My Take on Heidegger

Here's my off-the-cuff rendition of Heidegger's thinking:

As we live, our minds are immersed in the day-to-day stuff of our lives. Good things happen, bad things happen. Big things happen, small things happen. We notice a never-ending stream of events passing by, and since our lives are simply what we focus on, these events become our life. Our lives are a ceaseless stream of happenings.

These happenings are all beings (with a lower-case "b"). We're subjects focused on lower-case-b beings, objects that interact with our subjectivity. We're internal subject colliding with external objects. At least, that's how most people receive the world.

Hediegger calls us to Zoom way, way out. We're awash in a world of objects. But, he says, let's start from the beginning: Why does anything exist at all?

Once more: Why does anything exist at all? Why do Playstations and Mack trucks and chocolate exist at all? Where did everything come from? Why is anything here at all? Why are we alive? Why does the world exist?

Heidegger shakes readers by the collar. Look around! Look at all this stuff! Look at it all! Why is any of this here? Why are we here?  Why aren't you amazed?!

If these questions land with a thud, it's because in the modern world, we've forgotten how to ask them. In fact, we've forgotten these questions even can be asked at all. 2500 years ago, before even Socrates, Ancient Greek philosophers pondered these questions. Heidegger tells us "reach back into the oblivion of history", remember to ask these big-picture questions in the first place, and then ponder away.

We're not sufficenitly amazed by existence.

In fact, our entire conception of existence is wrong. We're not discrete, independent subjects interacting with a world of objects. That collapses all of existence into independent lower-case-b beings. All of existence is capital-B Being. Being encompasses this world that for some mysterious reason exsists. Our day-to-day experience of life is Being-in-the-world. Each individual is the sum of their selves and everything they interact with each day. You're not an independent point, separate from other people and things. You are a cloud of activity – there's a mutual interdependence between you and all you encounter.

The opposite of Being is Nothingness. All of Being is surrounded by Nothingness on all sides. It's utterly remarkable that all of this Being exists against the backdrop of so much Nothing. It could have just all been Nothing!

The problem with not being amazed with existence is that we miss this miracle. We're so lucky to be alive at all! And yet, how do most live their lives? With a fearful eye, glancing around at others, seeing what others do and following along, not wanting to make a mistep. But look around – nada surrounds you on all sides. You've got your slice of Being-in-the-world, your little stack of decades against the backdrop of eternity. How will you fill those years? As a fearful follower? Or with the courage and conviction to blaze your own unique trail of thought and action?

The choice is yours. Choose well. And while you're choosing, don't forget to look around and say "Wow."