Adventures with Ideas: Truth, Beauty and the Paradoxes of Life
Juliet Bennett's Blog
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • About
  • My Story
  • Research
  • Photography
  • Modeling
  • 2009
  • 2010
  • 2011
  • 2012
  • 2013
  • 2014
  • 2015
  • Home
  • Truth
  • Owning Life’s Absurdity

Owning Life’s Absurdity

16 Mar ’12 Leave a Comment Written by Juliet Bennett

Have you ever thought about the absurdity of life? We are born, we work, (if we are lucky) we love, and we die… it’s hard to deny that it’s all a little absurd. Given my desire to impose some kind of “bigger meaning” to it all, the idea of “owning the Absurd” (on the Camus episode of The Partially Examined Life) made me wonder. Let’s start with Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus, the “absurd hero”, and then see what you think of “Absurdism” that followed (yes, seriously, there is such an ism).

The myth goes something like this: the gods condemned Sisyphus to roll a rock up a mountain and watch it roll down again, and to repeat the process for all eternity. It’s only when Sisyphus stops resenting his fate and instead learns to embrace it that he finds happiness.

Camus solution to the irreconcilable absurdity of life is (as we’d say today) to “own” it. He concludes that despite the terrible life of pushing rocks up a hill “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Thinking about the world today I wonder: Is the life of your typical lawyer, banker, or average happy robot, so different to Sisyphus? Are the lives of unhappy robots any different, or are they simply frustrated Sisyphus’ pushing the rocks with frowns on their foreheads? Is the conclusion to be a happy robot that knows he or she is a happy robot? Is that what Camus is saying? Maybe. Let’s leave my developing thoughts on happy and unhappy robots for another day.

“Absurdism” is the result of Camus’ book. Absurdism (—according to Wikipedia, adding an extra dash of absurdity to the table) refers to conflict between the human tendency to search for meaning in life, and the ultimate (humanly) impossibility of really finding it.

In our vast universe, mulit-verses, or whatever is the biggest representation of the infinite you can think of, how can humans ever find a sense of certainty about the meaning of anything? How can the human mind exist in conjunction with the universe? It is absurd!

But it seems to me that there’s something beautiful in the absurdity — something extremely meaningful in the meaningless of existence.

The story makes me think of the Buddhist meditative tradition of Sand Mandalas in Tibet, where over a period of days or weeks monks carefully lay grains of sand to create an incredibly detailed and beautiful picture, which once complete is very soon destroyed “in order to release and disseminate the deity’s blessings into the world to benefit all sentient beings.”[2]

At the end of a Mandala, or at the end of one’s life, I suppose we are left with one magical thing: the process. The process of life comes only alongside the process of death.

I think the lesson I have learned from Sisyphus, Camus, and all this “to suicide or not suicide, that is the question” talk… is that: (1) it’s about the process not the result; and (2) you may as well have a sense of humour about it.

If the process of pushing rocks up a hill and watching them roll back down again is what we live for, why not embrace the absurdity and have a little fun with it?

References:

[1] http://www.namgyal.org/mandalas/

[2] Partially Examined Life – 15 min exert on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6zaM5-Cnnc

[3] Myth of Sisyphus http://www.nyu.edu/classes/keefer/hell/camus.html

 

