I’ve been very lax on the miracle-recording front recently, and I think there are a few reasons for this. I’m not going to bore you with them suffice it to say that life has it’s ups and downs, and will always do so.

Something I’ve been pondering lately is how to define self. Self is not just what we look like, how we act, what we own, what type of friends we have, nor the types of places we go. There is something independent to all that, the inner-ness of self. How do we go about knowing our self separate to all the of the above listed life accoutrement?

So, this is a related excerpt from a great little blog written by “a bro who loves philosophy” [otherwise known as Philosophy Bro]. This is a bro-summary of Sartre’s Being and Nothingness. Don’t mind the cursing; I think it gives to the meaning a certain je ne sais quoi.

Jean-Paul Sartre’s “Being and Nothingness”: A Summary

First of all, fuck Kant.

Why is his shit so needlessly complicated? A whole world we can’t talk about or know anything about? Then how the fuck can he possibly talk about it? What if the world is just exactly the way we see it? Why complicate things even further? Don’t tell me I can’t get to the chairness of a chair – it’s a pretty simply concept, chairness – it’s just being a chair. Legs, maybe a cushion, and you sit in it. Can’t stop being a chair. Was that so hard?

Look – there are two ways to exist in this world. Chairs just are the way they are, they have being-in-itself. There’s nothing special about them. But bros? Oh man, bros are a whole different story. There’s no intrinsic broness we all have; we get to make our own shit. Every bro is like a completely blank canvas, devoid of any color, and he gets to paint himself however the fuck he wants. Seriously, this blankness, this void, isn’t just any ordinary property; it cuts to the very meaning of what it means to be a bro – a bro exists with being-for-itself, with an incompleteness that he must take care of himself.

Maybe you’re thinking, “but Sartre – don’t we have a clear description too? Walks around on two legs, usually between five-six and six-eight, hair up top and all that jazz?” Bro, I get it. Nothingness is scary at first. So much room to work, and so little guidance; the thought of nothingness horrifies us. So if you want to take the infinite potential that is that blank canvas and fill it with a physical description of yourself, then fucking be my guest.  But you still have to do the work; it’s not like you’re achieving the certainty of being a chair that way. You’re just refusing to face uncertainty; that doesn’t make it go away. So my advice to you is man the fuck up, grab some colors, face the future boldly, and just fucking paint.

Don’t paint a simple physical description of yourself; don’t paint your job, or your stuff. You’ll never have the safety of being-in-itself; you’re wasting your time trying. Use your imagination; there are other voids with limitless potential. You can imagine what isn’t, and that tells you what you are, and what you want to be; make it happen. Who cares if you fuck up here or there? Paint over it. Humanity isn’t an 8×10 you get one shot at; nothingness isn’t a cup you get to fill once. As time goes on, you’ll see more possibilities, acquire new colors, learn new brushstrokes. But you don’t get any of that if you don’t start painting now. There’s a good chance you’ll never get it perfect. Whatever, bro. But you can know perfection through its absence; when you look at yourself and say, “almost! What if I just… that’s closer, even!” That’s how you can discover the truth of beauty – the drive to create is enough.

Written by Philosophy Bro. The full summary can be read here. Philosophy Bro love can also be found on twitter and facebook.