David Foster Wallace on Why Existentialism Sucks

what did David Foster Wallace think of existentialism well today we are going to hear Wallace's thoughts on why existentialism is ruining American culture and then have a discussion on how 20 years after the statement by Wallace existentialism is still running rampant and causing a lot of issues and if you guys don't already know right conscious is the headquarters of everything related to David Foster Wallace to corat McCarthy and to all the greatest books and authors of all time here on YouTube so go check out my playlist Down Below on Wallace go check out the channel

for a ton of great videos and let us now hear from Wallace and and this is something else about like being an American when I hear the word existential now I like half of me rolls my eyes oh what a bit you know the big sexy like philosophical term and um and it becomes hard to speak seriously about it because all I can hear is being is is being made fun of for how serious and boring and dull I'm being if that makes s so I know that was a short clip but there's a lot

there and what Wallace was talking about is that Americans don't take life and art very seriously anymore we've started to turn away from the things that actually bring us happiness and fulfillment and part of that especially in intellectual circles is the virus of existentialism and I love ex existentialism look behind me right here I have a Camu book Camu book excuse me I got redpilled I got awakened by existentialism in the eth grade like I'm sure a lot of you guys did maybe at a later age existentialism is one of the kind of The Gatekeepers

one of the few paths that a lot of people who awaken to deeper levels of Education take especially over the last 30 or 40 years and there's nothing inherently wrong with that but what can go wrong is that when someone decides to stay in existentialism forever because the philosophy of existentialism isn't necessarily bad but the application and the use of it in Modern Life in your own life is where things start to go wrong and as a teacher I've seen this time and time again I used to teach at a school that sent 30 year

30 kids at least a year to Ivy League schools and a lot of them loved to research literature and philosophy and time after time I would see these kids who were in existentialism into existentialism excuse me and they would have depressive problems there was always something going on they were questioning everything and they were never really able to synthesize and be in the moment and be happy it got so extreme that I had one student who never came back to school because was in a long-term mental health facility for at least over a year but

this guy love ex existentialism that's all he wanted to talk about all he wanted to write about and when I look back and reflect on existentialist Ian from 8th grade even into my freshman year of college those were some of the worst times in my life even though I was being a Rebel Rebel excuse me even though I was pushing back against a lot of the institutions and ideas that are total BS I was missing the bigger picture I was actually missing reality I was not engaging in in the phenomenology of ontology and there are

levels to the game there are levels to understanding and when you look at people like Camu SRA haiger n uh kard you don't want to be like any of those people they were at the top level they were manipulating it and figuring it out for themselves but those aren't kind of the literary icons or people that we want to be like and even though they were espousing this philosophy of Free Will and of power look what it did to them and that's one of the easiest ways you can tell if a philosophy works one of

the best ways I can explain this is that I used to have this really crazy girlfriend she was a vegan this was like over a decade ago and I would grew up and lived in Las Vegas and there was this raw food conference that came to Las Vegas and she was a raw foodist and so she and I was only I was barely with her for a couple months and she drugged me along to go to this conference I'm like okay and I go there and I see all these people who are trying at their

diet they're like doing all these dietary restrictions and like spending all this time and I'm walking around I saw a lot of frail kind of people with sunken in faces and they were emotional and very very kind and spiritual and they weren't obese they looked healthier than I if we just got a random group of Americans into a room but I contrast this with four or five years after that I went to a Paleo conference really like kind of a sustainability and Primal living and eating kind of conference and everyone there looked healthy and jacked

and like looked like real humans who like were very optimized and they had boundaries and maybe they weren't as spiritual or emotional and stuff and like there were a lot more Bros there but overall it was a much better group and I was like this is the greatest advertisement of what diet is better and that's just my opinion but the same goes for almost anything in life and if you want to write like David Foster Wallace you have to go check out my free PDF on David Foster Wallace's favorite books it already has over a

hundred books in it and by the end of the week it will be over 400 books and continuing to grow as I do more research on David Foster Wallace and in June I'm going to the David Foster Wallace archive and going to dig up even more books that he liked or was inspired by and so all you have to do is go to the description below click the link and you will have not just his favorite books but his favorite writing books and the three books he always wrote with as he was drafting his novels

and essays when I look at what people who are going through University programs or professors and what postmodernists look like at most of the time and that's a generalization I'm like I want nothing to do with them even though I enjoy the philosoph and messing around with it I don't want to make that my identity because that's a no no and you can pick any group of people and usually you look at it from kind of a high enough level there are some generalizations and some things that the core philosophy that they are following turn

them into and when I look at the literature community and a lot of these Pathways existentialism most of the time is so inundated with the individual and this individualism that it never really moves into co-creative experiences and never really fully understands the depth of love because you don't get that being an atheist and I know a lot of you guys out there are atheists and you can access it but generally it requires religion spirituality meditation like a ton of effort and dedication to either becoming a aware of awareness and meditation or kind of these spiritual

