This is a persuasive speech I will be giving to my COMS 130 class (speaker audience communications) on Friday. I thought I would post it here for you people to enjoy and for any constructive criticism you want to throw my way.

Thanks to all who took the time to read it!

Introduction
Why are we taking this class? You don’t have to respond, I already know the answer -- it’s because it’s required. But why is it required? Because you need the credit to graduate. But why are you required to graduate from college? To make money, to not disappoint your parents, to be successful…
If you’re agreeing with this then, guess what ladies and gentlemen, you’re living in bad faith.
I know a little bit about this bad faith stuff. It has to do with existentialism, which is a philosophy I’m going to use to show you how you can improve your life by taking back your free will.
In order to live an authentic existence, you need to stop living in bad faith and take back your life!
But what do you mean take back my life?! I have free will! Well no you don’t, and I’m going to tell you why. But don’t worry, I’ll also tell you what you can do to improve this.

Describe the situation
Ok, so what is this “existentialism” crap anyways? According to C. S. Wyatt, the author of The Existential Primer, “Existentialism is an attempt to describe our desire to make rational decisions in an irrational world” (2008).
This is essential to the concept of independence, individualism, and the human condition. As individuals, we are all born completely free, but that freedom is stripped from us by the responsibility of our decisions. Evan infants learn this law quickly. If you don’t take in breaths, you’ll suffocate.
But you still have the freedom to not breath, it’s just that most people would want to. And that is the definition of free will. Free will is doing what you want to do, but the paradox is that you’re going to be held accountable for your actions. Jean-Paul Sartre, one of the most influential philosophers of the 20th century, from his book The Age of Reason, wants us to accept our own absolute responsibility for our lives. Thus no excuse or alibi is acceptable: no god is responsible for the human condition, no race or caste can be blamed. Man is completely free. Without free will we’re just objects -- puppets on strings.
So how you live you’re life is completely up to you. But society is going to hold you morally responsible. You cannot escape this responsibility, although many people try. As a human, one might find much anguish in the fact that they cannot blame their choices on anyone but themselves.
So what do we do? We adopt defenses to protect us from this accountability. We fallow laws, guidelines, and other moral systems that deny us our freedom of choice and accountability, and that is living in bad faith.

Describe the situation as a problem
Bad faith, as described in The Existential Lexion also by C.S. Wyatt, is “self deception; a lie to the self, usually in an attempt to escape the responsibility of being an individual” (2008).
Take, for example, a waiter. His voice and smile are eager to please, but it’s all an act. He just want’s a fatter tip. He knows being a waiter isn’t what he want’s to do, yet everyday he puts on a fake, plastic smile for the customers. This is a deception to the self.
Another good example is the one night stand. Imagine you’ve made some bad choices with someone, but in the morning when they ask you to drive them home you just pretend to still be asleep until they go away, or when they call you the next day you just let the phone ring. Doing so is not taking accountability for the actions you made and is a denial of your freedom of choice and, thus, is living in bad faith.
Think about all the times you smiled at some jerk you don’t like, blindly fallowed orders, or procrastinated until midnight the night before to write you’re speech? I can lay claim to at least one of those.
But as you can see, living in bad faith is a conscious action. You can do something about it.

Propose a Solution
Stop living in bad faith! This is an easy problem to fix. You don’t have to go out and vote, donate stuff, write your congressman, or any of that crap -- you just have to stop doing what you’re doing and start living your life the right way. Stop lying to yourself, avoiding responsibility for your actions, or denying your free will! Stop “coping” with your situation and instead transcend in it.
By taking these steps you’ll be on your way to what is called an authentic existence according to John-Paul Sartre (Cummings, 1965, p.35).
He says that by living an authentic existence you will gain free will in your life and effectively throw off bad faith. Yes, you could say that this is the most radical doctrine of freedom in the history of western thought, but it has it’s implementations.
For example, in his article “Towards Authenticity: A Sartrean Perspective on Business Ethics”, Kevin Jackson describes how one can use existentialist ideas to reflect on the moral character of your coworkers (2008, p.307). Think about it, would you want to be working next to people who secretly dislike you yet never confront you about it, or people who have no problem passing their accountability onto you?
But the ultimate goal of someone living an authentic existence is nothing more than self-fulfillment: embracing reality rather than denying truth, accepting yourself and others, self-actualization. This is Abraham Maslow’s final level of psychological development in his hierarchy of needs from his article A Theory of Human Motivation.
Well...I don’t really feel like giving this speech anymore, and continuing to do so would deny my freedom of choice and accountability, so I’m going to sum it up now.

