I have a rough time with imagined institutions.
I notice this especially with self-inflicted ones: routine, for example.
I think about making my bed every day.
I don’t feel like it.
But it serves to give a sense of accomplishment.
Why?
As though I am dictated by invisible daily rules that tell me that this fabric should be assembled in this way and if not set correctly, it is a consistent morning reminder that I am not a productive, successful individual.
Why does productivity or success define me anyway? Is the illusion of order in my bedroom indicative of my mind or my life?
And I wish I was kidding because it sounds like I’m about to revolt about bedding.
But I really do think this way.
And so I decide “Well, I make the rules. And my rule is: I want to have fun and not waste five minutes of my day on something that is objectively useless. That’s 1,825 minutes a year spent purely on beds. I will pass.” And so the rule maker and the hedonist in me high five, and so I don’t make my bed.
But that’s when I’m the boss. It’s a bit more perplexing when I’m not.
Buying a coffee is a multitude of imagined institutions.
Here is my plastic card, granted to me by a “company,” full of invisible currency which holds no value in a world sans humanity, and judged by a numeric score to demonstrate whether I should be trusted to purchase more or not.
And here is this bean liquid, branded with colors and sent across the world to have sugar and milk stirred in. That’ll be $7.
And I just think it’s funny.
I’m not even trying to be contrarian.
Sometimes I feel like we’re all playing this layered game of pretend and one of the many rules it presents is that you can’t admit that the grand majority of it is collective fiction.
This can get a little isolating when I hear what I’m culturally expected to value (beauty, money, popularity) and I understand why, but it just isn’t real.
It almost feels disingenuous then to attempt to bond with peers over these things. I don’t want to have discourse within the sensations. I want to see them for what they are.
I’ve found that this perspective is not overly relatable.
There can be merit to these, though. Religion and law unite millions under an umbrella of morality and purpose. We have no substitute for these concepts.
I think of this when I see stop signs (I obey them) and when I know to be quiet in a library.
Etiquette and law, buildings and corporations.
I know that money, while defined by what we determine it is, still dictates our quality of life.
Outward beauty grants benefits that some don’t experience.
Law prevents violence.
These institutions are what power the world that we’ve built for ourselves.
They are what enabled us to evolve, conquer, and domesticate. We are the only ones on the planet that do it.
They serve to give humanity culture, structure. But they’re still imagined institutions.
I think I get most angry when they’re misused.
When religion becomes crusades and minority second class citizenship.
When law enforces who you can love.
When beauty is unattainable.
When corporations value money over utilitarian benefit.
That is when I want to shout from the rooftops: this only matters if we decide it does.
What are we left with if we decide it doesn’t?
“Amanda, that’s nihilism,” I hear you say, dear reader.
But it’s not. Not mattering doesn’t have to be a bad thing.
It could be freeing to not matter. Like a paper you’re not graded on.
In “The Stranger,” by Albert Camus, his protagonist Meursault is also trying to navigate a world of imagined institutions. He treats every sensation with equal apathy, and concludes that his perspective is most soothing because he views it all as insignificant, much like the universe in its totality does of us. Perhaps that is the true nature of it all. Meursault is at peace with that.
Gradeless paper. Why not scribble on it? Be a little creative while you’re stuck writing it?
But I also believe that good philosophy hinges on one’s ability to live it out. I don’t know anyone who’s related with Meursault in full, and I would almost hope that no one does. It seems uncanny, and Camus writes it this way purposely to demonstrate this point.
It is uncomfortable for human nature to see a person acting devoid of emotional investment in the world around them or their function in it.
To Jean Paul Sartre, an existentialist and friend of Camus, “The Stranger” represents not overarching existential wisdom, but collapse of meaning. He wrote that to him, Camus filtered out all meaningful (and very real) connections of experience in the name of rendering it “raw.”
To Sartre, lived experience must coincide with imagined institutions. A human exists in this framework, and we are only truly free if we engage with it. True freedom is not acting randomly, as it seems Meursault does.
And to Sartre, I suppose that my “getting a coffee” spiel might be viewed as a lack of intentionality rather than some wise insight into the encounter’s true nature. I’ve created a collapse of experience for the sake of picking individual aspects apart.
So it’s interesting to me.
Here is this world of material things and beings, who have created things that are imagined by many, truth to some, and flat out lies to others.
To Sartre, truth is our experience of it all. All we know is that we are. Our purpose is to partake in our world, imagination and all.
And as I question truth and objectivity, I wonder if experience alone qualifies.
“To the things themselves!” A quote commonly attributed to Edmund Husserl, a German philosopher and founder of the phenomenological movement. That is a big word.
In this quote, Husserl encourages us to examine phenomena as we perceive them in our consciousness, rather than just stating facts or biases about what they are.
To Husserl, my cup of coffee becomes an experience in itself. What is it in essence? How does it feel to taste it, to smell it, to feel its warmth, to look at it from multiple perspectives?
And suddenly experience becomes a sort of science. Not in the accepted scientific sense (chemical makeup, etc.) but in the analysis of the way our conscious mind interacts with it.
When I read Husserl, I become a detective tasked with documenting the way the world makes its impression on me. Every object is a study worthy of conducting.
In focusing on intentionality- taking time to tediously mull over each phenomena as I come in contact with it- I find that the mundanity melts away a little.
Husserl’s phenomenology isn’t limited to the material, either. I think of or see imagery of something fantastical like a unicorn and I can measure what it is in my eyes.
Likewise goes for any imagined institution we could fathom. The unseen still has the capacity to make us feel, and Husserl encourages us to process it with care.
So as I think about this life- ping ponging between home and work and home again, making the bed, reading a book, brushing my teeth.
Maybe it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme.
Maybe our delusion of grandeur only serves to keep us far from existential anguish.
But maybe this collapse of meaning is antithetical to our nature. Maybe experience is one and the same with institutions, real and imaginary.
I know that I am. I want to pursue knowing, engaging, and existing authentically.
That might be the only routine that I find worth keeping daily.
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