Justin Horn

Philosophy 111

Mr. Rollins

Due: May 3, 2013

Existentialism; The Self Heaven or Hell We Create

“The metaphor that Victor Frankl used is the existential vacuum. Then further

stating that meaningless is a hole in our lives. We allow things to rush in and fill our

vacuum and a primary cause of this need to fill the voids is boredom.” What I feel is the

meaning of existentialism is our desires to fill ourselves with our own habits, beliefs, and

emotions; thus, creating our own heaven or hell. When individuals are bored they look

for anything and everything to fill that empty space, whether watching television or

falling into a daily pattern of a drink. This need, I feel, also attributes to some of the

labels of today and some of the phobias; creating our own worst enemy to be ourselves.

Frankl stating that “meaningless is a hole” furthermore re-enforces the need for

individuals to feel some sort of meaning in their lives. No matter the claim on what type

of meaning, but most want to feel worthy of something. The pure sense of the feeling of

acceptance also fills the hole somewhat. All allow things to rush in as Frankl suggests

and “when people have time to do what they want to do, they do not want to do

anything.” Concerns should arise from that statement because are we truly filling

ourselves so much with nothingness that the meaningful things now seem less important.

We even fill ourselves with new gadgets of the tech age that takes away from quality

family time. The popular gadgets today consumes so many people and so much time; we

may see ourselves or someone else so drawn in by these things that the world around

them seems obsolete. Gadget designers continually make the devices more and more

user friendly, like the hands-free cell phone device. Laws became more strict and

devices became a grey area that still allowed individuals to fill themselves more with

meaningless stuff.

When retirees find themselves with no work to do they seem to be set off in a

frenzy; they are unable to come up with new things. Taking into account what I have

witnessed within my family, after my grandfather retired it seems extremely difficult to

pry him away from couch duty, he continually sits and watches nothing but the news. I

have asked on many different occasions if he would like to do something and on the few

instances he agrees to go it seems as if he begins going through withdrawals from the

couch because this seems is what he has chosen to fill his void with and everything else is

outside of the “norm” for him. The pure fact of doing nothing at all but watching

television could be a form of cure for boredom, as seen with my grandfather. Then on

the same accord he will also complain how this hurts and that hurts, but never seeing that

the lack of the inactivity could be a primary cause of aches and pains; however he

continues with his version of filling the void.

Habits are also a big thing that we fall into because we can easily blame all

actions on habit. For instance, if we allowed are cleaning habits to grow to a level that

we found acceptable is this were the labels like OCD come from? What may seem

normal to one may just not be normal across the board. I will use my mother-in-law to

show the example of habits; she has some overwhelming but harmless habits that skim

the surface of having OCD. Different occasions I have attended dinner at her house and

she can not wait until she or any one is done before the kitchen is in it’s original state;

usually my wife, her father and I all are already done with half of the meal before she

even begins to sit down. Daily she will go to the post office two or three times because

of her obsession with ensuring that her mail is not misplaced. Then there is the funniest

habit she has which is when the cat is using the litter box it seems as