Pursuits for you to access kind of these higher levels of love because you can love your mom you can love your dad but can you love Society can you love and feel and and and intu it at very deep levels and existentialist Ian was not able to do that that's the biggest difference between him and me I literally couldn't feel at a deep level and maybe that was because of childhood trauma and stuff but and I'm sure it was because I I was a person who was primed for existentialism because a lot of the time

because religion has been so watered down now that people never gain those spiritual experiences a lot of the rituals and the community aspects of Christianity and um a lot of the Pagan initiations we don't even have really Pagan initiation anymore but a lot of the complexity of religion has been watered down so people at a young age don't really feel feel the spirit they don't feel God I remember me I was going to church a bunch I I felt nothing I was like this has to be BS because there's nothing here and I know a

lot of people who kind of stuck with it and after a couple decades they felt it but that's way too long you're telling me I have to stick with this for decades that just means it's weak spirituality because when there's something like a psychedelic that can give you instant connection with you know something higher or you know actual religion or spirituality when you're when it's done the right way it can get you there in less than a year like have you really connecting with the spirit then I was like okay something's wrong here so I

felt like none of it was true that God couldn't exist that this was just a fabricated idea because I was in a low-level community and this is where a lot of kind of exch Christians move you know move into because they hear things about friederick n saying God is dead and they're like okay n didn't write fiction so what do I turn to well maybe the Stranger by Albert Kimu that's such a famous book because I've read it with my students before and I've read in eighth grade myself it's an easy book to read you

know I wasn't some talented kid in the eth grade I was just your average reader but I was able to get through it and understand it and that could be said about a lot of existentialist books and when there isn't that deeper connection you have to find it yourself but if you were wandering around aimlessly me at 14 15 16 years old I even though I thought I knew a bunch about reality I honestly knew nothing and I had no Elders around me no you know really no figures in the media didn't have the knowledge

to understand that all these other authors existed yet to be able to find guidance so I was relying totally on myself which first of all put a lot of pressure on my own experience and it made my experience the only one so I would start doing crazy things I was like okay if I'm going to live if I'm going to feel I'm going to have to make this happen myself and I got into you know criminal things and got in trouble and had other problems and when we hear Wallace talking here Wallace kind of he

said he rolls his eyes at these people because he knows that they are self-centered because that is one of the biggest problems in our reality I understand at the base Consciousness level when there's a zombie apocalypse or at the end of the day you have to focus on yourself and self-preservation is hardwired into us that you can't trust anyone but that's actually all a false belief that's been primed because of trauma most of the time if you're around good people you can trust them and if you hold the the belief that the world is good

that people can be trusted and you find those people eventually you're going to be living that reality but you first of you first have to have the acatic belief because those people those jobs those communities that you move to those come to you one by one there's not just a flood you don't get that automatically so when you look over at the chakras over there that one at the very bottom it's red that is base Consciousness and that's where most people are existing the first three are really base Consciousness desire for material um Power in

the world and like sexual power in the world those are the first three and that could be said of all levels of consciousness no matter what religion you're in and you have to trans once you transcend those first three chakras or transcend self-preservation sex and power you finally are able to reach the heart you're finally able to love you know the heart is really Christ Consciousness but you have to transcend the self you have to not be a narcissist I mean that's what we've turned our society into if you actually look at the principles of

Satanism the the first one is self-preservation uh back a long time ago back when I was an existentialist I would ask people I would ask my religious family members I would have them look at a list of the principles of Satanism and I wouldn't say there was the principles of Satanism and I would say say do you agree with these and they would be like yeah and most people in the world actually have satanic a satanic mindset I I don't believe I'm not a Christian I don't believe in like Lucifer but I do believe in

adversarial energy I do believe in kind of that dietic element of reality that you know Christians call Lucifer and that that energy is all about self-preservation and the self and gaining power sex and and and really at the core level living in a state of fear and so if you want to live in a reality where you're always worried and being fearful about everything going on and you're you know worried about the acquisition of money and sex and everything in that regard then you it's an endless maze I mean you could live in there forever

you could live in there for lifetimes and still not even get started there there's a whole globe a whole solar system and billions of people to conquer to even get that itch out and like that's not probable but when we look at people's politics like one of my main critiques of the whole libertarian movement why I don't identify as a Libertarian it's always about my freedom I went because my dad um was a professor and he studied um and he got my dad was a professor of Economics with Murray rothbart and her Hans Herman hop

who are very famous um anarchists and libertarian economists and so I would go to these um conferences with him sometimes because sometimes these libertarian conferences would come to Las Vegas and everyone was so focused on the self all these guys they didn't have that heart feeling it was they want to put up the barbed wire they want to be left alone on their own own property and do what they want and maybe um give out a little Charity and I understand that most of the time capitalism is a supreme system but capitalism can only really

