Accepting the absurdity of everything around us is one step, a necessary experience: it should not become a dead end.

When I read this the first time  I wasn’t quite sure what to make of it, i.e.,  I was unable to identify with “the absurdity of everything all around us”. Most of the things going around me seemed to make reasonably good sense most of the time and if there was something going on  I didn’t quite understand I was quite confident that it made sense  to someone else.

However, over the years I have come to the realization that this is all a matter of one’s point of view, and that – yes – life, existence,  appears to make little sense  when you take a step back and consider the human effort as a whole, including its history, when seen from the  vastness and complexity of a seemingly infinite material universe.   And as it has been said, the universe remains absolutely silent on these matters: it fails to provide the very  reasons  for  its existence and everything that can be found in it, including our lives.

By way of a simple analogy, accepting this is a lot like waking up one day and discovering that you are travelling on a train with an unknown destination and having absolutely no prior knowledge from where it departed from or how you ended up being on board. With little choice other than accepting the fact of the matter your options are going to be limited in terms of what to make of it.

When I  write this I am once again reminded of Kafka’s short story The Passenger that I have written about elsewhere, about being confronted by an existential disconnect, the acute realization that the immediacy of the moment  is unable to account for whatever situation you find yourself caught up in, e.g., what am I doing here, or: why am I here at all?

It is in this context – or more likely in the absence of any kind of context that would be able to account for it – and what I have frequently  referred to as “the greater context”  that some have deemed life or existence an absurdity, and a seemingly meaningless exercise that appears to have no particular purpose beyond being there for its own sake.

However, it is once thing to conclude this about life, but  – as Camus suggested –  this should not be an end in itself. To contemplate one’s existence this way would be very much  like staring down into the void – the realm of infinite nothingness. And to  paraphrase something Nietzsche once said: if you stare into the void long enough, the void will look back at you, i.e., it will vacuum out your soul, and you might as well end it all right then and there.

Interestingly, to consider suicide as an option is according the Camus the one truly serious philosophical problem we face in life: Judging whether life is or is not worth living.  But while this might be an interesting question for philosophers, one doesn’t need to be  overly presumptuous for suggesting that the vast majority of people do not consider their existence a waste of time, and an absurdity which must be  endured one way or another. Instead, they experience life as meaningful given that meaning is always relative and a function of what one is experiencing within the context of the here and now. Even in the darkest of times it is within the human spirit to try to make sense or look for meaning in what one is experiencing at the moment.  “Hope springs eternal in the human breast” as Alexander Pope once said.

The bottom line is that we remain challenged to provide  the meaning of life   beyond the immediacy of finding ourselves immersed in it. As to the suggestion that there is no meaning beyond it was a consideration for Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl  who suggested that “Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of his life is, but rather he must recognize that it is he who is asked.” And that “In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible.”

Finally, I believe that – as a species – we are initially prevented from looking beyond the immediate substance of our lives and seeing the apparent absurdity of it, as we remain preoccupied by the trivial and perhaps not so trivial. But that doesn’t mean that we are unable to encounter it and  be challenged by it as a means to gain a greater understanding of the predicament we find ourselves in, e.g., why is it that we are here and what is it, exactly, that is expected of us?

Sisyphus – by Franz von Stuck

Sisyphus, as we know, is the figure in Greek mythology who was punished by the local Gods for his deceitfulness by being forced to roll an immense boulder up a hill, only for it to roll down again at the top, forcing him to repeat this action for eternity.

In The Myth of Sisyphus published in 1942 French author and Nobel laureate Albert Camus retells the tale of Sisyphus as likening the futility of his labours to the human condition, the point being that all human endeavours are essentially meaningless in a cold and indifferent universe.

Camus concludes  that it is absurd to continually seek meaning in life when there is none, and that it is equally absurd to try to know, understand, or explain the world when no rational knowledge can be obtained from it.  While accepting absurdity as the mood of the times, Camus appears most interested in the question of whether or how to live in the face of it.

But there is a problem  this line of reasoning,  and not only on just logical grounds.  Firstly, we can’t exclude the possibility that there is in fact a meaning and purpose to the universe just because we can’t see the point of it.

Secondly,  it makes no sense to say that we cannot obtain rational knowledge of the world given the multitude of verifiable scientific successes that have occupied themselves with the material nature of the world. This includes the discovery of evolution as a means to provide perspective to the phenomenon that live represents as well as the context for where we are in the in the hierarchy of all things living.

And  by linking our biological ancestry to the heart of the material universe through the process of evolution, science has attached us more firmly to the world.

This leads me to believe that the universe has a plan,  and within it lies the larger context for all human endeavours, as we find ourselves at the receiving end of it.  For many this larger context simply may not exist or is merely taken for granted,  its relevancy subsumed in the background noise of every day life.

Other than that, yes, the story the greater universe may have to tell  is definitely something of interest to science, but by and large their observations and subsequent theories put it so far out of reach of everyday life that  it is difficult to see how much of it has any bearing on the way we conduct our lives.

One might presume that merely living our lives provides us with all the meaning and context we find ourselves preoccupied with at a given moment. But that might only be the case so long as we don’t look beyond the immediacy of the current moment and try to place it within the larger reality of the surrounding universe.  And just because it is seemingly so grand and perplexing that  we can’t possibly get our heads around it,  it is nevertheless part and parcel of who and what we are, yet have absolutely no clue what we all of this means.

