Is Existentialism on the rise ?

Like “rationalism” and “empiricism,” is “existentialism” a term that belongs to intellectual history ?

If like me, you grew up in the 1960's and 1970's you were almost certainly exposed to Albert Camus and Jean Paul Satre at school, drank lots of coffee in small clubs with close friends, wore black and were constantly wondering why "... man was free but everywhere in chains ..".

I could not say that I was a staunch existentialist back then, but I did wonder about how much freedom we all had; in art, in literature, in the ways we sought relaxation and escape from a drab reality and most of all in our daily toil, whether at school or at a job.

It was a subject that hooked me in and made me wonder. After I read Camus's "Outsider" and "On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, I saw references to the conundrum of perceived freedom everywhere, particularly in music. Not so much jazz, but for me, more in the nuances of inference in the music of the Beatles and Van Morrison.

So here we are some 50 years after the bulk of existentialist works were written, and I am still reflecting on whether we have more or less freedom, am I better off now than back then, and is the world a better place?

Cheers