Existential Hotline

I have never read Nausea by Jean-Paul Sartre, not linearly. However, I make a lot of major decisions by flicking to random points on random pages and doing whatever it suggests. It’s tea leaves as both a method and antidote to existentialism. Existential Hotline avails this life practice to the public over the phone. When the hotline is open, I invite you to think of a question, give me a call, and I dispenses the chance-sagacity of Jean-Paul, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus and other Existential friends to help you find your answer.

Jean-Paul Sartre gave Existentialism the tagline “existence precedes essence”. Who-you-are and what-your-purpose-is arise out of how-you-be. My thoughts on these types of base philosophies are totally inconsistent, but I like that 80 years ago some French intellectuals’ books started filling with mirrors and windows and bemused dissociation.

Simultaneously, the telephone—the perfect device of existential estrangement—was becoming commonplace.