Existentialism is a philosophy for secular humanists like me, who seek freedom from government-imposed religious practices.

Have you noticed that quite many of the anti-maskers arguing in favor of "freedom" to disregard public health measures from "big government" are the same ones who support mandatory national anthem observances, "under God" as part of the pledge of allegiance, and the requiring that atheists swear on bibles -- when these stipulations are onerous for pagans like us?

State-established religion doesn't bother them. Saving lives does. How very strange.

Existentialism: a philosophy for secular humanists, by James A. Haught (at Freedom from Religion Foundation)

... In the 1950s ... existentialism burst onto the global scene like a tidal wave of new thinking.

It said, yes, life is absurd and ultimately pointless. We find ourselves living lives, but we don’t know why we are here. We are doomed to die without ever knowing why we were “thrown into the world.” The only thing we have is our own individual lives, which are temporary. We exist — period — which provides the name: existentialism. We are “condemned to be free,” to live inside our own minds and skulls, separated from others.

And yet, no matter how much chaos and cruelty are around us, each of us has no choice but to formulate values and decide how we will behave, personally. We must craft an “authentic” life for ourselves, regardless of what the surrounding society does ...

Now more than ever, when surrounding society seems to have gone bat-shit crazy ... with my apologies to bats, which possess a high degree of "creature integrity."

Somehow, existentialism seems a perfect philosophy for secular humanists — for nonconformists who can’t embrace the majority god-chanting and war-fever chest-thumping and entrenched unfairnesses of society all around them. It’s for misfit thinkers who see the world as half-loony, so they each seek a private, personal path, outside the mainstream, trying to be honest and devoted to values that seem right to them alone.

Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre: Human, All Too Human, a documentary about radical thinking, in three parts.

As a lapsed philosophy major, I highly recommend these three documentaries in a 1999 BBC series entitled Human, All Too Human. An essay at Open Culture provides invaluable context to accompany your viewing.

Human, All Too Human: 3-Part Documentary Profiles Nietzsche, Heidegger & Sartre

Certainly three of the most radical thinkers of the last 150 years, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Sartre were also three of the most controversial, and at times politically toxic, for their perceived links to totalitarian regimes. In Nietzsche’s case, the connection to Nazism was wholly spurious, concocted after his death by his anti-Semitic sister. Nevertheless, Nietzsche’s philosophy is far from sympathetic to equality, his politics, such as they are, highly undemocratic. The case of Heidegger is much more disturbing—a member of the Nazi party, the author of Being and Time notoriously held fascist views, made all the more clear by the recent publication of his infamous “black notebooks.” And Sartre, author of Being and Nothingness, has long been accused of supporting Stalinism — a charge that may be oversimplified, but is not without some merit.