Guy Reams (00:01.602)
This is day 31. Cogito ergo sum. So. So this Latin phrase comes from a very famous existential philosopher named Renee Renee Descartes. He had the famous phrase, I think, therefore I am. You probably remember. I was thinking this morning as I woke up and I looked in the mirror.
thought, you know, every day when you wake up, you should consider that nothing is true anymore. And that that I first I heard this concept when I was in my 20s. I heard a speech from somebody who were who they said this, they said, every day when you wake up, nothing that you believe is true.
And I never could get my head wrapped around that concept. It really bothered me. So for years I would contemplate this and I would think, what did that person really mean by that? So I've oftentimes thought about this concept and honestly it's probably rooted in this existentialist idea. So existentialist philosophy, if you don't know what it is,
is basically really trying to dig into why we exist. What prompted human consciousness? And many of the philosophers that have gone down this path have been philosophers that were religious and many that were not. Some were anarchists. Some were Marxists. Some were conservative. They come from all different aspects. Some of them...
Existentialism became very popular in and around World War II. Some of the more famous ones proceeded World War II by a few years, like Friedrich Nietzsche in Germany. And then several of them were involved in the war and then dealt with the post-war. And many French philosophers, like Jean-Paul Sartre, were part of that. And so it's interesting to...
Guy Reams (02:27.8)
think that these types of philosophies really came out when there was significant human conflict going on. You can imagine that people were really trying to question who they were and why we exist and why we would think this way. Jean-Paul Sartre, who was not a guy I typically would agree with much, he was, I can understand, he was a prisoner of war. He fought for the French and he was held in prison.
by the Germans for years. And he saw this really hypocritical kind of representation of the German society. He would see these really prim and proper people that would be absolutely humanitarians on one side, yet he would see these atrocities on the other. And it really got him to think like, how can humans be this way? Like what's going on? And so he tended to
romanticize kind of the communist or Marxist ideals of the time. So he romanticized the Soviet Union. What was then the Soviet Union? And so it was interesting to listen to some of his philosophies. And I've read several of his works. But he had a concept called existence precedes essence. And his thought was that
Humans should be responsible for their own actions. He would oftentimes say that we were condemned to freedom, meaning that we have been given freedom, whether we like it or not, and we have to choose for ourselves each day. So we can't sit there and blame our religion or blame our society. We can't blame the people that are an authority over us.
We have to take into consideration our own actions. So when you would wake up every day and go about your life, you have control over your own actions. Don't for a second let anyone ever teach you that you don't have control and freedom of your own actions. There is no static truth that is greater than your own freedom. Now, for many religious idealists, that would be, you know,
Guy Reams (04:51.788)
Blasphemous almost to say that humans were in charge of their own thoughts and not, you know, ruled by any higher authority. But from Sartre's perspective, it's like, why would you why use any religious authority or any belief in a God to hold you into some preset idea that caused you to do bad things? At least that was his opinion.
The idea that you should consider the fact that you exist and therefore you have to choose for yourself and they're therefore responsible for your own actions is actually a pretty powerful concept that our lives, how we are right now is an exact product of our choices and our actions. We really have nothing else to blame other than our choices or our actions.
Nothing else remains true. The only thing that remains true every morning when you wake up is what you are gonna do that day. Now, there are other philosophies that are similar to this and I've collected them over the years. One of them is in Zen Buddhism. This is the idea of Shoshin. This is the concept called the beginner's mind.
And you understand this philosophy already. Because you know when a child or when you were younger and you learned something new, you had a beginner's mindset. You took it on with fervor and with interest and excitement. When you let your preconceived notions or your habitual thoughts to invade you and your past beliefs about what's true or not true,
can seriously impact your perception. So the beginner's mind was this idea in Zen Buddhism that you needed to let go of these fixed beliefs so that nothing like that could ruin or prevent you from examining the truth. So every day when you wake up, you should adopt or every moment you're existing in, you should adopt this beginner's mind so that you can be open
Guy Reams (07:15.617)
to what you see.