work at a decent level if its constituents and the same goes with Communism honestly any system could work if the constituents were educated and heart-c centered but instead most people aren't so we have the libertarian movement also the spiritual movement so um I could I don't know too much about Christianity but I do know that a lot of people are very self like I said earlier almost everyone's focused on self-preservation but in the spirituality movement so I've been a yoga teacher for 12 years I am I have a channel on yoga and yoga philosophy I'm

really into all that and one of my main critiques and things I talk about over there all the time that's never gained any traction surprise surprise is that I call it the my Enlightenment movement everyone's just worried about their own alignment everyone wants to feel really good they're going to solve their issues they're going to feel good and be able to get a yoga high or a meditation high and that's all they care about but they don't realize is that the real goal what the Buddha talked about what all these other teachers talked about was

being a bodh Safa that's what Jesus talked about is about waking everyone else up you know bringing everyone else along on the journey that's the real calling that's the real message that's the real great work and so if you get too high if you honestly if you get too spiritual you lose the ability to be be able to communicate with others you get too woo and with the libertarian movement and the spiritual movement those are two movements that are pretty Grassroots those are I would say pretty authentic movements you know where people are actually trying

and very interested and very dedicated I have a lot of libertarian friends like I said I grew up on it I've studied it very deeply and there are a lot of dedicated people there but even they have been co-opted by self-preservation and that's the whole point of spiritual mental emotional and physical education is that eventually you're going to transcend to the heart you will get there but it all depends on the aaic philosophy that you're processing with if you don't even know that that's the destination then you may by chance get there you have this

sator Awakening which is an instant awak in but most likely you're never going to get there you're going to be running around in circles in a circle for way too long and that's one of the problems with ex existentialism because to get there is a fun time to get to the heart it's a fun time but it's actually a very serious time where you have to do a catalog of all your all your trauma and all your problems and like um all your habits and addictions and fix a lot of those and dedicate yourself to

something bigger than yourself because that's why that's why I'm doing this right now you guys I'm not doing this for some Financial outcome in the long run because I I would say I at least have some oratory ability I have some ability to you know be consistent with my content and book is one of the worst places to do it honestly Brandon's bookshelf go look up that channel that dude when he quit had the same channel size as me had you know put out you know videos of similar quality even though I feel like I've

put out better videos but that's because he quit that's because he was interested in making this big splash and he realized that that doesn't happen on book and so he immediately switched over to a channel it's called Mind shift now shout out mind shift great Channel but it's all about up um arguing against Christianity and within 6 months or so he has over 40,000 subscribers is uh it's his full-time job now and his videos are exactly the same as the book videos he was making in terms of quality and what he's putting into them all

he had to do was shift topics but I'm not doing that I'm here because I know that this matters I know that you know knowledge and writing in general are one of the most potent Pathways in the mental um education you know realm and they can also it can also teach you how to learn so that you can you know apply your skills and knowledge to the emotional spiritual and physical Pathways and so you're never going to see this channel go down six decades from now if I'm still alive I'm still going to be posting

here or writing blog posts or doing whatever I can or have handed this down to my kids or somebody else because this is bigger than me I'm trying to make this Timeless I'm trying to make sure that this knowledge lives on forever and that can never happen with existentialism and that is the core of Wallace's critique that is what we need to do eventually don't think of this as something that you can accomplish in a year because I'm still trying to figure this out after 12 years of trying to live a little bit higher in

terms of Consciousness but as a core base philosophy as something to explore and apply to your life you don't want to be an existentialist you don't want to be one of those little cool kids like yeah I'm an existentialist and smoking a cigarette and wearing a leather jacket you don't want that's not where we need that's not where the soul Jaws are at we need growth I don't care what direction you go I don't care if you're a Muslim or if you're Christian if you're a pagan or an atheist either go wherever you want to

go but we need people who are headed up or down exploring the deep dark elements of Consciousness either or but I don't need people in the middle I don't need people at Ground Zero just you know spewing off about what's wrong with the world I know what's wrong with the world everybody I live here I know we kill millions of people every single year I know that we have a ton of infighting and emotional trauma and that we have a terrible slaughterhouse system even though I eat meat I know all the pain and Trauma that

we're inflicting it any any idiot could tell you that it's not rocket science to figure out what's wrong with reality but to change yourself so that you can become a warrior in changing that reality that is hard especially when that our reality and the consensual reality doesn't want us to do that so that those power schemes and that money can keep flowing and so that's what our goal is that's the solution that's why exist existentialism can't work even though a lot of there's a lot of great stuff in existentialism I've talked about on this channel

before go search up right conscious existentialism you'll hear me talk about it I will continue to talk about it but it can't be our core operating belief or even really in the top 10