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    POL3133 Workshop 5 - Existentialism

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    Troye
    This document provides exercises and prompts for a class on finding meaning and handling existential freedom and uncertainty. Students are asked to complete a Meaning in Life Questionnaire, reflect on their scores, and consider re-taking the questionnaire later. They are then given writing prompts to explore sources of meaning in their lives, the pros and cons of uncertainty, experiences of freedom and lack of freedom, rejecting and accepting responsibility, unavoidable aspects of the human condition, consistently avoided things, recurring anxieties, experiences of existential crisis, and welcoming vs. resisting change. The goal is for students to examine these existential themes through introspective writing.

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    POL3133 Workshop 5 - Existentialism

    Uploaded by

    Troye
    14 views2 pages
    This document provides exercises and prompts for a class on finding meaning and handling existential freedom and uncertainty. Students are asked to complete a Meaning in Life Questionnaire, reflect on their scores, and consider re-taking the questionnaire later. They are then given writing prompts to explore sources of meaning in their lives, the pros and cons of uncertainty, experiences of freedom and lack of freedom, rejecting and accepting responsibility, unavoidable aspects of the human condition, consistently avoided things, recurring anxieties, experiences of existential crisis, and welcoming vs. resisting change. The goal is for students to examine these existential themes through introspective writing.

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    POL3133 Workshop 5 - existentialism

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    This document provides exercises and prompts for a class on finding meaning and handling existential freedom and uncertainty. Students are asked to complete a Meaning in Life Questionnaire, reflect on their scores, and consider re-taking the questionnaire later. They are then given writing prompts to explore sources of meaning in their lives, the pros and cons of uncertainty, experiences of freedom and lack of freedom, rejecting and accepting responsibility, unavoidable aspects of the human condition, consistently avoided things, recurring anxieties, experiences of existential crisis, and welcoming vs. resisting change. The goal is for students to examine these existential themes through introspective writing.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as docx, pdf, or txt
    14 views2 pages

    POL3133 Workshop 5 - Existentialism

    Uploaded by

    Troye
    This document provides exercises and prompts for a class on finding meaning and handling existential freedom and uncertainty. Students are asked to complete a Meaning in Life Questionnaire, reflect on their scores, and consider re-taking the questionnaire later. They are then given writing prompts to explore sources of meaning in their lives, the pros and cons of uncertainty, experiences of freedom and lack of freedom, rejecting and accepting responsibility, unavoidable aspects of the human condition, consistently avoided things, recurring anxieties, experiences of existential crisis, and welcoming vs. resisting change. The goal is for students to examine these existential themes through introspective writing.

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    POL3133 Experiments in Living

    Don’t Be Absurd! Just Choose Your Meaning

    ‘Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom’. -- Soren Kierkegaard

    This week we explore sources of meaning in our lives and how we handle existential
    freedom and uncertainty.

    Complete the Meaning in Life Questionnaire (MLQ)

    Please remember that your scores are really only guesses and should not in any way be
    considered diagnostic. They may change over time, as well.

    After class reflect on your scores in your journal. How do your scores for presence of
    meaning and search for meaning compare? Are you surprised by them?

    Consider re-doing the MLQ again in May before submitting your Reflective Report.

    Meaning:
    Write about a few things that feel meaningful to you personally. This may be something that
    just feels right when you do it, something that you believe is worth suffering for, or
    something that you decide has a meaningful effect on the world (as a whole or any specific
    part of it). It may be an outcome, an activity, a process or anything else you assign meaning
    to.

    Uncertainty:
    Write about some of the pros and cons of uncertainty. Give examples of when you have
    sought it out and when you tried to make it go away.

    An Exercise Exploring the Theme of Existential Freedom


    1. Think of one example when you have felt most free in your life.
    2. Examine and explore your felt experience of that event.
    3. Think of one example when you have felt least free in your life.
    4. Examine and explore your felt experience of that event.
    5. Compare and contrast your felt experiences of the two examples. What, if any,
    experiences were similar? Different? Surprising?
    6. Consider how your responses might clarify or raise new questions for the discussion on
    the theme of existential freedom.

    Here are some additional exercises you may wish to try outside of class:

    Responsibility:
    Think about a few situations in your life in which you have rejected personal responsibility
    or not given yourself enough credit for your involvement. Then think about a situation in
    which you may have rejected accountability but later had to admit to yourself that you at
    least shared some of the responsibility.
    Human Condition:
    Pause for a few minutes and think about the human condition, your existence. What do you
    experience that is an unavoidably part of being human? What are the givens and how do
    they show up? What is it like to be in the world for you? What can we not change as a result
    of being alive and here with others? Write down as many givens as you can?

    Avoidance:
    Think about your life. Is there anything that you have been consistently trying to avoid, such
    as getting hurt, feeling sad, or disappointment? To what extent have you been successful?
    Which ones are worth fighting against and which are perhaps better accepted?

    An Exercise Exploring Existential Anxiety


    1.   Identify one recurring anxiety that you experience.
    2.   What is it about this anxiety that is problematic for you?
    3.   What would change in or about your life if you no longer felt this anxiety?
    4.   What would change in your life if the anxiety intensified?
    5.   How does your anxiety affect or impact upon your relations with others? Or a particular
    other?
    6.   When you consider your anxiety as an example of the attempt to evade existential
    anxiety what, if anything, is further clarified about your anxiety?

    Facing an Existential Crisis


    Take a few minutes to write down for yourself what you think has been a significant
    experience of existential crisis, in which you initially thought you might flounder and lose
    your foothold in reality but then discovered that you were able to let yourself be
    transformed and transfigured by it instead. How did you let yourself trust the experience
    and how were you able to let it help you to bend rather than break?

    An Exercise Exploring the Experience of Change


    1. Describe one example of change in your life to which you were welcoming and receptive.
    2. Describe one example of change in your life that you attempted to resist or reject.
    3. Describe one example of change in your life that you could not bring about.
    4. Compare the felt experience of each of these instances of change. What differences, if
    any, did you notice in how you embody these changes?

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