In defense of existentialism: Abusive childhoods lead to existential questions

WARNING: Do not read if you are sensitive to unpleasant and harsh ideas that lack positivity, optimism and joy. Existentialism tends to be the most negative and painful expression of philosophy.

Existentialism: Philosophical enquiry regarding the question, meaning, purpose or value of human existence. It delves into the areas of existential crises, and the absurdity of existence, which are products of one’s acknowledgement of their lack of meaning.

Existentialism is an unpleasant subject, a negative exploration of unanswerable questions that ends nowhere, and only distracts from true pursuits. But then again, what is a true pursuit if we can’t answer the most basic of questions: “why?”

Critics dismiss existentialism as mental masturbation, or as a coping mechanism for the uninspired, the depressed, the mentally ill. They mock existentialists as being weak, without values or principles from which to derive meaning, purpose, drive and direction. If you have no purpose in life, it becomes natural to question the purpose of your existence, right? Then again, without a fundamental purpose to one’s reason for existence, how can any further purpose in life be meaningful at all?

Perhaps a satisfying purpose of existence is accepting that there is no purpose other than living by one’s values and principles. But what is it that makes someone driven by values and principles, and others not? Is it perhaps their willingness to commit a leap of faith in their ability to adhere to their values and principles? Is it their expectation and anticipation of having their principled behavior recognized and rewarded in this life or a promised afterlife? Perhaps.

Yet existentialists still torture themselves with lack of purpose. They ask painful questions: Why am I even here? What’s the point of life? Why did I have to be born? Why even bother living. Critics of existentialism insist that existential questions are just the symptom of lack of motivation, inspiration, purpose, self-regard, confidence, etc. Yet these are just symptoms; not causes. So what is the cause of these deficiencies?

I believe the cause of the existential condition is early exposure to child abuse, which results in the formation of such neural pathways that generate these existential mental processes of despair and hopelessness.

I believe that humans with relatively good parenting and humans with relatively bad parenting are as dissimilar as different species. People with bad parents (and we know what bad parents are) are abused, neglected, and manipulated during their developmental window, when body and mind are formed.

Imagine a child who just begins to form his own self-image and identity. This child is neglected by his parents, so he subconsciously wonders why they even bothered to bring a life into this world only to neglect it, treat it like a bother, and blame it for their problems. This is the first existential question that begins to brew subconsciously in a child’s psyche: “Why am I here, if I am not wanted by anyone, not even my own parents who chose to bring me here?”

In his innocence, he blames himself.

The child sees how his parents treat him as an extension of their own ego, leaving no room for his self-determination. The parents tell him when to eat, when to sit, when to speak, when to do what they dictate. They never ask him his opinion, they never engage with him, never value his company, never give him freedom to explore values that will give him individuality.

The parents never praise the child for accomplishing things he values. They only praise him to their peers only when it serves as a boast to improve their status. They praise things about him that he doesn’t value or identify with, like his enforced hobbies, his grades, his manners, his obedience, and even his looks. They praise things that the child didn’t choose nor earn, which makes those things meaningless to him. The child understands that he is nothing more than an accessory for his parents, an object to gratify them only when they need it. The parents never praise their own child for the things he chooses to pursue. They fail to give him direction, or to encourage him to pursue his own system of values, principles and identity.

They abuse the child, psychologically, physically and verbally, and so the child withdraws internally to disconnect from other people, which again makes him wonder why he has to endure a tormenting existence without connection, meaning or purpose. Neglect, being abuse in itself, is similar to prisoner solidary confinement, as the child feels like in a prison of the body and of the mind. The child blames himself for the abuse, and in his innocence, he concludes that he is deserving of it; why else would his parents, whom he deifies by default, would choose to abuse him?

The child tries desperately to gain parental approval, if it would mean permission for self-love. But the parents are perpetually dissatisfied, withholding approval, and using glimpses of it as a means to manipulate the child into doing what they want. They rob the child of his chance at achieving even the slightest measure of free will, self-determination, and self-respect. What meaning would such an existence have, when it it holds value for no one?

The child then sees his parents abuse each other, and fight amongst themselves, because abusive parents are miserable together. So, the child wonders whether it would have been better if his parents had never met, and if they never had him. He wishes he had never existed, if that would mean sparing his parents their miserable relationship, and his own miserable existence. One of the parents, usually the enmeshing devouring mother, drama-boasts that she endures an abusive husband only because of the child. She tells the child that if it weren’t for his existence, then she would have not stayed with the father, and she would have been happier. When the child asks “but then you wouldn’t have me”, the mother laughs and says “But I would have had other children”. Who wouldn’t question the meaning of their existence when his own mother expresses regret for giving him existence?

Naturally, the child feels ashamed and guilty for existing. He begins to hate himself for merely being alive. He feels unwanted, and a nuisance that the world reluctantly tolerates. The child wonders why anyone would bring a life to this world only to neglect it, disapprove of it, and treat it badly. The child hates his own existence. He feels that his presence is unwanted even by his parents, the two people who are supposed to value his existence more than anyone.

As the child approaches adulthood, it is only reasonable to philosophize existence as a whole, and to see reality as something absurd, judging from his life experience. He sees his existence as something evil, and a source of suffering embellished with meaningless ephemeral purposes. He knows that his conception had no wholesome reason behind it, and it was also a demonstrable mistake; the onset of suffering.

From a young age of innocence, the child flirts with suicide, but always tends to chicken out, fearing the process of dying, but not death itself. He finds it cruel that he entered an unwanted life of pain that makes sure he stays in it due to an inflicted self-preservation instinct. Life for him seems like a prison, and an unfortunate accident. He doesn’t just wish to die; he wishes he had never existed in the first place.

So the child, from a young age of innocence, had never valued his existence, as he wondered why he had to even exist, when his parents clearly made a mistake. Existential questions are simply a reasonable dispassionate review of life: What meaningful purpose can someone who was unwanted from birth ever have? How could someone, who has known more despair and suffering than hope and joy, find purpose in his existence? Why does existence have to be in the first place?

And just like that, existentialism makes a bit more sense.

Good parents value the existence of their children, and they value the individuality and free will of their parents. Bad parents do not.

Existentialism is not just a philosophical question; it is a state of mind of scrutinizing one’s reason for being. It is a state of not wanting anything yet feeling an emptiness that can’t be filled by anything that exists in reality. It is the yearning for things that are outside reality, which is why people with existential issues tend to be introverted and immersed in fantasy or creativity. Existentialism is a condition of detachment and disconnect from reality; the creative imagination of surreal and unreal concepts. And when one is so detached from “reality”, they begin to question which state for them feels more “real”: their immediate existence or their gaze into the non-existent and the imaginary?

It is no wonder that critics of existentialism are terrified of it. For them, existentialism is a creaking door creeping open to the possibility that all meaning is a meaningless lie…

I’m just kidding… you know I love life.