Let me just get this out of the way; life is unfair and there is nothing we can do about it. We were born onto a microscopic blue speck of dirt in the fabric of the universe with no justification for our existence, and for all we know, we’re just a cosmic joke. As Jean-Paul Sartre said it best:
“Everything that exists is born without reason, prolongs itself out of weakness, and dies by chance.”
Yet, if there is truly no point to life, then what’s the use of pressing forward? To French Algerian philosopher, Albert Camus, there is no point, because it is utterly impossible to find any. Camus classified this thinking as the “absurd” in where people should both embrace, yet defy their own existence in the fruitless search for meaning. However, there is one big problem that absurdism attempts to tackle: the question of suicide.
To Camus, suicide is not the answer as it is counter to the beliefs of absurdity and contradictory to accepting oneself as they are. Taking one’s own life would not be the solution to anything as it would only increase the absurdity by dismissing oneself from this plane of existence. Religion seems like a good principle, but classified by Camus as “philosophical suicide.” To him, having to put your trust in a being and realm that transcends the fabric of existence is the equivalent of giving up sensibility and your own confines of humanity.
Of course, this life may be dull and riddled with ennui, but Camus makes use of the Greek myth of Sisyphus to illustrate his point about absurdity. For those who don’t know, Sisyphus was a Greek king who cheated death on more than one occasion and as punishment from the gods he was sentenced to roll a boulder up a mountain. However, each time he would near the top, the boulder would disappear and reappear at the bottom of the mountain, leading Sisyphus to do the same thing over and over again for his endless life.
Camus chooses Sisyphus to be the poster child of absurdity as his monotonous boulder rolling echoes the hardships everyone faces at some point or another; the perpetual threat of subjugation to our crushing insignificance and tediousness. At the end of his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Camus proposes an alternate ending to Sisyphus: he reimagines Sisyphus happy and fulfilled with his work. Sure it may seem pointless and futile to roll a boulder up a mountain for all of eternity, but in Camus’ version, Sisyphus gives it a point and a meaning, he does this because he wants to, because he gets enjoyment from it; the boulder is but a means to his meaning.
Rather than wallow and complain that life has no point or meaning, Camus suggests that all we can do is look for a meaning we will never find, all the while creating a meaning of our own. Even though the universe as a never-ending scene of pain and inexplicable horrors, we could at least take some comfort in knowing that we have been given enough freedom to become our own masters in lieu of nothing.
Camus’ nihilistic approach to life implies that there not only is no God, but there cannot be any god whatsoever. To perceive a being higher than what we already cannot comprehend is contradictory to absurdist doctrines. By submitting oneself to this transcendental being, one is refusing to accept the true nature of the universe, an infinite and unavoidable, void in where one decision or another makes no difference whatsoever.
Humans were never made to understand everything there is to know, yet, paradoxically, by accepting the absurdist doctrine; we know all there is to know. Like Sisyphus, we all have our boulders in life, which we push up a mountain, without getting anywhere, but as pointless and meaningless as it may be, that’s because we have placed no meaning in it. Even though we were born here without purpose or reason, all we can do is give our lives their own meanings, by revolting against the crushing ennui the universe has presented us, and chaining ourselves to those boulders, we have given life all the meaning it needs.
Or have we?
