Hope

Nothingness is an a priori assumption. Nothingness can only be part of analysis if consciousness and being are assumed separable from existence. Like the Copenhagen Interpretation isolating the classical from reality / quantum. It’s separable only by assumption. Experience painted so stems from experiences or choices (literary, personal or critical). In that, Sartre is overcome.

EXCAVATION
Being and Nothingness, Jean-Paul Sartre, Hazel E. Barnes translation
Sean Carroll, The Many Hidden Worlds of Quantum Mechanics , Chapters 1 and 2.

APPLICATION

The argument that nothingness is an assumption rather than a fact, that the separation of consciousness from being is an artifact of a philosophical framework and not a description of reality, has a direct bearing on how leaders relate to uncertainty. Much of the dread that accompanies high-stakes decisions comes from an implicit Cartesian assumption: that the deciding self is isolated, and that the outcome is uncertain in a way that threatens the self’s coherence. But if consciousness and existence are not separable, if being is already in the world rather than peering at it from outside, then uncertainty is not a threat to the self. It is the medium in which an embodied, relational, historically situated person operates. Sartre being overcome here is not a philosophical curiosity. It is a practical reorientation: from decision making as a solitary confrontation with an unknown future, to decision making as the ongoing, adaptive navigation of a world you are already part of.