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Recently, I've had the opportunity to re-examine a concept of existentialism I thought fascinating.
A discussion inspired by the commentary of a very intelligent young woman dear to me.
Namely, the concept of the 'serious man', coined by French philosopher Simone de Beauvoir.
The namesake of the songstress residing in the Amusement Park. This is, by no means, accidental.

Those familiar with the lifeform should be able to readily see the connection from concept to theme.
Those not-so-familiar....well, I'll mainly address the concept, glossing over the connection.
Right, so as history would have it, Simone de Beauvoir published The Ethics of Ambiguity in 1947.
This was two years after the conclusion of WWII in Europe, the context of which is quite relevant.

WWII could be interpreted as the quintessential ideological conflict of the 20th century.
Specifically, the struggle between the triumvirate of Fascism, Communism, and Liberal Democracy.
Young men took up arms against combatants, risking injury and death in the name of abstractions.
Nations mobilized resources to assert their interpretation of reality as true and dominant.

Waging war in the name of an ideal is old hat for mankind. It had been done for centuries before.
Fighting over imaginary borders separating tracts of land; killing for the sake of Church and faith.
Why, the Gordian knot allegiances of WWI could construe it a war of morality, with loyalty at stake.
Distinguishing WWII from earlier conflict was the all-encompassing nature of the ideals.

Social organization. Biology. Economic policy. Political theory. Diplomatic relations.
History. Ontology. Considerations and consequences were to be had at every level of analysis.
Why was it that these ideologies had tendrils deeply rooted into so many aspects of existence? How?
One needn't go far into the past to see the origin of the preconditions that allowed them to flourish.

The prophetic German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote in The Gay Science (1882):

God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?

Popular interpretation holds that, in this passage, Nietzsche sets up the precedence for crisis.
Nietzsche maintains that the Enlightenment (c. 1600s - 1800s) effectively destroyed Christianity.
Along with it, man's sense of meaning and value, which inform several aspects of being.
This is an existential crisis, to be exact. Modern man still contends with it to this very day.

What is to be said of man who, for so long had everything given to him, has nothing left?
Christianity, for all of it's shortcomings, provided meaning, values, and morality for centuries.
Western civilization was built on it's foundational principles, permeating through all aspects of life.
Without it, he is lost, purposeless, and nihilistic. As a consequence, he must search for/create his own.

And this is exactly where ideologies, according to de Beauvoir, come into play. Sorry for that detour.

It is no secret that it is much easier to be assigned something than to generate it on one's own.
For one, it isn't exactly clear how to appropriately generate meaning. We do not know what we want.
Anything dreamnt up is shoddy at best, likely contaminated by some imperfection of thought.
Anything we tout as original has likely been created a thousand times before, and failed similarly.

To use the language of the existentialists, man is condemned to be free.
He is cursed to assign meaning, purpose, and value to his own life, but lacks the competence to do so.
Naturally, he does what one would ordinarily do when confronted with something beyond capability.
Reach out for help. Preferably, find someone that appears as if they know what they are doing.

It is exactly in this state of desperation where tyrannies both physical and intellectual both manifest.
It isn't hard to draw a parallel between the two. Consider the everyday, post-WWI German citizen.
Facing food shortages, national hyperinflation, and the demoralization of defeat.
A tyranny promising abundance, wealth, and a return to power is terrifying in it's utter seductiveness.

How is this any different from modern man in his existential crisis?
Facing a shortage of meaning. Constantly subjected to a too crowded marketplace of junk ideals.
Left defeated, confused, and scared by the vacuum of meaning intrinsic to existence.
Not only does he crave these things to absolve him of his burden, but he requires it to exist.

Man does not live by bread alone. That is so goddamned right.

As these ideologies are nourishing to man, it is not all too surprising that most readily adopt them.
Subscribing fully and wholeheartedly to their truths and comforting metaphysics. A serious devotion.
It quiets the stress of existence. It creates order from the chaotic Nothingness of the universe.
"Though existence is overwhelming in its complexity, I can anchor myself on these pillars."

Comparable sentiments I imagine have rung through everyone's mind at some point or another.
Anyone that have prided themselves as being an academic, a Buddhist, irreedemable scum, beautiful..
It isn't much of a surprise that de Beauvoir maintains that most people are "serious men".
Denying the awful freedom of their individualistic, subjective being for the transcendent.

Everyone, working off of this presupposition, is religious.
Doesn't matter whether you believe in God, science, or that humanity still resides on the moon.

Could Alice2's over-reaching objective worldview be a case study of the "serious man" trope?
Could Jill's commitment to tranquility and harmlessness?
Could Neptune's romanticization of chaos and destruction?
Or even my very own oath to order and egoism?

I don't think the procedure for avoiding such a misstep is readily self-evident.
Yearning for a unitary, guiding principle to reduce the complexity of existence is too strong to ignore.
It is the curse of dimensionality, applied to the pragmatic concern of living.
An inescapable tension that is a precondition to being itself. Resolution of which, may be undeserved.

In any regard, it is something to be conscious of; another too-heavy burden to bear.
Despite this, my heart swells with gratitude and humility towards the genius of our ancestry.
That have left such insight and knowledge for posterity, that we may reap unearned.
So as to possibly avoid committing the same errors that have claimed several in our common past.

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