a step in the right direction
In In Spite of Absurdity I explored the parallel between our lives and the futile task of Sisyphus, a connection made famous in Camus’s the Myth of Sisyphus. In the essay, Camus declares that “there is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.” In his view, our most important challenge lies in resolving to continue on living even though it’s (objectively) pointless to do so.
Now, this is largely true. Life is, as far as can we can tell, indeed quite pointless. 1 whether this is so simply due to the limits of human reason is an interesting question, though quite besides the point Camus is also correct in pointing out that daily struggles cannot be conquered with true equanimity until we grapple with that unpleasant truth and, if victorious, wrestle some veneer of purpose from the void.
This is a battle that every man must fight; a journey on which one simply must embark lest he wish risk finding himself listless and empty, slumped into an existence that isn’t worth the cost of its maintenance.
Unpleasant as it may be, this is the human condition.
Even so, the silver lining is that this fundamental pointlessness is only a component of it.
For all its value in highlighting the ultimate futility of preoccupation, the myth of Sisyphus is a spectacularly unfitting analogy for it’s character, then, in contrast to Sisyphus’ world of mindless drudgery, ours is a wonderfully complex and malleable one.
Instead of being doomed as Sisyphus is to toil at redundancy, we may instead marvel that nestled between the great frontiers of impossibly distant stars and determinedly mysterious subatomic particles is an obscene wealth of things with which we can fill the spaces of conscious experience.
Consider: should the musician ever be a discontent? Dare he detest a circumstance that delivers him a piano, lends him an instructor and outfits him with a capacity to disappear for hours into the startlingly pure and deep beauty of music?
While one may need imagine Sisyphus happy, we must not resort to fantasy to identify the potential for contemporary human flourishing.
On these grounds, I disagree with Camus’s assertion that there is only one serious philosophical problem. In a circumstance like ours, simply deciding whether to exist is only one step in the journey.
from acceptance to wonder
Leveraging an appreciation of our circumstance to continue onwards, however, demands no small effort. When removed from the comfort of illusion, it seems we are inclined to take our reality for granted; to conclude fallaciously, emphatically and often that the universe is a bleak and barren place.
Perspective is one tool that can help chip away at this obstinate tendency.
To find some, one might simply consider other conditions of life on our planet, which can undoubtably be cold and desolate. In fact, existence is literally so for emperor penguins on the icy tundras of the Antarctic. Their evolutionary journey to the present has stranded them in a freezing reality devoid for months on end of any hint of diversity or felicity of circumstance.
Do they deserve their fate any more than we ours? Gratitude is the word that first comes to mind.
If it is protested that penguins’ lack of reason at least spares them the psychological chill of the absurdity, we must then only glance at human history, a rich account of human conscious experience suffering circumstances that make the fate of the penguins seem nearly idyllic by comparison. While it is true that those burdens were typically born with consolatory beliefs in eventual salvation, these beliefs were never impenetrable, and, in any case, it should not seriously be contended that ignorant tolerance of suffering is an enviable mode of living.
The modern man does well to remember this when the weight of his problems has, psychologically, swollen to a weight disproportionate to their mass.
Perspective helps connect the stubborn, normalizing mind with the deep fortune of modern circumstance. With it, it becomes clear that if…
- we don’t know how or why the universe came to be
- the evolutionary process that carved our place in it is blind (i.e. there was no designer)
- our finding ourselves in this pocket of space on this section of time is sheer luck
…the contemporary human condition is an object deserving great — indeed, reverent — wonder.
a slippery slope to nihilism
The consequences of not advancing in this way are evidenced in the psychology of many existentialists.
Take this rather grim adaptation of the trolley problem from a popular existentialist reddit thread:
We encounter the lever-puller here after he has determined not die prematurely despite the eventual, certain death represented by the trolley. In this sense, he has already graduated from a deluded optimist to an existentialist, then he is no delusion about either the futility of his actions nor the inevitability of the train.
In finding him here, however, we also isolate the moment in which the analogy breaks down. The mindless task with which the lever-puller is now left to whittle away the time is true to form in its parallel to the fate of Sisyphus, and thus it is also no longer instructive.
Yes, we must decide to carry on living despite a lack of objective meaning… but no, the decision to do so is not (necessarily) characterized by empty drudgery.
Connecting with this distinction is crucial, then, when one dwells too long on the first problem, he fails to advance onwards to the true potential of embracing the absurdity, which is not the embrace itself but rather its unlocking of the next level in the journey. Such incomplete investigation may yield temporary relief, but this relief is not stable; to remain an existentialist is to remain at constant risk of a regression to nihilism, an in-between, purgatory state that is worse even than grounding engagement in illusion. 2 I suspect there has been a steady spillover from that reddit thread to this one
Again, the extraordinary nature of modern reality demands more. With fortune smiling upon him, the absurd man of our world must move past the first problem and into the next ones, which concern the actual details of existence. Wonder can serve his primary tool in making this progression.
Thus, we should be grateful to Camus for his instruction but waste little time in seeking the next instructor. Who and what that is will be covered in more detail in the next post.
In the meantime, that the journey continues is a pivotal insight for the absurd hero in the real world. While he may share some similarities with Sisyphus, he certainly has the better task.