, & Existentialism for how they empower us as humans to literally take responsibility in shaping our worlds 🥹 ending with more Viktor Frankl quotes because I got a lil emotional reading them🥲🖤 "For the world is in a bad state, but everything will become still worse unless each of us does his best." "An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior." "Life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose." & I liked the Goodreads rephrasing of the Google search quote, "Forces beyond your control can take away everything you possess except one thing, your freedom to choose how you will respond to the situation." 🥰🥰🥰

The user reflects on the philosophical concept of finding personal meaning in an indifferent universe, inspired by a Facebook memory about existentialism. They elaborate on existentialism, introduce absurdism and logotherapy, and find profound inspiration in Viktor Frankl's writings, particularly his emphasis on the freedom to choose one's attitude. The post highlights Logotherapy, Absurdism, and Existentialism as philosophies that empower individuals to take responsibility for shaping their reality and choosing their response to circumstances.

Existentialism for sure. If you haven’t, you have to read The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky. Literally changed my life. I majored in Russian Literature in college because of it lol. It pretty much contains everything you need to know about life in a single book. It’s about four brothers who basically represent different facets of humanity and the question is which one of them killed their father. I love Dmitry. But I bet you would identify with Alyosha. Read it someday!