Conclusion
If you did not like this speech, well guess what -- I don’t care. And that is because I try to not worry myself about what other people think about me. That much might be true, but that doesn’t mean I live an authentic existence quite yet. It’s truly difficult to accept responsibility for yourself, but it’s up to you if you want to stop living in bad faith and improve your life!

I have only one question: what about Nietzsche? He is one of the most famous existentialists and you left him out. Kierkegaard too? Heidegger? You've got Sartre though, I guess it's not all bad.
Otherwise, you did a good job! Best of luck.

You gotta remember, this is an oral presentation I'm giving to a bunch of fucking frat boys and sorority sluts. I can't fill it up with a bunch of jargon and useless info.

My goal of the speech is to give a very rough overview of existentialism and how they can use to to better their lives. If I where to try and describe all of those guys then they might miss the point I'm trying to get across. My three main points revolve around free will (the situation), bad faith (the problem), and authentic existence (the solution).

If this where an informative speech, then I might talk about the philosophers you listed. But because this is a persuasive speech where I try to persuade the class to follow my solution for the problem fitting them in there would too detrimental to their attention span. They'll probably be bored to a stupor from the last orator.

You gotta remember, this is an oral presentation I'm giving to a bunch of fucking frat boys and sorority sluts. I can't fill it up with a bunch of jargon and useless info.

My goal of the speech is to give a very rough overview of existentialism and how they can use to to better their lives. If I where to try and describe all of those guys then they might miss the point I'm trying to get across. My three main points revolve around free will (the situation), bad faith (the problem), and authentic existence (the solution).

If this where an informative speech, then I might talk about the philosophers you listed. But because this is a persuasive speech where I try to persuade the class to follow my solution for the problem fitting them in there would too detrimental to their attention span. They'll probably be bored to a stupor from the last orator.

Great job, it sounds like you really got your point across. If you're turning in a hard copy as well then just check your spelling and you'll do very well.

Very nice, I'd pay attention.

Very good speech, you seem to have tailored it to your audience.
One minor criticism I would have is your example of a one night stand. Surely if I seek out a one-night stand for the sole purpose of a one off sexual gratification then I am not required to follow up the action with any form of contact or commitment. Admittedly this would depend on whether I made my intentions clear i.e. if I had led the girl into thinking that the liason wouldn't be a one night stand but I don't think this is true for a majority of one night stands.

I have only one question: what about Nietzsche? He is one of the most famous existentialists and you left him out. Kierkegaard too? Heidegger? You've got Sartre though, I guess it's not all bad.
Otherwise, you did a good job! Best of luck.

he's right, you have a little bit about humans being completely free. Nietsche says that we are not completely free yet animals are

"animals are compeletely free because they live in the moment"

cool essay topic man

I'm sorry, but I find the OP's essay problematic. He fails to take into account how radical existentialism really is. Sartre does not say freedom is necessarily fantastic and will improve your life. On the contrary, he says that we are condemned to be free. We cannot find values intrinsic in beings out there in the world. Rather, we project them onto the aforesaid beings. When we realize this -- truly realize this, instead of aloofly saying there are no absolute values and then going about our business as if there are -- then we realize that sole responsibility for our actions falls on us, since it is we who decide what is valuable, and this creates a nauseous feeling of angst and dissociation. Sartre calls this experience or realization and the subsequent act of holding oneself accountable "authentic", not in any moral sense, but because it is a perception of the true nature of the human condition, as opposed to thinking that the values are external entities to be obediently served and held responsible for your actions.

Now, I get the sense that the OP associates existentialism with egoism, egoism being a value system in which a person puts his needs before those of others, providing needs for others only if it is a means to some end that is in his best interest. But that is not really the case, since an existentialist holds that no value system is objective, that there is nothing to exalt egoism over altruism. Also, existentialism does not mean doing whatever the hell you want. When a person decides what the right thing to do is, he is deciding what the nature of man ought to be. He may care about people and see that being listless will only cause them harm. He may really want to leave the stage and not continue with his speech, but he realizes that in doing so, he will be defining himself, and consequently all of man, as listless, and therefore overrides his hedonistic urges and continues on with the speech.

However, Sartre realizes that the "authentic" state of being, the "solution", can only ever be transient. Men will soon fall back into the habit of being "inauthentic", of seeing values as external and seeing themselves as being allowed to make moral exceptions for themselves since they "are not every man". What's more, the state of authenticity can be as incredibly painful as it can be liberating. The OP's sermon, on the other hand, which reads like a sardonic motivational speech, makes out that "authenticity" is inherently life-improving.

