Think back to the last time you were on an airplane. Look around; notice what people are doing. Many of them probably have AirPods in or headphones on and are watching a video or listening to music. Others are watching a movie on the back of the seat in front of them. A few people are reading a novel. And the last of the group are fast asleep. Hardly anyone, it turns out, can be found sitting quietly with their thoughts and their thoughts only.
Hence, it shocked everyone on TikTok this past summer when a few particularly rebellious flight-goers were spotted doing just that: nothing. Video clips of these travelers instantly went viral and started a trend. Suddenly, the practice was picked up by news outlets like BuzzFeed and likened to unprotected sex—flying ‘bare’ is rather risky and subversive.
As silly as this TikTok stunt may be, the fact that it went viral indicates that it struck a chord with our culture. Why? Why is it so hard for us to sit still with our own thoughts? Why do we seek constant distraction through any and every source of entertainment?
Perhaps we can find answers in the thought of Blaise Pascal, a thinker whose Pensées (“Thoughts”) was far ahead of its time. Writing in 17th-century France, Pascal’s insight into what it means to be human anticipates much of the existentialist philosophy that would arise centuries later in his country and across continental Europe. Pascal saw the condition of man as a “feeble mortal” one, “so wretched that nothing can really console us” from the thought of our own finitude. Thus, when we are left to sit alone with our thoughts and nothing else, we experience the “inconstancy, boredom, [and] anxiety” native to our condition. As Pascal famously writes: “[M]an’s unhappiness is that he does not know how to stay quietly in his room.”
Even a king on his throne with all the blessings of fortune is not free from this predicament. “[L]eave a king entirely alone, with nothing to satisfy his senses, no care to occupy his mind, with no one to keep him company and no diversion … and you will see that [he] is a very wretched man … bound to start thinking about all the threats facing him, of possible revolts, finally of inescapable death and disease.” If it is true for a king, Pascal suggests, it is true for us too. Like the king, our distress might start out concrete and particular, but will inevitably mount to more existential concerns. We might even be forced to confront questions we often prefer to put off: Why am I here? Who am I? How ought I live before I die?
Pascal is spot on in identifying the ways in which we try to avoid those questions and the reality of our finitude. Quite simply: “[M]en have decided, in order to be happy, not to think about such things.” Instead, we distract ourselves constantly with whatever diversions we can find that are less existentially demanding and more superficially entertaining. We immerse ourselves in work, we read a novel, we go hunting, we gamble, we see a show at the theater. For Pascal, all of these activities are more means to escape boredom and anxiety than ends we enjoy for their own sake.
Pascal would be horrified to see that the problem has only gotten worse in our modern world, since now there is greater opportunity to indulge in “diversions” than ever before. Today, we seek distraction not only in the physical world, where we might be limited by our surroundings, but also in the digital world, which is accessible from anywhere at any time. Thanks to the internet, it takes us only a few clicks to distract ourselves with the latest TikTok clip, Instagram post, or Facebook update. We can glue ourselves to our devices and forget our existence for as long as we doom-scroll. And when we finally get tired of that, we can switch tabs to our Amazon Prime cart and delight in the conveniences of consumerist culture. There’s always a new product on the market to capture our attention and keep it from ourselves.
These micro diversions are no doubt problematic enough in their own right. But Pascal would also have us recognize that our engagement with more significant life pursuits like work, school, and extracurricular activities is not so different. We need these macro distractions not only to be momentarily entertaining but entirely consuming. That way, they hold our attention for hours at a time, not just mere minutes. For Pascal, we trap ourselves within a pursuit by creating an object of desire that lies at the end of the road, something like a promotion at work, an A in school, or victory at a tennis tournament. We deceive ourselves into thinking that we will rest and be happy after attaining what we desire.
Pascal sees two key issues with this way of being. First, we miss that we do not really want the object of desire for its own sake. In fact, Pascal suggests that if we were offered the object straightaway, but denied the ability to chase it, we would decline and continue our pursuit. Pascal illustrates this idea by imagining a gambler who tries to avoid boredom and anxiety by placing bets: “Give him every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy … he must delude himself that he would be happy to win what he would not want as a gift … [h]e must create for himself some target for his passions and then arouse his desire, anger, fear, for this object he has created …” As Pascal wisely observes, we prefer the chase to the capture.
