existentialism is the preferred way

First, I would like to say that the topic resolution is rather vague. Just what is meant by it is not clear after reading the content of round 1, probably due to the fact that my opponent simply took a passage that was not meant to be a debate and used it as her round 1. Regardless, I will attempt to decipher the cryptic meaning. I ask my opponent to correct me if I am off course with this: my opponent is trying to argue that existentialism is the best philosophical outlook to have. Unfortunately, the plagiarized passage does not clearly demonstrate this to be true. It makes no comparisons to other outlooks, and such comparison is necessary to make a comparative or superlative assertion like that. Regardless, I'll go through and disagree with some stuff. But before that, let me remind the voters of something very important. My opponent has presented information without regard to common knowledge on the topic. Chances are, many of the people reading this don't even know what existentialism is. It is common courtesy to explain what you're talking about in a debate, and my opponent overwhelmingly failed to do so in round 1, mostly by the fact that she simply plagiarized material that was aimed at an audience that already knows about existentialism - what it is, who its key players are, etc. Anyway, on to my response. Perhaps existentialism does have something very important to offer us in the new century. If nothing else, it provides us with another philosophical viewpoint, something that's incredibly useful in the minds of many. The author, however, has a different view on what it has to offer us in the new century. He states, "I'm afraid we're losing the real virtues of living life passionately, sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feeling good about life." This is obviously a statement used to imply that these things are missing from life without existentialism, and that existentialism provides them. However, these things existed long before existentialism, and continue to exist independent of it. So far I'm only 2 sentences in, for those following along in the original, plagiarized text. Let's look at the next 3 sentences: "Existentialism is often discussed as if it's a philosophy of despair. But I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre once interviewed said he never really felt a day of despair in his life." I'd like to point out that this author disagreeing does not constitute a defense against it actually being a philosophy of despair, nor does an existentialist claiming to have never felt a day of despair in his life (if indeed he ever did claim that, he was lying). As my opponent has presented, existentialism is normally viewed as a philosophy of despair. Perhaps there is a reason for this? The next lines are as follows: "But one thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as a real kind of exuberance of feeling on top of it. It's like your life is yours to create." However, this is not an existentialist idea. Existentialists only feel 'on top of it' as often as they actually are, which is probably about as often as any non-existentialist. Also, there's nothing in existentialism that makes it seem like we have more power over our lives than would otherwise be expected. The author is bringing up points that are completely unrelated to existentialism in any way. After some more rambling that is irrelevant to this debate, the author closes with: "It might be true that there are six billion people in the world and counting. Nevertheless, what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms. Makes a difference to other people and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off and see ourselves as the victim of various forces. It's always our decision who we are." However, this is hardly has anything to do with existentialism. Everyone, existentialist or not, knows that their decisions can affect others. No one, at least no one I know of, claims that we are solely the victim of outside forces, with no control over what happens. Also, no matter how you look at it, we ARE affected to a great extent by outside forces. Remember that part earlier about how you can affect others? Others can affect you as well. Yes, we do have a say in how our lives go. But we aren't the sole deciders of it. We can't live whatever life we choose, else we would be omnipotent. I'm not sure what point the author was trying to make here, and I'm not sure what my opponent thought was so striking about it. The only agreeable things the original author said are not exclusive to existentialism, nor are they defining traits thereof. I await some rebuttal and explanation from my opponent.