Camus has contended that the irrational protagonist considers life to be a consistent battle, without expectations. Any endeavor to deny our struggles and the sadness that characterizes our lives is an endeavor to escape from the ridiculous contradiction. Camus' single prerequisite for the crazy man is that he lives with full consciousness of the absurdity of his position. While Sisyphus is pushing his stone up the mountain, there is nothing for him except for anger and a constant struggle. Be that as it may, in those minutes where Sisyphus plunges the mountain free from his burdens, he is completely aware. He realizes that he will battle always and he realizes that this battle will accomplish nothing for him. This awareness is absolutely a similar awareness that an absurd man has in this life. Inasmuch as Sisyphus knows, his destiny is the same and no more regrettable than our present situation.
The basic premise in this book is that there are two schools of thought involved with becoming conscious as a man. There is one in which you become conscious of God, accepting faith as the channel between this world and the next. Existence is a matter of order, one that is concrete and follows the compelling obligations towards the God whom you commit your faith. The other option is the absurd, for which this book is written. The problem asks, is it possible not to commit suicide in a meaningless world and without faith in God. The absurd man simply states, "I and my plight are ephemeral, but I still choose life". Why?
It’s all about cheerful compliance. Realizing you’re in the situation and you’re damned to it. It’s not that I’m lost in this absent void of existence, with no telling of the future and no cause for impetus. I realize that there is a chance, be it strong or tiny, that there is a vastness far beyond the compelling straits of life that leave me wondering “what’s the difference?” If I do anything, I am compelled to the possibility of it not mattering. Camus was talking about a “lucid indifference” to this. Saying, I live it. It would be a crime to strip my life of the possibility of something.
Camus said, “for the absurd man it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.” I am in a state of despair. Anything that I do has no value. On the other hand, I am living and I am breathing and in a strange way I have a personal freedom unpronounced by most people who establish their own freedoms. All I have to do is have faith in my freedom and like a majesty that is lain out in silver robes before me, it is there. I only have to respect that I am living in a free slate, unmitigated by a stratified moral imperative that limits so many people from following intuition and their actual imperative needs. Do you believe in destiny? That we all have a purpose and it is designated by our need to imbibe the principles of our life into a system that we can identify for ourselves. There is that mode of philosophy that says that we are the people whom we are, we are meant to be these people, this specific type of person completely genuine to himself and totally as that self. My identity is the world surrounding me combusting into a single frame that I can represent justly, by my merely living life as I should be doing it.
