Terrifying Freedom

As a teen I was very impressed by a weird book titled Kosminen Viisaus (Cosmic Wisdom) by a Finnish movie director Taavi Kassila. That one, and the Bible (regular and LaVey’s), along with Esa Saarinen’s best-of compilations of western philosophers, and many more alike, sent me on a journey, still ongoing.

After this immersion in (un)conventional wisdom, and also into modern kitchen psychology, Albert Camus got me. We move from the world of ideas into the visceral, this transition taking me far from my comfort zone.

Maybe this experience is what Epictetus meant with “The philosopher’s lecture room is a hospital: you ought not to walk out of it in a state of pleasure, but in pain”.

In Albert’s philosophy there is no external source of hope. No promise of perpetual growth or unlimited opportunity. No mystical connection to “something”, no assigned purpose: any hope of divine guidance must be abandoned.

This is a terrifying and beautiful freedom.

Tragedy

We have a need to illuminate the darkness using reason. A being in need of a meaning suffers without. In reality things just are. The meaning, if any is available, is provided by us: by our culture, by our values.

This realization may feel unbearable, and for the unbearable there needs to be a remedy.

Three responses

Camus identifies three possible responses to our predicament:

1. to commit an actual suicide
2. to commit a “philosophical suicide” by going beyond reason, choosing faith in a divine order
3. to accept the lack of ordained meaning, but to revolt against it by living in reality, without comforting lies

Actual suicide solves everything, but implies a confession: reality was too much. Faith and hope are tempting, but inauthentic living provides only slight consolation. The third solution, the one offered, is to accept the absurd, even to love it.

Absurd life

A person living in the absurd acknowledges the need for meaning but accepts there is none. He does not ask to be given a purpose, nor will he attempt to counterfeit one. He is free, inside the natural limitations of human life. The freedom provides no comfort, demands nothing in particular, and does not make reaching the destination any easier. That wouldn’t even make sense, since there is no ordained destination!

As examples of absurd living Camus offers a stage actor, who lives different lives on the stage, again and again, with nothing lasting coming from it. Or a seducer with his numerous conquests. He loves no less than a faithful family man loves his wife, the seducer’s love is real when he loves, but he does not commit forever. The target of his love changes, but the love itself is true and passionate.

Sisyphus

Sisyphus was a king in an ancient myth, famous for deceiving the Gods, even cheating death for a while. Eventually it all caught up to him and he got his punishment: to forever push a boulder up the hill, just to have it roll back down again.

We are like Sisyphus in our meaning-deprived world. The labor is lifelong, and it provides no cosmic reward. The rock rolls back down.

One day your powers will fade, but now you are alive!

While alive, ask for no permission, offer no justification. Live without an appeal to authority. If you must measure, measure against your own experience.

“One always finds one’s burden again.”

When Sisyphus reaches the peak and turns back to the foot of the mountain where the boulder returned, he is at his most vulnerable, and also at his strongest. In that moment he recommits to his revolt against the void by choosing to live.

“The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

Algiers and Oran

After the main essay I encountered the strangest section of the book. It took me a while to understand what I was reading. Plowing through the description of a summer in Algiers, or the author’s return to the city of Oran, I felt like I was being offered an overly poetic travel guide. It wasn’t quite that, though.

Here Camus puts flesh on the bones.

He illustrates, with examples, what it is to live without appeal, to live the absurd: young people playing ball on the beach, long straight roads that seem to lead into the ocean, the sounds and smells of the street, the aroma from a coffee shop, the dancing lovers in the dusk, the blinding light of the day.

Experience.

He did not offer proof, but painted a picture.

The present moment, and how much life you put into it, is everything.

“What I touch, what resists me – that is what I understand.”