The void or chasm of self

If you know what you’re good at and you’re reasons for doing it are right, you have to shut [everybody else] out and say ‘I don’t care, ... I don’t have to convince everyone else in the world to be like me. I’m happy with who I am. I don’t have to be unhappy because I can’t convince the world to be for or against something. Steve Wozniak IDF 2008

Sunday morning I was wondering about God's answer to Moses for a name and he got the reply "I am who I am". This brings reflections about ontology and that statement "In the beginning was the word" literally was the logos the same Greek word as"ology". Descartes famous Cogito ergo sum marks a definitive shift in Western thought. "I think therefore I am" almost usurps the divine statement, that my consciousness defines my very existence. Many of us live this way however moving this along to my decision making or even my consuming defines that I EXIST! My latest purchase or my latest gadget is who I am. Or my job or career is who I am.

Yet this removes our definition in the divine human relationship - child of God to self-definition. Cofounder of Apple Inc, Steve Wozniak's determination is good though rather individualistic and self determining. In the end we are responsible for what we say or do. There is no escaping blame to something else whether genetics or emotional history. The phenomenon of swarming crimes seems to be on the increase almost as a way of escaping identification and also escaping responsibility. But in the final accounting what we did or did not do will be reckoned.

If we co-live our lives or co-author our lives with God then the responsibility is not so heavy. When we live our lives for ourselves then somehow the life is never full rather it is empty. I think Heidegger has this concept of Dasein which is the mundane our average everydayness, which is in a sense our embededness in the world, as if we are thrown into this state.
Whether Heidegger or Sartre, existentialist philosophy names a human dilemma in understanding who we are when all that is left is our self definition.