Today's Meditation

[Cramulus]

Today's Meditation

on Absurdism

Because isn't it a little silly, this whole human condition? Our quest for meaning ultimately falls short when trying to explain this strange unpredictable universe. You think the world is a certain way, and then all of the sudden somebody flies a literal or metaphorical plane into a literal or metaphorical building, and all the sudden there's this new thing to make sense of, something which came from outside of our expectations and turns everything we knew on its head.

The Black Swan is humbling. You could meet somebody, or something could happen to you, or some opportunity could fall into your lap and next month you will be a different person. The checkerboard you had been playing on will be left unattended. And if you glance, momentarily, over your shoulder, you can see a long trail of unfinished checker games you've left behind.

So what can we do, knowing this? How can we respond to the fact that our world is always partially concealed from us, that our knowledge of the world is misleading, that any meaning we attach to it is passing, ephemeral...

"'Tis all a Checker-board of nights and days
where Destiny with Men for Pieces plays:
Hither and thither moves, and mates and slays,
and one by one back in the Closet lays."
—Omar Khayyam

We have a few options here
--We can turn to God, the alpha and omega who breathes meaning into the world ...but this is an illusion
--We can retreat into nihilism, insisting that there Is No Meaning ...but this is suicide
--OR we can embrace the absurdity of the universe and the human condition.

There is a lot of emotion in play as you walk to the ATM, withdrawing cash to satisfy some human need. You've spent your waking life transmuting calories into pennies, and then pennies into your desires. This is the alchemy of capitalism. But it is messy chemistry, it leaves waste product in your guts. As you picture the peaks and valleys of your bank account, I want you to visualize Sisyphus.

Sisyphus was a Titan, one of the friendly ones who loved humanity. He slayed Death, so that men would not have to die. But eventually death returned and came for him. His punishment was eternal toil - to push a boulder up a hill, and just before he gets a rest, the boulder bounces back down the hill. The Greeks thought this psychological torture was worse than suffering in the flames of Tartarus.

We have a lot in common with old Sisyphus. You work and you work and you work and you push your bank account up a slope. When you dip your card in the ATM, you can feel the momentum changing, you can feel the boulder shifting, and then it falls, it gets away from you, it rolls back down the hill at breakneck speeds, pulled by the demands of the mortal world.

Poor Sisyphus. He toils so hard, and for what? The boulder goes up, the boulder goes down. The world we live in is designed for this. Every step we take pushes the hamster wheel a little bit. Every penny we spend flows into the capillaries of the corporate tissue, it gets pulled into the fast moving arteries of the stock market, the rhythmic heart beat of billions of people grinding their stones into dust trip by trip. The world needs our suffering.

We must laugh! The absurdity is too much! We put our entire soul into this pointless fucking quest for money, for status, for comfort, for a moment of rest before the stone shifts and escapes us again.

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
— Robert M. Pirsig

Absurdism says: you might as well enjoy the trip. You might as well generate some meaning, even though that meaning will pass. If there is an objective truth to the universe, it is concealed from us anyway. So it might as well be about laughter and silliness and enjoying the feeling of the grass on your feet as you push the boulder.

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
— Camus

Yesterday was payday. Today could be a nice cup of tea instead.

[Adios]

Well done sir, and the ending is Truth. The beauty of the journey is all too often obscured by thoughts of the destination.

[Bebek Sincap Ratatosk]

Nicely stated, Cramulus!

[Disco Pickle]

the only philosophy that's ever really made sense to me.

I thought though that one of the three choices was literal suicide rather than nihilism, though I could see how nihilism could lead to suicide in the minds of certain people.

excellent toast sir.

[Cramulus]

nihilism's a philosophical suicide. You can reduce anything in this world to dust by chanting the mantra "that doesn't matter" over and over again. But if nothing matters, why even get up in the morning? Why bother with anything? What is there to talk about when nothing matters?

It's tempting though, I give it that. I just paid $160 in parking tickets and suddenly got smacked with a $200 fine for letting my car insurance lapse. This is at the same time I'm about to buy a big TV. And I'm looking at the peaks and valleys and whispering "it doesn't matter" to myself over and over and over again.

[Elder Iptuous]

that was beautiful, Cramulus.
thanks.

i particularly liked the phrasing of the strange alchemy of capitalism.
also, i had a friend introduce me to needitkeepit.org and have had charity on my mind lately.  that mingled with the metaphor here in interesting ways...  pushing someone else's rock a little...

[Richter]

Well put.
I ask myself things like that a lot, especially during the weeks on the far side of pay day.  "How do I get the slack without spending $$$".  My whole idea is not to make the money I've just burned 40 hours of life to get a force multiplier, not a force provider.  I look around and I take stock of what I have previously turned money into.  Books, tools, games, it's all like instrstructure, scorfolding and butresses around maslowe's pyramid.  Most of it is proping up the lower layers, I just have to figure out working it so I can diddle the capstone without bouncing off my wallet to do so.  

Beyond that, like you were saying I stop and wonder why IS the almighty dollar such a focus anyways.  Then I start paring it down swinging around a metaphorical cleaver in Occam's name.  At the end, the bits of paper are just me buying in to the current popular group survival scheme.  Not much else.  Ideas I can act on, or people to have itneresting interactions with are what's REALLY going to do something.

[Cramulus]

good image, Richter





Iptuous, very interesting website. I love the energy in it, this idea of passing warmth and good will along until it gets where it needs to go. I'm interested in perhaps creating a parallel project, but instead of money, humor or absurdity...

[Telarus]

In class, comments brief.

Good read.

[Ob_Portu]

That's righty embrace me might'lly :P


-FNORD

and your welcom eris.

[Ob_Portu]

And it's nice to see all you people.

[bds]

Nice read Cram - your rants never fail to make me think!

[Jasper]

I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

[Adios]

I'm awfully intrigued by the mythic implications.

Like are we all Sisyphus?  Look at the way we keep fighting death.  Death would be to just stop doing this pointless shit with The Boulder.  Our Boulder isn't money, it's life.  We keep fighting the gravity of the boulder because, even though it's brain-smashingly repetitive, it is still less boring than being dead.

The absurdity is that we keep thinking, yeah, this time will be different.  This time the boulder will balance on top of it all.

And then what would be the point of going on?

[Penumbral]

Absurdism has always resonated with me. I have a hard time drawing the same lines between absurdism and nihilism everyone else seems to. Their belief structures are very similar. They both say, "Nothing matters." The absurdest only adds, "If I find meaning or enjoyment out of the absurdity that is nothingness can't that be enough." Personally I like that addendum however I think it is simply a blurring of existential and nihilistic theory. Nothing matters so focus on yourself and your enjoyment.

I think Camus himself often got annoyed by the functional problems of existentialism and absurdism. Believing absurdism can save someone from nihilistic suicide; however he seemed to suggest that enacting pure absurdism would bring upon yourself another type of downfall.