The Mathematics Coach

09/05/2026

Death & birth are the only catalysts of change. Just as society progresses one funeral at a time, bankruptcies drive innovation in business.

09/01/2026

08/27/2026

Top functional equation solution must be Shannon's negentropy.

08/10/2026

Funny thing, ever since Descartes revolutionized/algebratized geometry with introduction of co-ordinates, we've been busy attempting to abstract away those very data, at least the global version.

08/09/2026

These days, professors are so hyperspecialised that they don't even know what is taught in other courses in their own department, and they often are surprised at the knowledge students bring to their course.

08/01/2026

Something that most youth do not know: society is actively creating disability, for then the government will pay, which in turn stimulates the local economy. Examples abound, such as e-scooters & e-bikes, both subsidized locally.

07/31/2026

Yes, back in my student days, on campus, econ. was known as a bird course, definitely not for the intelligent, on a par with psych.

07/25/2026

Sartre said hell is other people. Even if you flip it around like in the meme, he was describing something structurally real.

Hi, this is Markus and I will explain this meme to you.

Jean-Paul Sartre wrote in his play No Exit (1944): "Hell is other people." It is perhaps his most famous line, and it is almost always misunderstood. Most people assume he meant other people are intrinsically hostile, burdensome, or obstacles to individual freedom.

His actual argument was stranger and more philosophically profound. In Sartre's existential framework developed across Being and Nothingness, you become a self not in isolation but through the judgments and consciousness of others. Their perception of you shapes how you experience yourself. This is not evil. It is structural to human existence.

The other person's perspective on you cannot be fully controlled by you. You cannot escape their consciousness of you. This loss of absolute autonomy, this inescapable exposure to another's judgment, is what Sartre meant by hell.

The meme captures this precisely. You are trapped with yourself and simultaneously with someone else's perception of yourself. You cannot escape either perspective. The bus ride continues endlessly. Both passengers remain. Both are looking. Both are judging.

Psychology calls this the looking glass self, a concept developed by Charles Cooley decades before Sartre but reaching similar conclusions. We develop our sense of self through internalising how others perceive us. Neurologically we partly exist in other people's minds, in how they respond to us, in their representations of us.

The Stoics offered a counterargument that remains relevant. Epictetus insisted that what others think of you is entirely outside your control and therefore irrelevant to your virtue. You control your judgment, not theirs. Your character is determined by what you choose to value, not by their assessment. Hell is the refusal to make this distinction, the demand for control over what cannot be controlled.

Both perspectives contain truth. The presence of others is inescapable. The self is partly constructed through their recognition. But whether that is hell or opportunity depends on philosophy you adopt toward it.

Follow The Philosopher's Shirt for existentialism that describes actual human experience.