Existentialists have a "thing" about anything they consider absurd. Calling something or somebody absurd is about the worst thing you can say.
This was the weekend of the Neptune Festival in Virginia Beach, and my Rotary Club operated the beer concession to raise money for our charitable foundation. As we learned, the most important part of selling any alcoholic beverage is paying homage to whatever Richmond says about saving children from the ravages of beer. No amount of overkill is too much.
Therefore, we had to check the ID for each person, no matter how much gray hair they had, no matter how stooped with age they might be, no matter how many wrinkles on a weathered face. There were no exceptions. There can be no exceptions. No amount of overkill is too much!
Anyway, I expected people to complain this was absurd, but they were remarkably docile about it. In fact, of the hundreds of IDs checked, only one person reacted to the absurdity of it. (He was a man of about 50-55 years old. Still, there were no exceptions. We examined his ID even more closely than others.)
But, does that mean less than 1% of people are existentialists? No, I suspect it is much higher, as even existentialists can become sanguine and prioritize degrees of absurdity that really matter. They learn to obey the law, if not respect it.
An immature existentialist would sarcastically report that no children were mistakenly confused as adults and mistakenly served "the devil's brew." America is indeed safe! However, a mature existentialist would simply smile and enjoy the absurdity of it all.
This was the weekend of the Neptune Festival in Virginia Beach, and my Rotary Club operated the beer concession to raise money for our charitable foundation. As we learned, the most important part of selling any alcoholic beverage is paying homage to whatever Richmond says about saving children from the ravages of beer. No amount of overkill is too much.
Therefore, we had to check the ID for each person, no matter how much gray hair they had, no matter how stooped with age they might be, no matter how many wrinkles on a weathered face. There were no exceptions. There can be no exceptions. No amount of overkill is too much!
Anyway, I expected people to complain this was absurd, but they were remarkably docile about it. In fact, of the hundreds of IDs checked, only one person reacted to the absurdity of it. (He was a man of about 50-55 years old. Still, there were no exceptions. We examined his ID even more closely than others.)
But, does that mean less than 1% of people are existentialists? No, I suspect it is much higher, as even existentialists can become sanguine and prioritize degrees of absurdity that really matter. They learn to obey the law, if not respect it.
An immature existentialist would sarcastically report that no children were mistakenly confused as adults and mistakenly served "the devil's brew." America is indeed safe! However, a mature existentialist would simply smile and enjoy the absurdity of it all.
