Existential Crises

swatiraohnlu

Swati Rao
Existentialist thinking doesn't take up a lot of time. And there are many well to do people with lots of time who don't have an existential cell in their brains. Your statement actually insulted working class people by saying they don't have the ABILITY to think intellectually. If they did, the time they used for it would not be an issue--the thoughts would just be there. And they can and they do think existentially. Maybe YOU are ashamed that you don't have this inclination and you are are trying to impugn the whole group to cover your own intellectual emptiness.

DO you think the Working Class does not have time for Existential Crises?
 
That is a fairly elitist view. At some level most people question their purpose their reason for being where they are or why they are. It may not be when you would expect or as you would expect, but such questions will be coming to most at some point in their lives. Not everyone, but there are plenty of people in know who have lots of money that are insulated from such questions. They have so much that they have never had to deal with things that would put those questions in their minds.
 
It is my belief that the new vast middle class, as David Mamet has termed it, have too much time on their hands. They must have. They spend time trying to find themselves, they hum and haw about what their role is in the world, they question their choice of job, they worry about ethics, they concern themselves with whether actions that they performed were morally right, they are concerned with how global issues relate to them and all manner of other existential issues.
 
The existential crisis which Fintan O'Toole is going through, on behalf of the insensitive state which is failing to experience it, is no doubt connected with the inability of the Tribunals to do what the Irish Times itself failed in its ambitious attempt to do. The Moriarty Tribunal, as reported on another page, is ending as farce, having forgotten a letter it had from the relevant Attorney General, and conversations it had with him, and remembering a letter which, as far as can be ascertained, it was not sent. And this was all because Denis O'Brien saw the draft report expressing fact-free opinion and let it be known that he would take legal action to force the Tribunal to face the facts.
 
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