the absurd

This note last modified March 7, 2021

Camus claimed that life is meaningless and absurd. I am a hairless ape slapping some buttons which make lights light up on a screen right now. Attempts to make sense of life are doomed to failure because life is inherently meaningless.

Camus argues that to have meaning in life you must embrace “the absurd” and flow with the complexity and nonsensicality that life brings.

I really love absurd media

wishful philosophy
- I feel odd about that though… I wonder if these philosophers are just saying that because they are afraid of death, or sadness, and try to ascribe meaning to the absurd just so that they can feel better about it.
happiness
- Also, facing the absurd can’t hurt.
absurd media
- Media that breaks from the norm is my jam. Either it deconstructs media itself, forcing you to ask what you enjoy from media and why (blaseball, The Crimson Necklace), or it deconstructs “real life” and forces you to face the absurdity that is real life (Welcome to Nightvale, 17776)
- Some media tries to adhere to realism (sitcoms), some media sticks to its own internal consistency (Game of Thrones), but absurd media eschews realism altogether because the world is absurd anyways.
17776
- You play football with silly rules. You play football and run into tornados. You “fight” over a patch of land for 13 thousand years. the absurd has nothing on this. Everything is arbitrary, and social, and stupid, and beautiful