Now to address supperrfreek, I cannot imagine anyone calling Martin Heidegger an existentialist, unless they have misread his books. And that is exactly what Jean-Paul Sartre did, prompting Heidegger to compose a rebuke, in which he writes: "existentialism says: Existence precedes essence. In this statement he [Sartre] is taking existentia and essentia according to their metaphysical meaning, which from Plato’s time on has said that essentia precedes existentia. Sartre reverses this statement. But the reversal of a metaphysical statement remains a metaphysical statement. With it he stays with metaphysics in oblivion of the truth of Being."

However, I do think that it can be argued that Kierkegaard is in some sense a "quasi-existentialist". Barring his pseudonym's concern with authenticity and angst, the only real similarity is that he does believe that man creates his own moral systems, but (and here is why I say quasi) he also believes that there are external commands from God that override morality and that man is inherently sinful. Hence it cannot be said that he believes existence precedes essence. Nietzsche, on the other hand, is really a different matter altogether. I haven't seen anything indicating he is anything like Sartre or Beauvoir. In summary, I think it is a mistake that after Sartre, both him and Kierkegaard were labeled "proto-existentialists". By their nature, their work should really not be labeled, but considered in itself.

Now to address supperrfreek, I cannot imagine anyone calling Martin Heidegger an existentialist, unless they have misread his books.
My apologies, although Heidegger is close to existentialism, and whether or not he is an existentialist is debatable, he himself denied it on several grounds, and I did fall prey to the misconception that he IS an existentialist. Once again though, he does come close.
he also believes that there are external commands from God that override morality and that man is inherently sinful.
Ok, he too comes close, but it's not quite good enough. My apologies once again. Maybe you got me on Neitzche too, but I have read that the three I seem to have misconceived as existentialists are still largely considered to be in the existentialist camp, even though their status as existentialists is debatable. Although I am, for the most part, conceding, I don believe that these philosophers exhibit key elements of existentialism, despite their own status as "existentialists" is debatable, if not faulty, and several of the notions which they created and propagated have been canonized by existentialists, which sometimes leads to a better understanding of existentialism, and other times, misconceptions.
So in an unnecessary conclusion, all I have left to say is that even though they may have not been existentialists, their impact is still important enough to warrant mentioning it in an informative essay on existentialism.

So in an unnecessary conclusion, all I have left to say is that even though they may have not been existentialists, their impact is still important enough to warrant mentioning it in an informative essay on existentialism.

Oh, absolutely. I only disagreed with you on classifying Kierkegaard, Nietzsche and Heidegger as existentialists. But I do believe that the relationship between them and existentialism is akin to the relationship between Hume and Kant: understanding Hume facilitates understanding Kant, as he was a primary influence on his philosophy, but that doesn't mean that we should call him a Kantian.

EDIT -- If anyone wants a deeper understanding of the existentialism of Sartre, I highly recommend finding a copy of his essay "The Transcendence of the Ego" and contrasting it with the work of Edmund Husserl, which it seeks to correct. The essay is all too often overlooked, considering it presents the foundational germ of everything Sartre writes after it, including "Being and Nothingness".

totse needs more exchanges like the one between hare geist and superrfreek. perhaps then it could live up to the statements justifying its existence.

Hare_Geist, yeah there is a lot of problems, for lack of better word, about existentialism (and any philosophical movement at that) that I did not include in this speech because, again, it was meant to persuade. I left out the fact that it's too radical an idea to be "authentic". Trying to throw off bad faith would itself be an act of bad faith in some one instance of the meaning. So I leave that out...

Yeah, unethical I know, but I don't know a whole lot about philosophy, I've never even taken any philosophy course only psychology and that is where I first learned about it and it was brief.

Less about the context it was in, more about the subject -- I suppose it's possible that my understanding of existentialism can be confused with another philosophy I've never even heard of before. I meant what I said in my speech, that it's possible to live authentically by stop deciving yourself, but I wouldn't devote my life to it. I mean, existentialism has it's truths but so does that egoism thing you where talking about.

To get to my point, you're taking this too seriously. I wrote this speech to turn an assignment I was not a all interested in into something humorous and entertaining for the class and I.

Actually, the vast majority of that speech is all personal experience. I work as a server in a private dorm where there are a lot of snotty rich kids living there. I don't mind serving most of them (rich girls are hot), but the ones that really agrivate me, I just don't serve them! And the one night stand example, that exact thing happened to me but I did drive her home (she wouldn't stop poking, women are crazy) but I still feel a little bad because I didn't make it clear that she's a fuck buddy.

BTW, they where rolling on the floor laughing.

totse needs more exchanges like the one between hare geist and superrfreek. perhaps then it could live up to the statements justifying its existence.

Personally I found the semantics unnecessary because they dont accord with the nature of a persuasive speech; the speech does what it is intended to do and does it well.