Reflection XII

11/30/2019

Whether we like it or not, we are all influenced by outside forces. From the day we are

born, we are all shaped from experiences and others in our environment. We eventually grow up

to be the sum of our experiences. No matter how free we think ourselves to be, we are never

truly free. Society always has a hand in who we are and the choices we “chose.” We are so

blinded by society, that some of us actually look up to other people; to mold our lives to follow

who they think we should be. Sartre describes this is “bad faith.” This bad faith is trying to

become someone else; someone we are not. We are never truly free to be who we are, to live

authentically, if we are always trying to mold our lives like that of others.

I am a christian. I am not afraid to admit it. I am also completely aware that I am not

truly living authentically because I am succumb to these doctrines preached by another person;

someone who hasn’t figured life out for themselves either. I understand the importance of having

churches, without them our religion would most likely die, I, however, do not attend said

churches. “Why?” you may ask. It is because I don’t want my authentic beliefs to be swayed by

another being. I don’t want to shape my life to best fit whatever the pastor feels like speaking

this week. Instead, I stay at home, and create my own unique experiences and try to shape my

life according to who I want to be; I found God on my own, in my own way. While I am sure

that a lot of my ideas come from what is written in the Bible, which could be argued that I am

living in bad faith because I am being shaped by someone else's teachings. Using that same

logic, wouldn’t follow the teachings of Sartre also be living in bad faith? He is a man after all,
and he is not you. This of course leads to a bunch of paradoxes, but without his teachings we

wouldn’t understand what it truly means to be free.

Who we are to ourselves, we have complete control over. My opinion of my conscious is

dictated completely by myself. That is very straight forward, however, Sartre doesn’t like to keep

things simple. He proposed an idea of “being-for-others.” We have complete control over how

we express ourselves to others, but that is not always how other people see us. We forget to take

into account others subjectivity about ourselves. We can try all we want to alter our outward

appearance to others, but they will always see us as a different being than we see ourselves. I was

walking around Mill Ave with my friends one Saturday night. We approach and talk to a guy

whose karoking skills did not go unnoticed amongst my group. He comments on one of my

friend’s appearances and says he looks like a frat boy. My friend is utterly shocked by this, as his

view of himself does not fit the stereotype of that of a frat boy. Perhaps the karaoke guy thinks

very highly of fraternity kids, while my friend thinks that anything related to them is negative.