existential threat, or, like, not (1/2)
“an existential threat” ≠ “a threat to all existence”
Are you under assault by existentialism? Press 1 for [yes], 2 for [no], 3 to [get ready], now [go (Schrödinger’s) cat go]!
We are all possible waves at once. To be alive is to be conscious of mortality, that is, to live astride not living. Hamlet’s wondering “To be or not to be?” was not to question the utility or futility of life, but to acknowledge the curious human condition wherein, each waking moment, we are offered the choice to live.
In Erwin Schrödinger’s eponymous 1935 thought-experiment, the cat-in-a-box could be dead or alive. The answer doesn’t matter. The cat’s quantum uncertainty is the essence of life. Almost better never to know. That’s where the fun is.
I am an unabashed existentialist. I started writing this piece 8 years ago in 2016, where all of a sudden, everywhere, from POVs in 360 degrees, this phrase became vernacular:
“[X] is an existential threat.”
At first, I laughed at the idea’s hazy construction. Then, and throughout the last 8 years, I sighed in resignation.
As the phrase unfolds, [X] is the threat, but only because [X] is also “existential.”
