Albert Camus: Life is worth living ☀️
Camus: If life has no meaning, then why don’t you just kill yourself right now?
DKB: That’s a bit of an extreme question to start a conversation with.
Camus: Not really. Deciding whether or not life is worth living is the fundamental question of philosophy.
Many people die because they determine that life isn’t worth living, so the meaning of life is the most urgent question of them all.
You wake up, work your nine to five job, go home, watch TV, sleep. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Stuck in an infinite loop.
But one day the “why” arises, and that’s where everything begins. Your consciousness awakens, and you begin a journey of questioning. At the end of this journey comes the ultimate question: suicide or recovery.
The human heart has a natural desire for meaning and purpose. But the universe is devoid of meaning. It doesn’t have anything to offer us.
This contradiction between our longing for meaning, and the universe’s total indifference, is what I call the absurd.
Is suicide a legitimate solution to the absurd? Or is there a better solution?
Albert Camus (1913 - 1960) was a French philosopher, famous for his absurdist philosophy. He was also the second youngest person to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
(Read this post on the website directly: https://dkb.show/post/life-is-worth-living)
DKB: Well speak for yourself, because my life does have meaning. I believe that we’re all part of a benevolent universe, working together in harmony to serve some greater purpose.
Camus: A leap of faith is the most popular response to the absurd.
Every single existential philosopher suggests some kind of leap of faith.
Kierkegaard said that if there was no transcendent reality, and all we had was this bottomless void of the absurd, then life would be despair.
This cry doesn’t stop the absurd man, because he would rather accept despair, than feed on the roses of illusion.
I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I don’t know that meaning, and that it’s impossible for me to know it.
How can I understand anything outside of human experience?
The abstract philosopher and the religious philosopher both start out from the absurd, then take a leap of faith to meaning. They sacrifice their reason in exchange for comfort. This is a philosophical kind of suicide.
Just to be clear, I’m not saying that anything is wrong with this way of living, or looking down on anyone. I’m just wondering…is there something else we can do besides take that leap of faith?
DKB: What happens if we don’t take the leap of faith? What else is there?
Camus: Revolt!
Revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that would typically accompany it.
Conscious revolt against the absurd is one of the only coherent philosophical positions. The constant confrontation between man and his own obscurity.
You might think that suicide follows revolt, but it doesn’t. Suicide, like the leap of faith, is extreme acceptance. You see your hopeless future, and rush towards it. True revolt is the simultaneous awareness and rejection of death.
Revolt is what gives life its value. Spread out over the length of a life, it restores majesty to that life.
Suicide is a rejection of life, but the absurd man maintains his life and his consciousness. He knows that in his day-to-day revolt, he gives proof of his only truth, which is defiance.
DKB: Okay, but what would I actually do without meaning or purpose?
What does it mean to live a good absurd life?
Camus: Quantity over quality!
Living the absurd life means substituting the quantity of experiences for the quality. If all that matters is my conscious revolt, then what counts is not the best living but the most living.
Quantity of experiences doesn’t depend on the circumstances of our life. It depends solely on us.
To two people living the same number of years, the world always provides the same amount of experiences. It’s up to us to be conscious of them.
Being aware of one’s life, one’s revolt, and one’s freedom, to the max, is living to the max.
The sole obstacle in life is premature death. In the rebel’s universe, death is the supreme injustice.
No depth, no emotion, no passion, no noble cause, and no sacrifice, could make a conscious life of forty years equal to a conscious life of sixty years. There will never be any substitute for twenty years of life and experience.
A cashier at the grocery store is equal to the president if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard.
The succession of presents before a constantly conscious soul is the ideal of the absurd man. The absurd revolt is a tribute that man pays to his dignity in a campaign in which he is defeated in advance.
By the mere activity of consciousness, I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.
DKB: If you really believed all this, then wouldn’t you be completely immoral, break every law, and have no regard for other people?
Camus: I have seen people behave badly with great morality, and I note every day that integrity has no need of rules. Everything is permitted, yes, but that is not an outburst of joy, but a bitter acknowledgement of a fact.
The certainty of God giving meaning to life is far more attractive than the ability to behave badly without punishment. The choice would not be hard to make. But there is no choice, and that’s where the bitterness comes in.
The absurd does not liberate, it binds.
“Everything is permitted” doesn’t mean that nothing is forbidden. The absurd just views the consequences of all those actions as equivalent. It doesn’t recommend crime, because that would be childish, but it makes clear the futility of crime.
Likewise, if all experiences are indifferent, then living a life of duty and altruism is as legitimate as any other. You can be virtuous on a whim.
An absurd man always considers the consequences of his actions calmly. He is always responsible for his actions, but he is never guilty of anything.
DKB: I don’t know…if I adopted this philosophy then I’m not sure what I’d do.
Maybe I’d give up my blog and go travel the world, to collect as much experiences as I can before I die, or something like that?
Camus: Give up your blog? What are you talking about?
Being a creator is the ultimate absurd rebellion.
Creating is living doubly.
To work and create for nothing, knowing full well that your creation has no future, is living the dream.
The absurd creator knows that whether their work lasts for days, or centuries, it remains completely unimportant. Performing these two tasks simultaneously, negating and magnifying at the same time, is the path of the absurd creator.
Human will has no other purpose than to maintain conscious awareness, but it could not do that without discipline. Of all of the schools of discipline and presence, creation is the most effective.
Creation provides the clearest evidence of man’s sole redeeming quality: the dogged revolt against his condition, perseverance in a hopeless effort.
It calls for daily effort, self-mastery, and intense self-discipline. And all of that for nothing. The end result is a fleeting, short-lived work of art.
Perhaps the great work of art has less importance in itself, than in the ordeal it demands of a man, and the opportunity it provides him to approach a little closer to his naked reality.
The final challenge for the creator is to free themselves from their creation. They have to truly accept that their creation has no value in the grand scheme, and with this they complete their understanding of the absurd.
Surprisingly, this gives them more freedom in the realization of that work, just as becoming aware of the absurdity of life empowers them to dive into their creative work wholeheartedly.
So create your heart out, and live life on your terms. The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.
If you made it all the way to the end, send me a message and let me know what you thought of it.
Working tirelessly to create meaningless work is great and all, but hearing from you is even better.
much love,
dkb