When one is eating Skippy peanut butter from a jar and putting together a steam punk costume to wear to Burning Man…one tends to have questions bubble to the surface. Questions such as:
“Really? Did I just eat a whole jar of goddamned peanut butter?” or “I wonder how these leg warmers will hold up in the desert?” or “Dude. Meaning. Where do I find meaning in my life?”
It that last one on which we shall focus today my friends because my lovingness of peanut butter and my forthcoming hedonist adventures in the alkaline soil of the playa really kind of fall by the wayside when the question of worth and value come to the fore. Or maybe they bring up such thoughts.
My lovely, sweet, sassy and completely confused little heart. She forgets that fulfillment is a self-specific thing. She must have a broken gauge or something. I notice it most when I flail and set the expectation for others to fill me and then fall down because how could anyone ever do that? Ever?
It’s absurd.
I (and I think most of humanity) have this space inside that I call “the absurdist pit”. It is that space where certainty bleeds into pure WTF’ery and nonsense becomes that thing that life answers to despite ones best intentions. Emotional response lines the bottom and sides and edges of this space and speeds the drop down into its depths. I honestly believe that partnering with another human being is steeped in absurdist philosophy; in fact I have the urge to say that ALL life is steeped in the absurd but to do so would indicate that I believe that there is no inherent value or meaning in life and I simply cannot do that. If I did I would start going all Toilets in Mumbai and end up with a gun and a bottle of whiskey playing roulette on a mountain top cursing Camus and Kierkegaard…I know myself well enough to know that I need to have more than fleeting concepts of hope and beauty to sustain me.
You think that I jest…but I don’t.
There is a small space inside my body, locked from prying fingers and eyes that holds the unwavering belief that there is something worth living for on this earth. I think this might be where my soul lives but perhaps not. I believe that it is where my deepest well of personal knowledge resides and I am grateful every day that it is locked up there. If it wasn’t I would have carved it out of my body in a fit of rage or offed myself long ago.
You think that I jest…
Camus said “Suicide is confessing that life holds no worth” (total paraphrase) and in response or perhaps aversion to this statement my locked space holds fast to belief in my worth and perhaps this is to a fault. To be perfectly honest – it took years of hating the ever living shit out of myself to begin to know and to find value at my core…and if self-loathing isn’t suicide of the ego experienced over the long term…well then it isn’t… and the absurd can win and fuck the world.
If you don’t know absurdist philosophy – you probably think I have an embittered heart and I suggest that you read anything by Albert Camus or Soren Kierkegaard… or sit in your room, think about what has worth in your life and then try to mark its value. Better yet, think about who you are and where you are going in this vast ocean of humanity then find a solid grounding for your ethics, moral system and all things of value…then read some absurdist or nihilist philosophy and THEN read about what’s going in Syria and juxtapose that to your understanding, redact it to a finite set of parts and then begin again.
Welcome to the “ absurdist pit.”
Welcome to one of many reasons why my soul has locks that remain un-keyed. Even if it seems foolish, I need that space to be untarnished.
The absurd is born out of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world. Camus – I have a thing for French philosophers don’t I? That dark silence that presses on the soul and heart space when one sits in bed at night and thinks too fully on what one is, was and will become. .. . .. … Feel it now? A ghost
pain deep in your center? If you do then you know. If you don’t then you will one day.
Hope, Freedom and Integrity.
These words are the bones absurd throws to we humans to fill the raw void that believing that there is no meaning carves at one’s center. Chase THAT dragon around a while and see where it leads you. It might be a better and more developed place than I…perhaps not. I find value in all of these words but I also believe that they are the gilding that makes the absurd seem manageable and are simply that: flakes of gold trying to emulate a truth. How can one have hope or freedom or know integrity if one truly believes that all is for naught and the universe answers with silence.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
Eliot
Man – my writing today is tangential at best, but holds worth for this smaller conversation and perhaps a larger one later.As for this discussion; it is sort of about the heart growing from the miasma of the absurd… I think perhaps might it and the golden edges of hope and freedom and growth and integrity are what keep us coming back for more. That and the driving knowledge that even if we do not find recognition or meaning on the large scale than perhaps it is available in smaller doses – at the locus where one heart meets another. Perhaps the absurd only comes out to play when one focuses on the effort placed in finding a mate, or pushing away an appropriate mate or enveloping an inappropriate one. Trying and doing. Placing value or building it with another person. Constructing and deconstructing. Absurd but oh so human. Strictly speaking the value of any relationship is intrinsic and therefore if one has never had a “valuable” relationship then is the pursuit of one an attempt to live a fulfilling life in an indifferent word? If the world paid deference would we all find our perfect mate the first time out of the gate? I have never mated “appropriately” so does this mean all my relationships have fallen to the absurd? Sometimes I think yes. Most times I think no…but it is the hope, integrity and sense of beauty in this world as well as the freedom to believe as I like that drives this understanding of “beingness” in me . This belief lives in the secret spaces because for me to not go all fucking hunter s. it has to.