However, probably and I started with this probably the most influential one to me was Rene Descartes. Rene Descartes was probably the founder of modern Western philosophy. I mean, many people claim Greek thought was the beginning, but honestly, this idea that, you know, this irrefutable thought that humans think
Humans have this conscious ability to think and therefore that is a precious thing. And we should embrace our ability to inquire, to understand, to know. And so this is a really interesting perspective. He had this idea called radical doubt, which means to doubt everything. Every day doubt everything, like take nothing for granted.
And and I think that's a daily affirmation that could have some value right just doubt everything But I'll end with all end with this person There was another philosopher of a very similar ilk named Sorin Kierkegaard who was a Danish philosopher He was alive in the early 1800s Probably around 1810 like 1850 and man
This guy had some incredible writing. mean, if you ever have a chance, you should read one of his books. I think his most famous one was called Either Or. He believed, and I think he was right, that your life's meaning must be found through individual choice and experience. He emphasized absolutely personal responsibility in order to become your trueth and excel.
Guy Reams (09:14.721)
And he argued that you become your true authentic, you become your true authentic self through an evolution of time. And he talked about various stages of life that you would go through. And these are really fascinating. He believed that there were three major stages you would go through. So in your early life, you know, into your twenties, you went through this aesthetic stage where you're focused on pleasure, beauty,
You know, you're focused on happiness. You don't want to be bored. know, boredom would lead to despair. So you're trying to, you know, do the things that young people do. And then as you got old enough, you would start to transition into an ethical stage. This is where you take on more responsibility. You have a family, you have kids, you own a home, you own land or whatever. You take a position, you get a job.
And so you start to wanting to live according to society's values. You want to fit in and be more ethical to hold up society. And a lot of people will stay in that ethical stage until you get to the religious stage. And now very important, sometimes people will get into the ethical stage by being religious. So they will join a faith or a religion and then they will be in that ethical stage in that religion.
And they may never actually be religious, but they will be part of a social structure in a religion and they will stick to it. Pretty pretty they will commit to it and follow all the things are supposed to follow. That is the ethical stage. So just joining a religion isn't the religious stage. I know that's confusing, but if you think about it, it makes sense when you're in the ethical stage, you're trying to. You're trying to be a good part of whatever society that you're part of, and that could be a religion.
The religious stage is the most challenging and many people don't get there. And that is when you confront your own limitations and you take a giant leap of faith. You take you find it deeply and this becomes a deep personal relationship with God or with some higher power where you start to really understand who you are and taking on something to find your true purpose in life. That's kind of his thought now.
Guy Reams (11:40.471)
He felt that if you disregarded this notion of who you should be, that would lead to anxiety and stress. And of course, this has been critiqued by many people. But the idea was that
This leap of faith concept, rationality or understanding the world and rationality could only take you so far. So you could be the most perfect upstanding citizen and it would only take you so far in understanding life's ultimate purpose. So you have to at some point in your life make a subjective, passionate leap of faith.
into something beyond logic or beyond empirical evidence. And that leap is deeply personal and sometimes a bit irrational. But the idea is that you confront your doubt in your affair, you overcome that, and you take that leap. And that is really the thing that transforms you into what he felt was a true person.
I know that's deep and heavy and it is because I think about this a lot. So the reason I bring this up is when I woke up this morning, I looked in the mirror. I thought.
Wow, maybe I should really question everything every day. Maybe I shouldn't take for granted everything that I believe all the time. Maybe I should go into my life every day with this eyes wide open attitude. And maybe I should be looking for that thing, the idea that will become me, that transformative type of mentality.
Guy Reams (13:35.735)
So I don't know what this does to help me. Maybe this confounds and confuses me. I don't know. But the point is, I think we should understand that we have a very precious gift, which I think all of the existential philosophers that I've discussed would agree with. And that gift is that we have been given agency or choice. We can choose to live our lives how we will.
We can take action and we can make decisions to do good things or not. So I think that
This is motivating to me. It's motivating me to know that every day I have the possibility to discover the truth once again. And by so doing, I may come up with something new or I may come up with something great. And so that's the motivation I would like to have every day. This is another day, another great day where I could make some great discovery about myself or about the world.
and accept that I have the ability to do so because I can think and because I'm human.