How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

Now, if you’re thinking, “You just told me there is no God and no ‘meaning’ to our existence, and that all we have are our choices, and now you’re telling me to make choices that model behavior for all of humanity? I kind of have a stomachache here, man,” well, that’s exactly the point. In fact, Sartre acknowledges that this particular human condition fills us with anguish—“the kind experienced by all who have borne responsibilities.” He knows how hard it is to be a human being on earth under the circumstances he describes, and refuses to let us off the hook. Life is anguish. Welcome to existentialism! And yet, for all the anguish it entails, Sartre believed, about existentialism, that “no doctrine is more optimistic.” The way Sartre puts it, in his trademark “everything I say is kind of terrifying, even when I’m trying to reassure you” style, is this: “Man is condemned to be free.” We have no crutches, or “reasons” to do whatever we choose to do, except that we have chosen to do them. (And I know what you’re thinking—what if I just don’t choose anything? No go. “If I decide not to choose, that still constitutes a choice,” he says.4) The “optimistic” thing about this condition, for him, is that “man’s destiny lies within himself.” If we embrace the idea that all we are is our choices, we are forced to freely make any choice we want, whenever we want. We have no other option—there’s no other way out of this anguish-filled mess.