My basic orientation has been existentialist for most my life. But existentialism does not itself provide a path to any particular purposeful trajectory in terms of what kind of life one wants to live. It is open-ended in this regard. This is its strength as well as its weakness.
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For whatever reason—and there are no doubt reasons beyond my immediate control—my natural tendency is toward negation and pessimism. This is why Zhuangzian Daoism has proven to be such a good fit in terms of directing me in a more positive direction. I have chosen this “imaginary solution” as a path into a greater enjoyment of life.
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This Daoist existentialism is by no means “the” dao, but simply the one that works for me. It is a chosen philosophy of life, where a multitude of such philosophies are equally valid. The real question is not which dao is “best”, but which dao works best for you.
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It seems clearly the case, that we are often stuck in a dao that does not in fact work best for us. We are typically born into a religion, certainly a culture, and just as certainly into a personal character. These bonds are not easy to break; nor should we expect that we will feel the need to do so, or could if we wished. It likely takes some kind of existential trauma for us to realize a genuine paradigm shift, a new dao, and that, unfortunately, will not necessarily be a more helpful dao. The loss of faith, for instance can be a gateway to freedom, or it can be a descent into cynicism and despair.
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To my thinking, the attainment of some degree of existential freedom—free-thinking—is worth both the birth trauma and the subsequent adriftedness. It is not, however, something that we need prescribe for others—all things being equal in the vastest arrangement, in any case.