Week 3: Experimenting with Absurdism
It's a little dark in here, but the shadows are pretty
This week feels dark, just to warn you. I’m not sure if this is the right sequence for these reflections, but I think we have to allow ourselves to feel darkly for a moment. I will try to balance it, but sometimes darkness just envelops. Of course, the experience will be subjective, but I think there is a slight objectivity for the vast majority of humans in the notion of resisting death. I don’t know how this is going to make you feel, but if I read shit I wrote and go “Well, shit”, it’s probably > a 7.0 on the shookness Richter Scale.
When I was writing these the first go-round, I let my emotions flow. I selected 366 excerpts and quotes that I felt reflected the elements of absurdist that would deepen my understanding of it. But, on any given day, I just picked a quote to write about base on how I was feeling. If something felt too dark or too bright, I chose a different day. The first few months were pretty dark, but when I couldn’t stand it anymore my humor kicked in.
So, a dear friend recommended the idea of an emo index. Something that gives you an inclination as to how light, dark, funny, science-y any give day might be. The only problem is, it’s not like grading a hot sauce. My emotional spice combo is flavorFULL. I have no idea how these things will feel on your pallette. I’d love your input on this because I don’t want to interfere with the subjective nature of this experiment.
I think diving into hard stuff is good and I want to encourage you to take each reflection as it comes. Put your own spin on it. If it’s too dark, lighten it up and vice versa. I think you’re strong enough and smart enough to know if you need to reel back, up your Zoloft, or get your ass to yoga. I believe you’re competent, and my opinion is that you don’t need my spicy/emo meter, but I’m willing to give it a try if you have strong feelings about it.
January 15 - Hope, Fear and the Duty to Ride
Thought Experiment: What are you secretly (or not so secretly) hoping for right now? How attached are you to this hope? How would you feel if I told you that your job is to stop hoping for an outcome and just let it ride?
“Hecato says, ‘cease to hope and you will cease to fear.’ . . . The primary cause of both these ills is that instead of adapting ourselves to present circumstances we send out thoughts too far ahead.”
— Seneca Moral Letters to Lucilius, Epistile V
The stoic philosophy of Seneca is reflected in the Absurd. The Stoics and Absurdists are called to live similar lives. The sense of duty to lie in revolt against the meaninglessness of the Absurd is akin to the idea that stoics should take responsibility and control what is within their ability. Both of them would argue your job is to not worry or hope. It’s to live.
In a conversation with Camus, I imagine Seneca suggesting that if life is absurd, we should live it just the same as if it is not. Camus might agree, and in response to this letter, he might add that hope and fear trick us into believing we might find some universal meaning. Seneca might not care about hope or fear’s influence on the meaning of life but thinks we should let the present erode hope and fear.
In the full passage, Seneca addresses the apparent contradiction:
“But I wish to share with you today's profit also. I find in the writings of our Hecato that the limiting of desires helps also to cure fears: "Cease to hope," he says, "and you will cease to fear." "But how," you will reply, "can things so different go side by side?" In this way, my dear Lucilius: though they do seem at variance, yet they are really united. Just as the same chain fastens the prisoner and the soldier who guards him, so hope and fear, dissimilar as they are, keep step together; fear follows hope. I am not surprised that they proceed in this way; each alike belongs to a mind that is in suspense, a mind that is fretted by looking forward to the future. But the chief cause of both these ills is that we do not adapt ourselves to the present, but send our thoughts a long way ahead. And so foresight, the noblest blessing of the human race, becomes perverted. Beasts avoid the dangers which they see, and when they have escaped them are free from care; but we humans torment ourselves over that which is to come as well as over that which is past. Many of our blessings bring bane to us; for memory recalls the tortures of fear, while foresight anticipates them. The present alone can make no person wretched.”
Fear is an obvious problem because it can prevent action, causing anxiety before a thing even occurs, but I’m not so convinced that hope must create fear. In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus seems to have to convince himself to eliminate hope:
“I must admit that that struggle implies a total absence of hope…” (emphasis added)
“A man devoid of hope and conscious of being so has ceased to belong to the future. That is natural.” (emphasis added)
He sounds like he’s telling himself he has to believe this (it’s natural, I MUST admit it), but one thing is clear: Camus, Seneca, and Hecato would agree that hope erodes the moment for the allure of something in the future. I’d argue that a little hope won’t hurt us in moderation, as long as we use it to create personal meaning, but Camus is even more stoic than the stoics on this point, who realized that we can’t help but move through the ups and downs. The best we can do is let our awareness and sense of duty guide us on the ride.
Since this quote is from Seneca’s largest body of work, a series of letters to Lucilious, an official for the emperor Nero and the letters read almost like a diary that Seneca meant to be read, I’ll let you in on little diary entry of my own from a time when my body was hurled through space, constrained by iron and straps, as my hopes and fears were eroded by the thrill of living.
I waited in line, patiently for the front row, naturally busying myself with sing-songs and covert observations of the people around me: kids and dads with the occasional mom all in dirty shoes and sweaty bodies. We shuffled into our slots, and the vinyl restraint bar descended over my shoulders. I grasped the cool metal handles, looking forward with anticipation, taking in everything from the textured sheet metal under my sneakers to the dull attendant operating green and red buttons behind a podium. There were some words over a loudspeaker and before I knew it I was upside down. I started to fear, but the side-to-side movement jostled my small head between the hard restraints. It hurt, and I hoped the end would come, but adrenaline compelled my mind to stay with the current the loop, and objects whooshing past me. It was over in a flash, and all I was left with was nausea, a headache, and a temporarily elevated heart rate.
We went again and again without deference to the pangs of fear and hope. We didn’t go for the hopes of that butterfly feeling, the fear of some anomalous crash, nor the pain that would surely come to my small head after. We rode the coaster to feel all of that melt away - for the rush of the present
I still don’t love roller coasters, but I rarely sit out. I’d rather embrace the pain of living it over the fear of the experience. The existential fear exists only in the moment before we take off, buckled securely between me and a few kilotons of hard metal. The inertia of fear is overcome as I’m thrust into the moment. I like to think that Camus, Seneca, and Hecato would feel a sense of duty to ride through the present, but I dare not hope I’ll ever know for sure.
January 16 Possibilities on the road of uncertainty
Thought Experiment: When was the last moment you felt terribly unsure? How did you get through it? Play it back in your head like a movie… were you scared? Were you angry? Roll the footage.
“The business of philosophy is to teach man to live in uncertainty — man who is supremely afraid of uncertainty, and who is forever hiding himself behind this or the other dogma. More briefly, the business of philosophy is not to reassure people, but to upset them. ”
― Lev Shestov, All Things are Possible
After experiencing discomfort, a moment of relief feels exquisite. The same goes for uncertainty… and arguably the two are synonymous for most. The more discomfort you find yourself in, the more you develop the ability to lean into a place of comfort. The wonderful irony of getting used to discomfort is that it can lead you to maximal comfort, but to reach points like this you must be prepared for anything. The process of living in uncertainty changes you.