Humans are blind to their own lack of an original fixed nature

Evidence

In the process, our attitude seems so natural to us that we perceive it as THE reality, and we are usually not even aware that it is an interpretation of reality created by us. The confrontation with other world views is a valuable expansion of our perspectives. However, the first reactions that usually arise are irritation, defensiveness, and a posture to fight for our own worldview. We prefer to surround ourselves with people who share our worldviews. This confirms us, creates security and a sense of belonging. … It feels comfortable in our shared nest of beliefs. We know who the good guys and the bad guys are, we agree. Our attitudes are shared and constantly reinforced by others, and echo chambers are created, confronting us less and less with alternative views. If these views appear, then as a common enemy that is despised, to be fought against. Black-and-white thinking is reinforced; there is also the impression (or the concrete experience) of losing membership in one’s own group as soon as one holds a dissenting opinion. For example, if you post a change of heart in the Facebook group of vaccination opponents, you are quickly expelled from the group. — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 155 (#exemplifies, via linked claim)

Thus this perpetually absent being which haunts the for-itself is itself fixed in the in-itself. It is the impossible synthesis of the for-itself and the in-itself; it would be its own foundation not as nothingness but as being and would preserve within it the necessary translucency of consciousness along with the coincidence with itself of being-in-itself. It would preserve in it that turning back upon the self which conditions every necessity and every foundation. But this return to the self would be without distance; it would not be presence to itself, but identity with itself. In short, this being would be exactly the self which we have shown can exist only as a perpetually evanescent relation, but it would be this self as substantial being. Thus human reality arises as such in the presence of its own totality or self as a lack of that totality. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362 (#expands, via linked claim)

Sartre put this principle into a three-word slogan, which for him defined existentialism: ‘Existence precedes essence’. What this formula gains in brevity it loses in comprehensibility. But roughly it means that, having found myself thrown into the world, I go on to create my own definition (or nature, or essence), in a way that never happens with other objects or life forms. You might think you have defined me by some label, but you are wrong, for I am always a work in progress. I create myself constantly through action, and this is so fundamental to my human condition that, for Sartre, it is the human condition, from the moment of first consciousness to the moment when death wipes it out. I am my own freedom: no more, no less. — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 27 (#qualifies, via linked claim)

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: The absence of divine design obliges us to act without hoping for cosmic outcomes — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 16; Absence of God entails the absence of any fixed human nature. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 10; Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 26 (+7 more)

Related

• Humans lack any predefined nature and create themselves through choices (similarity 0.83)
• Absence of God entails the absence of any fixed human nature. (similarity 0.82)
• Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature (similarity 0.80)
• Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality (similarity 0.78)

Broader Connections

• Human reality arises as a lack of an impossible self-totality #expands (0.85) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 362
• People mistake their culturally tinted worldview for objective reality. #exemplifies (0.85) — Holm Gero Hümmler, Ulrike Schiesser, Fact and Prejudice, 155
• Human beings create their own essence through action rather than inheriting a fixed nature #qualifies (0.80) — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café, 27
• Humans lack built-in detectors for their own compartmentalized thinking #exemplifies (0.78)
• Foreshortened perspective keeps people blind to irreversible environmental collapse #exemplifies (0.72) — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 2549