Welcome to Breakpoint, a daily look at an ever-changing culture through the lens of unchanging truth for the Colson Center. I'm John Stone Street. Much has been written about the crisis of meaning, especially among young adults. Back in 2023, Harvard's On Edge report found that 58% of 18 to 25-year-olds experienced little or no meaning or purpose during the previous month. 50% reported that their mental health suffered from, and I quote, not knowing what to do with my life.
And then just this year, Talker Research reported that 32% of Americans are suffering an existential crisis, and that includes 52% of Gen Z. And it's no accident that this crisis of meaning has coincided with the rise of transgender ideology. This idea that the internal perception and projection of oneself is what's really true and that biology, family, culture, religion, and everyone else should be made to align with it, that's the ultimate social experiment. Specifically, it's the attempt to make meaning as if there were no meaning to who we are.
Now of the many contributing factors to these phenomena, a primary intellectual source is the thought of John Paul Sartre. He was born 121 years ago this month. Sartre was the central figure in the philosophical movement called existentialism. In fact, the term existentialism is derived from Sartre's most famous statement that existence precedes essence. With this saying, Sartre inversed the traditional understanding of the relationship between essence, which refers to a thing's nature or purpose, and existence.
See, historically, across most times and cultures, essence was considered logically prior to existence. Thus, there's a fixed human nature or essence. within which people participate. Or exist. Sartre rejected the notion of a fixed human nature.
Instead, he argued that the individual has to decide their nature. Without a fixed nature, humans were then radically free to choose their value and their identity. And though this idea of so-called radical freedom sounds liberating, for Sartre, it was not a gift. Rather, he said, humans are condemned to be free. No matter how we define ourselves or what meaning we make, it's all done, he believed, within a meaningless absurd universe.
It's meaningless that we're born, Sartre once said. It's meaningless that we die. In fact, he vividly described the terrifying prospect of meaning-making in terms of anguish and nausea, but he still believed it was the only path to an authentic life. We decide what values and causes we should pursue, even though we know our choices are in the end arbitrary and meaningless. For Sartre, the only alternative was what he called bad faith.
to deny radical freedom by blaming a fixed nature or culture or an upbringing for the decisions we make.
Now Sarcher's greatest impact on America was during the post-war years, especially the 1960s, but his ideas influenced a number of radical cultural movements that have followed. For example, his moral and cultural relativism helped open the door for the sexual revolution, and not coincidentally, Sartre was himself a serial womanizer. His attack on the idea of fixed human nature made possible viewing identity as pure construction and viewing social roles as oppressive. And that made plausible the emphasis that critical theories have placed on power, deconstruction, and grievance. And of course, his insistence on radical freedom and the task of humans to define the self was all a precursor for transgenderism.
His emphasis on anguish as the centerpiece of authentic living contributed greatly to a therapeutic culture obsessed with anxiety and victimhood. The idea of bad faith undermine institutions, roles, and social traditions. In all of it, Sartre's ideas have brought to us this current crisis of meaning among young adults. To borrow a phrase, Sartre is one of those thinkers who rules the world from the grave. A dominant intellectual during his lifetime, his ideas still continue to shape hearts, minds, and cultures, and not in a good way.
And because his ideas are now fully in the cultural water, they continue to have consequences and, yes, victims.
So they must be identified and refuted wherever we find them. Even more, they should be replaced by better ideas, ideas that are true and good about the meaning of life and the value of the human person. For the Coulson Center, I'm John Stone Street with Breakpoint. Today's Breakpoint was co-authored by Dr. Glenn Sunshine.
If you're a fan of Breakpoint, leave us a review wherever you download your podcast. And for more resources, or to share this commentary with others, go to breakpoint.org. Colorado is at it again, trying to silence free speech. A law in Colorado forces businesses to use customers' preferred pronouns, even if they're biologically inaccurate, and even if using those incorrect pronouns would violate a person's religious beliefs or conscience. That's a violation of free speech, but as Colorado has proved time and again, it has little concern for the First Amendment.
At Alliance Defending Freedom, we're challenging the law on behalf of a Christian bookstore and a Colorado-based sports apparel company. But a court recently ruled against them. With ADF's help, they appealed the ruling, and they'll continue fighting to ensure Colorado doesn't get away with this next attempt to skirt the First Amendment. Your gift helps protect free speech in cases like this all over the country. And for a limited time, your first gift to ADF is doubled by a special matching grant while funds last.
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