Why? That brings us to Pascal’s second point. Whether or not we are aware of it, we do not really want the rest after the capture because then we would lack the distraction offered by the chase. We need the chase because it takes our mind off ourselves. As Pascal puts it: “What people really want is not the easy peaceful life that allows us to think of our unhappy condition … but the agitation … of a vigorous and violent occupation … that takes their mind off it.” Perpetual busyness serves as a defense mechanism against existential angst.
This is especially true in the modern world, evident in the hustle culture that has come to dominate American life, afflicting everyone from working professionals across the nation to high school and college students who glorify the grind above all else. Our obsession with high performance often takes the exact form that Pascal describes: once we accomplish one thing, we only set our eyes on the next task, never allowing ourselves to rest and be happy. Now, we even brag about how busy we are, as if it is a strength and not a symptom of an underlying illness in society.
But we workaholics—myself included—must recognize that we do not have forever to avoid confrontation with ourselves. We must figure out what kind of being we are, and want to be, before it is too late, before “diversion [completely] passes our time and brings us imperceptibly to our death.” Here, Pascal anticipates the idea of “being-towards-death” put forward by the 20th-century German philosopher Martin Heidegger: that to live an authentic life means to live true to oneself, always conscious of the reality that “it is certain … we shall not be here for long, and uncertain whether we shall be here even one hour.”
So, how do we know who we are and what to do? Where can we find meaning? Pascal’s thought pushes us to consider his own position as well as those of later existentialist philosophers.
Pascal himself takes a religious perspective. According to him, man can be transformed from a being who “does not know the place he should occupy [and] has obviously gone astray” to one who knows “true good [and] justice” for himself and others, through faith in God. Indeed, Pascal was a Catholic (who subscribed to Jansenist beliefs), and many of his philosophical writings are proofs of God and defenses of Christianity. The most famous of these is “Pascal’s wager,” which suggests that it is best to choose to believe in God rather than not, even if you are struggling with faith. Pascal is clear that reason alone is not enough to convince you either way but shows that you give yourself the best chance at happiness and fulfillment if you bet on God. If you are correct, you are infinitely blessed, but if you are incorrect, you have not sacrificed much, while the atheist risks being infinitely cursed without considerable reward.
A fellow Christian existentialist like Søren Kierkegaard would broadly agree that meaning and the realization of the self are best found in faith. He would agree that reason alone cannot get us there, and certainly agree with statements from Pascal like, “Knowing our own wretchedness without knowing God makes for despair,” which can be found almost verbatim in Kierkegaard’s own writing. However, Kierkegaard would likely disapprove of the sort of model in Pascal’s wager that seeks to maximize gains and minimize losses at the expense of genuine faith. Indeed, Kierkegaard’s “knight of faith” is someone who has taken the requisite “leap of faith” and has thus made an absolute commitment to the absolute. A pious Protestant, Kierkegaard believed that you could only truly learn who you are through a personal relationship with God, who calls upon you to shape you into the being you are meant to be.
In contrast, the 20th-century French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre advocated for an atheistic existentialism that allows you, not God, to determine how you live your life. For Sartre, there is no God, and life has no a priori meaning. You may not have chosen how you were brought into the world, but now that you’re here, you have complete freedom to create your own meaning and define your own destiny. Though such total responsibility may be daunting, Sartre would argue that it is also empowering, since you may decide for yourself what you value, whether it’s people, places, things, or activities. As long as you are honest with yourself, and do not evade your responsibility through what Sartre calls “bad faith,” you can live an authentic life.
The philosophies above are condensed and only but a few of many possible systems of belief. It is ultimately for each of us to explore what we believe. So, next time you are on an airplane—or anywhere at all, really—drop the distractions and consider what you think is right. Identify your place within that perspective, so you know who you are and what matters to you. Pascal offers us his wisest words when he reminds us that “One must know oneself [since] at least it helps in running one’s life, and nothing is more proper.”