An Existentialist Hat Trick

It appears my reading Sarah Bakewell's book "At The Existentialist Café" while - purely by accident - listening to lectures about the leading thinkers of the Existential movement has also lined up with a recent existential moment of my own.

An old friend, a former Deputy Attorney General of the NJ Office of Bias Crime, has again enlisted my help for a multi-day workshop he's leading at a national conference in Minneapolis next June. And though I'm honored - as always - he's asked me to co-facilitate, as our first conversation and review of his outline deepened, a few of his questions prompted me to peer into an abyss.

How do each of us live with our confusion, guilt, or shame surrounding oppression? What are the compromises we make to help us cope with the moral injustice of the way people with less privilege are treated? And most pertinently to the workshop, what emotions do we avoid or deny to keep these questions from interfering with the comfort in our own lives?

Work to do. Good thing there are several months to prepare.