The first point I would like to make is that it is unimaginable to me that we see the meaning of the event of ourselves as something over and above the event of the cosmos.  As such, the cosmos is intrinsic to our being, and vice versa – we cannot be separated.

It follows too that – while it may have taken the world some time to bring us on to the scene – we have always been here, in principle, from the very start, as a potential event that was eventually realized as an expression in physical matter.

Secondly, the incidence of our physical existence is not a function of when, where or how, but of why we are here. I know this notion flies in the face of those who believe that everything that exists beyond the most elementary particle of matter is strictly a function of the random action of such particles, with no rhyme or reason in mind – other than of course the seemingly innate ability of matter to organize themselves into progressively more organized structures which – in its most complex formation – are able to exhibit life, prescience and consciousness as new properties not seen before. This is of course a bit of a problem for the random motion folks who’s fear of metaphysics – the “why?” beyond the mere matter of cause and effect  – must be a product of random thoughts as opposed some kind of structured logical thinking.

I think that the reason why we are here is the same reason as to why the world is here – or, for that matter – why there is anything here at all. Well, at least it means we have only one why to worry about …

It is easy to be intimidated by the sheer scope of the physical universe, it age and its size, but as incomprehensible as that may be  – it would be wrong to attach a significance to that beyond the fact that it simply is what it is. Its true meaning will be completely independent from and over and above its physical attributes, in the sense that it will be larger than the sum of its parts.

This makes our experience of the physical aspects of our existence less relevant, and that beyond the point of being able to survive them, we can  – to a certain degree – take them for granted, i.e., we wouldn’t be what, how and where we are without them.

Thus, what we will conclude about ourselves is not going to be strictly a function of our physical interaction with the world, but what we discover about ourselves as we interact with our environment and, more importantly, with each other, i.e.,  what we mean to each other, how we treat each other, or are able to work together towards common goals, and how we arrive at such goals. And – ultimately – from what we want from life in terms of accomplishments during the short time that we are here as members of the human species, as well as what our history will show us about ourselves as a species.

Only the individual can decide if there is value or not – this is entirely a subjective judgment –  if he or she doesn’t see it that way, the context of that action is devoid of meaning as far as that individual is concerned.  And so it might come to pass that there will be vast differences of opinion about some thing or event being meaningful or not.

All this goes to show is that value or meaning starts and ends with the individual; only they can bestow meaning to the context that they are involved with.  Does this mean that nothing could be intrinsically meaningful?  Since meaning or value isn’t some property of objects or events, e.g. colour, size or duration, they are devoid of meaning or value unless we can make that kind of determination.

Now the reason I want to talk about meaning here has to do with a number of references I have made earlier to “the larger context”, suggesting that there is a greater meaning to be discovered within our day to day existence.  Because  – as I have just shown – meaning is subjective, this larger context will be of our own making if we begin to maximize our human potential beyond being just another beast in the wild – a challenge no doubt but one well worth pursuing if we wish to redefine our relationship with reality on our own uniquely human terms and discover where this will take us.

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player
That struts and frets his hour upon the stage
And then is heard no more: it is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing.

If you are catching the flavour of what the Bard has on his mind here, and are intrigued by it, you might well be interested in a train of thought that has often been referred to as “existentialism”.

Now the term “existentialism” is a bit of a catch-all to describe a variety of philosophical views popular during the 19^th and early 20^th century that can be said to have some commonality through the notion that it is the individual who – in the face of a seemingly cold and uncaring universe – must define the meaning of existence for themselves, as no one else can do it for them.

This might or might not involve a reference to a deity of sorts – for which the former was definitely the case for Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) – often referred to as the original Existentialist – as well as for later thinkers such as the theologian Paul Tillich (1886-1965).

More typically, Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980), as a devout atheist in 1945 described existentialism as “the attempt to draw all the consequences from a position of consistent atheism”.  Not calling himself an atheist but an “unbeliever”, Albert Camus (1913-1960) rejected the existentialist label, but is usually included in the roundup of existentialist authors, as are Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) and Franz Kafka (1883-1924) who are really in a category all by themselves, and some of my very favourite writers.

The kind of thinking I clearly identify with existentialism is best expressed by Camus’s view that man’s freedom – and the opportunity to give life meaning – lies in the acknowledgement and acceptance of absurdity. If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free.” Truly free to define the meaning of our own individual universe – but do we have courage and will to do this?

I like to think of existentialism as the attempt to re-define yourself in an increasingly absurd world as defined for you by the traditions of science, philosophy and religion; you cannot help but feel alien to it. Others cannot tell you who or what you are, or what your existence should mean to you. Only you can determine what you can be for yourself, as opposed to what others want you to be.

For this you must look at yourself not through the eyes of others, but from yourself, from the inside out – from within the acute reality of your own cognitive and spiritual existence. But this is no easy task – it means assuming responsibility for all your actions as you attempt to recreate yourself from the subjective contents of your stream of consciousness. It will require courage – the courage to re-invent oneself without being plugged into a god, a scientific assumption or the beliefs of society at large for confirmation that you are doing the right thing.

That this process might cause you anguish  and despair was a frequent topic for existentialist writers when they held that “… value of life – living –  is nothing more than the meaning we give it.”  (J.P Sartre).

For a more complete and erudite roundup of the existentialist movement I recommend Walter Kaufmann’s excellent 1956 anthology Existentialism: from Dostoevsky to Sartre.