I love existentialism.
and I love sartre.
I actually heartre sartre, to be honest.

so let's talk about it.
Who knows anything about him? I mean, we can just talk about existentialism in general, but I need a good philosophy discussion, or maybe just a general worship of all that is sartre.
he and I have the same glasses.
and we are both born in the year of the earth snake.
we're probably the same person. (minus the fact that he's a guy, and everything..)

http://books.google.com/books?hl=en&id=X6RtpboH478C&dq=jean+paul+sartre&printsec=frontcover&source=web&ots=owTBs9kzoU&sig=0W3dBG-BwI_LZO3Ui3gLT4kg2J4&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=9&ct=result#PPP1,M1

or just read this excerpt from Existentialism and human emotion!:
"Actually, things will be as man will have decided they are to be. Does that mean that I should abandon myself to quietism? No. First, I should involve myself; then, act on the old saw, 'Nothing ventured, nothing gained." Nor does it mean that I shouldn't belong to a party, but rather that I shall have no illusions and shall do what I can. For example, suppose I ask myself, 'Will socialization, as such, ever come about?' I know nothing about it. All I know is that I'm going to do everything in my power to bring it about. Beyond that, I can't count on anything. Quietism is the attitude of people who say, 'Let others do what I can't do.' The doctrine I am presenting is the very  opposite of quietism, since it declares, 'There is no reality except in action.' Moreover, it goes further since it adds, 'Man is nothing else than his plan; he exists only to the extent that he fulfills himself; he is therefore nothing else than the ensemble of his acts, nothing else than his life.'
  According to this, we can understand why our doctrine horrifies certain people. Because often the only way they can bear their wretchedness is to think, 'Circumstances have been against me. What I've been and done doesn't show my true worth. To be sure, I've had no great love, no great friendship, but that's because I haven't met a man or woman who was worthy. The books I've written haven't been very good because I haven't had the proper leisure. I haven't had children to devote myself to because I didn't find a man with whom I could spend my life. So there remains with me, unused and quite viable, a host of propensities, inclinations, possibilities, that one wouldn't guess from the mere series of things I've done.'
  Now, for the existentialist there is really no love other than the one which manifests itself in a person's being in love. There is no genius other than one which is expressed in works of art; the genius of Proust is the sum of Proust's works; the genius of Racine is his series of tragedies. Outside of that, there is nothing. Why say that Racine could have written another tragedy, when he didn't write it? A man is involved in life, leaves his impress on it, and outside of that there is nothing. To be sure, this may seem a harsh thought to someone whose life hasn't been a success. But, on the other hand, it prompts people to understand that reality alone is what counts, that dreams, expectations, and hopes warrant no more than to define a man as a disappointed dream, as miscarried hopes, as vain expectations. In other words, to define him negatively and not positively. However, when we say, 'You are nothing else than your life,' that does not imply that the artist will be judged solely on the basis of his works of art; a thousand other things will contribute toward summing him up. What we mean is that a man is nothing else than a series of undertakings, that he is the sum, the organization, the ensemble of the relationships which make up these undertakings.
   When it is all said and done, what we are accused of, at bottom is not our pessimism, but an optimistic toughness. If people throw up to us our works of fiction in which we write about people who are soft, weak, cowardly and sometimes even downright bad, it's not because these people are soft, weak, or cowardly or bad; because if we were to say, as Zola did, that they are that way because of heredity, the workings of environment, society, because of biological or psychological determinism, people would be reassured. They would say, 'Well, that's what we're like, no one can do anything about it.' But when the existentialist writes about a coward, he says the this coward is responsible for his cowardice. He's not like that because he has a cowardly heart or lung or brain; hes not like that on account of his physiological makeup; but he's like that because he has made himself a coward by his acts. There's no such thing as a cowardly constitution; there are nervous constitutions; there is poor blood, as the common people say, or strong constitutions. But a man whose blood is poor is not a coward on that account, for what makes cowardice is the act of renouncing or yielding. A constitution is not an act; the coward is defined on the basis of the acts he performs. People feel, in a vague sort of way, that this coward we're talking about is guilty of being a coward, and the thought frightens them, What people would like is that a coward or a hero be born that way.
  One of the complaints most frequently made about The Ways of Freedom can be summed up as follows, 'After all, these people are so spineless, how are you going to make heroes out of them/' This objection almost makes me laugh, for it assumes that people are born heroes. That's what people really want to think. If you're born cowardly, you may set your mind perfectly at rest; there's nothing you can do about it; you'll be cowardly all your life, whatever you may do. If you're born a hero, you may set your mind just as much at rest; you'll be a hero all your life; you'll drink like a hero and eat like a hero. What the existentialist says is that the coward makes himself cowardly, that the hero makes himself heroic. There's always a possibility for the coward not to be cowardly anymore and for the hero to stop being heroic. What counts is total involvement; some one particular action or set of circumstances is not total involvement."