I think I've figured it out!!

[moniss]

I think we might be experiencing a thing like I saw on TV long ago in the '70's. There was an adaptation of a Bruce Jay Friedman play titled "Steambath" and it starred Bill Bixby. It wasn't really comedy but "contemplative satire" might describe it better. It is available on the Tube. I'm not going to give too much away but he finds himself suddenly in this steambath with a bunch of people he doesn't know and they don't seem to know why they are there either. It is a sort of purgatory is all I'll say. But that must be what has happened to all of us amid this madness.

Somehow we are all here in our rational selves and we're in purgatory. So given the idea that we all must have died and now we're stuck here until we "purge" ourselves of our sins and can't leave the madness until we do it reminded me of "Steambath". Now having said this, and thinking that I don't get to "elevate" until we all are ready, I wish you people would get on with the sin purging already because this is too much. Yes that's right. You there over in the corner! If you don't stop doing that we're never getting out of here. How much madness can I be expected to take?

[MoonlightHillFarm]

1. Steambath

I remember it well. Valerie Perrine was also in it. Very good play.

[usonian]

2. I barely recall it, but the situation smacks of a little Kafka and.a lot of Sartre (Huis Clos, or "No Exit")

Sartre is interesting in having been an atheist existentialist. So he (and I) have no concept of a purgatory, only in free choice to move forward.

Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be (Wikipedia)

Further:

The emphasis on personal commitment brings us to a third basic idea of existentialism: human beings are radically free. We are the ones who create the meaning, truth, and value in our lives, and we are totally responsible for our lives. We often claim to be unable to do certain things, but in fact we don’t do them because we don’t want to. If we wanted to do them we would. For instance, the fact that it’s wrong to steal doesn’t prevent us from doing it, only we can do that. True, we can’t do everything—we can’t fly—but we can choose from our available options and, in the process, create our selves. In summary, existentialism claims that: Moral theories which derive from rational thinking are defective because they emphasize personal abstraction over experience, and they can’t account for the role that human freedom—manifested by personal commitment—plays in the moral domain.

https://reasonandmeaning.com/2017/11/15/ethics-existentialism/

To me, people are living too much in abstractions --- memes promulgated by conspiracy theorists, "influencers" and ad-driven clickbait "news" sources, who only give you an infinitesimal slice of news, all of which sells their ads and their owner's agenda.

We're more living in The Matrix than any other analogy.
Programmed what to think and feel.
But we can break out.
It's a choice

Otherwise we're batteries.

"Enlightenment" awaits that decision.

[moniss]

3. Indeed and I enjoyed the play "Steambath"

because the writer was showing us, through the characters, that even in these various "stages" of supposed spiritual elevations that people are still going to be largely who they are. So the writer, Friedman, lays this out for us in a setting with the vulnerability of people naked except for a towel and still being who they've largely always been. The outer wrappings of distraction or disguise of who we basically are stripped away and we see we are just ourselves rather than who we think we are. I thought it was clever and a great use of simplicity in presentation.