Truth
philosophy
Similar posts
  • Business leadership in climate change — I am consistently surprised by the initiative and leadership taken by businesses to address the climate crisis. Not all businesses obviously (e.g. ExxonMobil, the Koch brothers and the other vested interest that have funded climate denial movement and created vast climate confusion), but MANY businesses and business analysts, scholars and consultants are doing a extraordinarily better job than many governments [...]
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]F... — On 15 April 2016 the so-called “Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015″ was “Lapsed at prorogation” and the current status on the bill is (thankfully, at this stage) “Not proceeding”. I’m not sure whether this is a permanent status, or whether they just ran out of time and will return to the bill later…  When I see the word “fairer” associated with this bill [...]
  • A new lens to view the world: the wor... — My PhD is essentially an exercise in communicating and examining the potential for an  alternative worldview to the mechanistic materialism offered by process philosophy to contribute to addressing structural forms of violence and working toward peace. Process philosophy is too rarely taught in university philosophy as the current fashion there is divided between analytical or postmodern navel gazing. Yet process [...]
  • Thoughts on a morning walk — On my walk this morning: –       I realised that truth, reality, and illusion, are completely relative and self created –       the truth of a religion is truth for that person, it is made real by the stories that are told, and because each moment is in a way timeless, these truths are eternally real –       yet when truths are examined [...]
  • Boundaries between Self and World — “Your skin doesn’t separate you from the world; it’s a bridge through which the external world flows into you, and you flow into it.” More Alan Watts? Yes, it’s always a good time for more Alan Watts. Over and over and over, repeat. “The whole world is moving through you, all the cosmic rays, all the food you’re eating, the [...]
The Partially Examined Life
Desire to Know — Curiosity, Vanity, Trading, Prudence or Love?

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

TRUTH

BEAUTY

ADVENTURE

ART

PEACE

  • Popular
  • Recent
  • Comments
  • Is “God” a Fractal?
    15 Feb ’11
  • Is Lindt chocolate slave chocolate?
    11 Sep ’09
  • Creativism – a philosophy for life
    10 Sep ’09
  • Free Documentaries: The Truth Is Free
    17 Apr ’10
  • Coming to grips with the elephant in the room
    28 Jun ’10
  • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    4 Aug ’10
  • A short biography
    2 Sep ’09
  • Sex or chess? Peace, the world’s trump card
    13 Apr ’10
  • Alan Watts Fan Club
    3 Dec ’12
  • The Very Short Life and Times of Me and Kombi Xee
    23 Feb ’11
  • My policy wishlist for Australia’s response to climate change
    17 Jan ’20
  • Business leadership in climate change
    1 May ’19
  • A story of (mis)fortune: the farmer and his son
    8 Oct ’18
  • What is life really about?
    1 Mar ’17
  • Why the right (brain) is right…
    22 Feb ’17
  • New life: reflections on being a new mum
    29 Dec ’16
  • Orwellian Australia: the “[Un]Fairer Parental Leave Bill 2015”
    1 May ’16
  • Alan Watts’ ‘dramatic model’ and the pursuit of peace
    18 Mar ’16
  • A new lens to view the world: the world as process
    14 Jan ’16
  • 2015 in review
    1 Jan ’16

Adventures with Ideas... on Facebook

Archives

Categories

  • Academic (35)
  • Adventure (119)
  • Beauty (23)
  • Featured Posts (10)
  • Peace (124)
  • Random Life Stuff (102)
  • Truth (164)
Constitutional Recognition

Rights of Indigenous Peoples: A Personal Statement

As a "non-indigenous" Australian living on what was once the land of the Cadigal and Wangal Wangal communities, I wish to acknowledge the inter-generational responsibility that I feel toward the colonial past. As a beneficiary of "White Australia", to the Eora people of Sydney, I request your forgiveness. I stand in solidarity with your rightful demands to self determination and active participation in governmental decisions, and I hope I may learn from your eco-spiritual connection. May we, as Tom Trevorrow of the Ngarrindjeri puts it, learn to 'respect, care and share' the gifts that our planet offers us.

Tags

Alan Watts Atheism Big History Bridge Series Central America Chocolate climate change Conflict Transformation Creativism Ecology Europe God Health India India/Nepal inspiration Life in Oz Life philosophy Meaning of life Modeling My Brazilian My Christian Journey Narrative Narratology Occupy optimal trajectory Panentheism peace philosophy Photography Politics population Potentialism poverty religion slavery social construction South America The Pyramid Travel United States War What is God Wikileaks Yoga

Related posts

  • philosophy
    • Is “God” a Fractal?
    • Optimum Trajectory, swimming against the current, and man who stare at goats.
    • Joseph Campbell – The Hero’s Journey
    • Disasters and Delhi
    • Curing my incurable optimism

Donation

evolve theme by Theme4Press  •  Powered by WordPress