Empirical Existentialism

Disclaimer: The use of the word existentialism is not meant to draw parallels between my ideas and those of the many eminent / supremely mindfucked thinkers to whose philosophy, the moniker has previously been applied. If anything, the idea behind empirical existentialism is to develop a wholly personalized and purely experience-driven approach to philosophy and to life itself.

This is an attempt on my part to arrive at a systematic yet personalized approach to the development of an ever evolving set of heuristic approximations to aid in decision making, or in less exact terms, a way of life. The basic premise of this approach is to treat my experience of existence, i.e., my life, as emergent behavior arising from the interaction between two complex adaptive systems, namely my consciousness and the universe. Having decided on the overall approach, the next step was to evolve basic frameworks using with to regard my consciousness as well as the universe as I experience it.

I view the processes of my consciousness as taking two basic forms, perception and cognition. At first glance, this list appeared to be missing physical actions. However, upon further reflection, I came to view physical actions as a tool one may employ in the pursuit of perceptive and/or cognitive experiences. Next it appeared that emotion is another element which belongs in the above characterization of my consciousness. However, I have come think of emotion as higher order cognitive behavior, i.e. part of the response of my consciousness to interactions between itself and the universe.

The next step is to develop a basic framework using which to regard the universe as I experience it. The way I’ve come to think of it is as the context in which my consciousness operates. The nature of my consciousness affords me varying degrees of control over some aspects of this context. At least in my case, it is a given that human society is a vital part of my context. However, I have also noticed wide inter-individual variability, not to mention temporal variability, in the form and degree of the individual’s need for social interactions. Therefore, I feel it would be a good starting point to determine the sufficiency conditions that must be met in order for my need for social interactions to be fulfilled.

I thought it best to take an experimental approach and determine by trial and error the minimum, sufficient context to satisfactorily house my consciousness. However, these experiments deviate from the scientific ideal in three ways: I, the experimenter, have only partial control over experimental conditions; I am not afforded an independent point of observation on account of being the principal subject of my experiments; the interventions, conditions and outcomes are not quantifiable in the form of well defined parameters. Therefore, the approach I have devised can best be described as pseudo-reductionist. Further, it is important to note that this is by default an infinite, iterative process and will constantly yield parts of a solution that is far from time-invariant. In spite of these significant limitations, the utility of the process lies in enabling me to identify non-essential and more importantly, unfavorable interactions and thereby, enhance the efficiency of the process of living.

Based on systematic, iterative changes and observations made over the last two years or so, I can say with a fair degree of confidence that I have achieved rather satisfying and apparently sustainable steady state that has demonstrated little susceptibility to external perturbations.

P.S. Importantly, this is accomplished without the use of what I would call “cognitive over-damping” – suppression and concealment of unresolved thoughts/emotions – having engaged in it rather recklessly and to my considerable detriment in the past, I feel confident in my ability to identify it.