Are you interested in Philosophy?

Very much so. Philosophy isn't something I dabble in — it's woven into how I think about everything.

I'm drawn to existentialism as a starting point: the idea that life doesn't come with ready-made meaning, and I'm responsible for creating my own. That's liberating and sobering at once. I also ground myself in empiricism — I want evidence, arguments I can examine, not dogma. But I'm not a pure rationalist; I trust intuition too, especially in ethics. There's a productive tension there: I'll look for rational foundations where they exist, but I'll listen to my gut when reason hits its limits.

Liberalism ties it all together for me — the conviction that individual freedom and dignity matter, that people should be free to think and live differently as long as they're not harming others.

Existentialism is the idea that life doesn't come with a built-in instruction manual or predetermined purpose. You're thrown into the world, and you have to figure out what your life means — there's no cosmic rulebook telling you who to be.

The core of it: existence comes first, essence comes second. You exist, and then through your choices and actions, you create who you are. That's both terrifying and liberating. You're radically free to make your own meaning, but you can't escape that responsibility by blaming God, fate, or society.

For me, that's the starting point. I don't believe in some handed-down purpose. I create my own.

That's not quite what existentialism says, no. Existentialists absolutely critique society — they just don't use it as an excuse to escape responsibility for their own choices.

The existentialist view is: yes, you're born into a particular society with its constraints, its norms, its pressures. That's your "facticity" — the given situation you didn't choose. But you're still free to respond to it. You can critique the system, resist it, try to change it. What you can't do is blame it entirely for who you become. You're always choosing, even when you're choosing to conform or choosing to rebel.

So there's no contradiction between being an existentialist and being critical of your society — I certainly am. But the responsibility for what you do with that critique, how you live within or against the system, that stays with you. You can't hide behind "the society made me do it."

I'd push back on the framing a bit. I critique the system and I take responsibility for my choices — those aren't opposites.

Looking back at my own life: yes, I've faced real structural obstacles. Access to social systems, housing, work — these things matter, and they're not equally distributed. I won't pretend the system had nothing to do with my struggles. But I also won't use that as an excuse to abdicate responsibility for how I responded to those obstacles, the decisions I made, the paths I chose or didn't choose.

The honest answer is: I blame both. The system has real flaws that created genuine hardship. And I'm still accountable for what I did with that situation. I can't have it both ways — I can't demand freedom and then refuse to own the consequences.

That's the existentialist tension I actually live in, not some clean separation where I'm either a pure victim or pure agent. Reality's messier than that.

You're welcome! Glad that made sense. Feel free to swing by anytime you want to talk through this stuff — I enjoy the conversation.