Contra Camus

[ShadowOfTheDay]

Having lost my childhood faith around the age of 15 or 16, I found myself deeply enthralled by the writings of the notable existentialist philosophers (e.g. Sartre, Camus, Kant, etc.). I was especially moved by Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus," which addresses the question of personal meaning in a world essentially devoid of one. As Camus states, suicide is not merely some symptom of mental illness, but a perfectly rational response to the absurdity of life. In fact, he claims that suicide is "the only serious philosophical question." He concluded his essay with a very poetic and beautiful life affirming statement: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." In other words, our fate is only tragic if we are unhappy. Wish I could imagine Sisyphus happy : (

 

[Logic]

Having lost my childhood faith around the age of 15 or 16, I found myself deeply enthralled by the writings of the notable existentialist philosophers (e.g. Sartre, Camus, Kant, etc.). I was especially moved by Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus," which addresses the question of personal meaning in a world essentially devoid of one. As Camus states, suicide is not merely some symptom of mental illness, but a perfectly rational response to the absurdity of life. In fact, he claims that suicide is "the only serious philosophical question." He concluded his essay with a very poetic and beautiful life affirming statement: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." In other words, our fate is only tragic if we are unhappy. Wish I could imagine Sisyphus happy : (

Sisyphus may of been happy for a few minutes, until he remembered he was stuck pushing a rock up a hill for all of eternity

 

[memataporfavor]

To learn and accept life's absurdity is one of the most difficult things in life. Then and only then we'll be able to push our rocks up the hill with a smile on our faces. I'm still trying to learn to do so, but damn, that shit's hard.

 

[not_a_robot]

Having lost my childhood faith around the age of 15 or 16, I found myself deeply enthralled by the writings of the notable existentialist philosophers (e.g. Sartre, Camus, Kant, etc.). I was especially moved by Camus' "Myth of Sisyphus," which addresses the question of personal meaning in a world essentially devoid of one. As Camus states, suicide is not merely some symptom of mental illness, but a perfectly rational response to the absurdity of life. In fact, he claims that suicide is "the only serious philosophical question." He concluded his essay with a very poetic and beautiful life affirming statement: "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." In other words, our fate is only tragic if we are unhappy. Wish I could imagine Sisyphus happy : (

Imagine him smoking weed. That's what I do.
He frequently mumbles "Fuck this rock. Fuck all their stupid fucking rocks. One day I'll let this rock roll down, I hope it fucking crushes someone. Fuck rocks. I'm the fucking King of "Rock and Roll", get it? Ha ha, oh, I do crack myself up. Fuck Elvis and fuck this rock, Im'a roll it. Roll this motherfucker all day long. Rock and Roll, baby! Damn I'm funny."

 

[memataporfavor]

Imagine him smoking weed. That's what I do.

Instead of rolling the rock, rolling a joint?

 

[Jean Améry]

The myth of Sisyphus is the perfect metaphor for life and the complete and utter irrationality of humankind on both a macro and a micro level. Each day we expend energy and work towards goals while we know perfectly will one day all will come to naught and we'll die (macro level, life as a whole). On the micro level each day we basically do the same things and we just repeat this like hamsters running in a wheel.

We must indeed imagine ourselves happy (delude ourselves into thinking we are or it's at least attainable) otherwise we'd collectively give up this race to nowhere. Truly seeing life for what it is (devoid of illusions) will inevitably lead to suicide. Of course even those who've actually looked into the abbyss ("If you look into the abbyss the abbyss also looks into you", Nietzsche) usually shy away from the perfectly logical conclusion (it's better not to be) and turn to the junkie behaviour of chasing meaningless pleasures and goals (dopamine release in the brain: fun, fun, fun lets do it all again and again).

Here's a monologue by a philosopher (Inmendham) who, unlike Camus, did draw the logical conclusion based on the facts of life and the meaninglesness of it all:



Antinatalism is the logical consequence of this worldview (pessimism or rather realism).