So – as always – I part with a question:
Does any of this really matter? Honestly. If you never heard of absurdism you/I would probably keep at it. Living and loving and questing and hurting and eventually dying. Does the application of a philosophy matter at all to one’s ideals this late in the game? Let’s shift the term we’re using from absurdest to enlightenment how much does it matter now? Does the term matter or are we free enough to escape …. What? Training. Culture?
Returning to my peanut butter now.
Much love and light-
Sx3
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ahimsamaven 
fiztrainer
July 31, 2012
Very thought provoking. I’m sure this is something we all contend with now and again. I know I do. Thanks for such an awesome post. 😀
Our Daily Train blog (@ourdailytrain)
August 4, 2012
I tend to think we can find our own value in life regardless of whether we ascribe to absurdism or not. I do ascribe to it, and say that life for the human race has no meaning taken as a whole, but we can embrace our own meaning individually: giving to charities, love, learning, the arts, etc. For myself, I find a great deal of personal fulfillment in the first and third. So, I would answer: if life has no meaning, so what? Just live, enjoy the ride, find some meaning in your own way. Or, wallow in the futility of it all … or, blow your brain out. It’s your choice. 🙂
ahimsamaven
August 6, 2012
…to play devil’s advocate…isn’t it against the precepts of absurdism to believe in it’s tenets? I totally agree with everything you do engage to live a fulfilling life ( it seems like we are a lot alike on that front) but why would it matter? It seems you’re saying it doesn’t save for personal fulfillment which seems more like egoism or enlightened self interest…See this is where I think too much.Way too much. Whenever I go to far down the nihilist, existential rabbit hole I watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iMUiwTubYu0 ..and then it makes it better.
amonikabyanyuvva
September 13, 2012
Soul mates.
Michael Shoemake
March 21, 2013
I believe you’re misreading Camus’ Absurdism here, and I don’t see how Kierkegaard’s, which is largely obsessed with the Knight of Faith and the reconciliation one finds in religion, is even addressed here. While intrinsic meaning does not exist, Camus doesn’t take this as a depressing notion, but a liberating one. Now, either interpretation is a fundamentally emotional response to an abstract, non-emotional idea, but the point is that Camus was rejecting the emotional nihilism of “nothing matters” by saying that because the universe does not dictate our ethics, we may choose it. Emotionally, we may rebel against this inherent meaninglessness and imbue the world with our own. Intellectually, we may construct anything, bend the whole of our minds to the task of creating something we can be proud of.
Think of it this way: If you eat a muffin, but you know that eventually all of the pleasures, both sensual and mnemonic will go away — therefore, why eat the muffin? This question, though, presupposes that longevity is to be desired more than sensual and mnemonic pleasures. If we swap “longevity” for “intrinsic worth,” however, we find that a paradox occurs: intrinsic worth is valued by the one making the evaluation. The value of intrinsic value, then, finds its origins in the appraiser.
It’s true that it’s equally clear that there is no logical basis for eating that tasty muffin either, though. It’s got no ground besides your own evaluation that fleeting sensual and mnemonic pleasures are worth eating the muffin. In other words, Camus’ whole thing about the Absurd being liberating is just as unfounded. But, again, he’s not trying to be a philosopher. He’s just presenting an alternative way that one may or may not choose to live (and love).
ahimsamaven
March 21, 2013
A: Given that this is all philosophically based and steeped in existential/absurdist ideals…I can’t really misinterpret absurdism now can I? I’m in conflict and trying to find meaning in this vast and unresponsive universe and everything I experience is subjective 😉
B: Kierkegaard was one of the forefathers of existentialist nihilism – believing in god/perusing the righteous christian idea ( knight) doesn’t negate that he outlined the basic tenets of absurdism in his Journals and broached on moral nihilism in is attempts to mete existential subjectivity and personal faith.
C: I am referencing Camus from The Myth of Sisyphus more than any other text so my apologies if he has a more comprehensive text in which he further delineates how to embrace nothingness in order to find personal freedom.
D: I’m utilizing a literary agent known as juxtaposition in this post. Referencing absurdist/nihilist philosophy in a way that also calls to the fore the absurdist literary tradition…call it an experiment in blogginess.
E: Thank you for the muffin analogy. I dig it.