Existentialist concepts now operate as unlabeled common culture

Evidence

On the other hand, existentialist ideas and attitudes have embedded themselves so deeply into modern culture that we hardly think of them as existentialist at all. People (at least in relatively prosperous countries where more urgent needs don’t intervene) talk about anxiety, dishonesty and the fear of commitment. They worry about being in bad faith, even if they don’t use that term. They feel overwhelmed by the excess of consumer choice while also feeling less in control than ever. A vague longing for a more ‘real’ way of living leads some people to — for example — sign up for weekend retreats in which their smartphones are taken away like toys from children, so that they can spend two days walking in the country landscape and reconnecting with each other and with their forgotten selves. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 1000

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the broader twentieth-century pattern of once-radical ideas being absorbed into consumer culture, echoing accounts of how movements get domesticated after their founders die. — connects to: Popularized existentialism supplied the counterculture’s vocabulary and impetus — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 915; Existentialist categories migrated into postwar social science via Riesman, Goffman, and Arendt — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 895

Broader Connections

• Existentialist categories migrated into postwar social science via Riesman, Goffman, and Arendt #expands (0.85) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 895