The concept of absurdity as a fundamental characteristic of human existence was introduced into philosophy by Albert Camus, succinctly summing up in it the results of the quests of non-classical philosophy and the explosions of existential crises from Kierkegaard and Nietzsche to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. The term absorbed Nietzsche's "death of God", the dismantling of faith in the objective cosmic meaning of existence and the protection of higher authorities and, finally, a rebellion against the emptiness that reigned in their place. Camus defined absurdity as a fundamentally irreducible contradiction between the unreasonableness and meaninglessness of the world, on the one hand, and the craving for meaningfulness, orderliness, and rational comprehension in humans, on the other. Absurdity is contradiction. However, not every contradiction is absurd. To qualify as such, it must be outrageous in its absurdity - a sharp discrepancy betweenwhich is and what - as it seems to us - should be. Isn't this a surprisingly accurate description of life in general? A person is doomed to want what the world is not able to give him - this is the tragedy, comic and confusion of his position.
In his analysis of the absurd, Camus, however, drove himself into an absurdly narrow framework, focusing on one and essentially secondary aspect of it, ignoring the general picture, the depth and variety of absurd contradictions that make up the core of human existence. They will be discussed further.
Infinity of desire
Turn your gaze inward, strain it to the edge of the spiritual eye: from what, from what matter is your inner world made? Yes, that's right - out of greed. Moreover, the most furious, the most insatiable, even when she is turned to the lofty goals of creativity, love, compassion and knowledge, or retreats a little into the shadows in moments of peace. Man is a constant dissatisfaction, at times flaming, at times smoldering, but invariably present. It would be otherwise, we would not eat, and not drink, and not read books, and not paint pictures, and would not extend a helping hand to our neighbor. But only the desired is achieved, our thirst, as everyone knows, does not even think to dry up - on the contrary, it often only increases. It turns to new objects, like a black hole, greedily sucking in everything it can reach into the singularity. We have a desire for wholenessto close this eternally festering wound between "I have" and "I want", but integrity is impossible, unattainable, for human nature itself is incomplete and in striving for the unattainable, in thirst and absolute inability to eliminate it. The end of this thirst means the end of life itself, and this fact constitutes the cornerstone of the absurd, discovered by Buddhism.
Pursuit of happiness and programmed for suffering
A conscious being, eternally driven forward by the force that bursting with it, constantly receives biting lashes from the same force: they both set us in motion and punish us for any delay, for insufficient speed. The entire sphere of human experience embraces suffering, in all the diversity of its forms, gradations and shades. First of all, it lies at the basis of desire, since desire is a lack, a lack, something painful by its very inner nature. Further, suffering permeates the process of realizing desire through the discomfort of tension, boredom, disappointment with the results, the speed of this process and dissatisfaction with one's mistakes, through anxiety and fear of not reaching the goal, and much more. It also awaits at the end of the path, because what has been achieved almost always disappoints, leaving emptiness, sour aftertaste and understanding,that the nature-bitch has again twisted us around her finger, and the thirst has not disappeared anywhere.
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However, the main source of suffering is that in the article "Does suffering have only one cause?" I called "existential dissonance" the irrepressible contradiction that torments us between "I have" and "I want." Its intensity can vary, it is possible and necessary to work on its softening, but as long as the heart beats, it will remain with us. Evolution itself has taken care of making us generators of suffering, for in this way we, who are constantly “on treason” and running somewhere with our tongues out, have undoubted advantages in survival.
A satisfied, relaxed creature has weak motivation, it is weak in defense and attack, and invariably loses in the evolutionary arms race and adaptation. In order to move forward, multiply, destroy and create, to learn, we must constantly lash ourselves and our neighbors to the blood with a set of hormonal, psycho-emotional, moral and other BDSM lashes, since there are other reasons for the bulk of our activity, in addition to trying to dodge these blows, just doesn't exist. The second root component of the absurd, therefore, is the outrageous contradiction between man's innate desire for happiness and his own nature that resists happiness, generating mainly suffering at every stage and, moreover, needing suffering for survival and development.
Finitude and infinity, the meaning of life
As we remember, a black hole, by its very nature, is not able to get enough. Since she is insatiable, happiness for her, if not impossible, then at least extremely problematic. The infinity of our needs inevitably comes into conflict with the awareness of the finiteness not only of our capabilities, but also of ourselves - with death. Death as a border opens up another side in the absurdity, because it is in antagonism with the boundlessness of human appetites.
It is at this point that the boring problem of the meaning of life begins. Sense represents the position and functional role of an element in the broader context of reality, in a higher order system. So, the being of the eye is comprehended in the context of the body. Being a gear in the context of a machine, a machine inside a factory, a soldier in the context of an army or state, and so on. But all of the above meanings have one important nuance - they lose all significance along with the destruction of the contexts in which they are inscribed, that is, they turn into nonsense. Let's say you play a decisive role not just in the life of planet Earth (if this is not ambitious enough), but in the development of intergalactic supercivilization. Large-scale, grandiose, no one - it would seem - would even think of calling your existence meaningless,but now ten thousand years or millions or billions pass - and what remains of these labors and their glory? A cloud of stardust and residual radiation.
"Sic transit gloria mundi" - said in the Middle Ages. "This is how worldly glory passes." Was the existence of this proud intergalactic emperor more meaningful than the life of a humble bank clerk or a hermit in the desert? Of course no. Their fates are absolutely ontologically identical. The contexts in which they are inscribed have equal ontological statuses of insignificance in space and time, and the difference between their sizes is just an illusion. On the scale of infinity of space, an apple is no less than the sun. On an infinite time scale, a million years is no longer than a second.
That is why a person has always looked for the meaning of life that meets three criteria:
1) timelessness, indestructible eternity of the context;
2) the absoluteness, all-embracing of this context, equal to the universe as such;
3) the possibility of direct personal and formative participation in the fate of the universe. These criteria, at the very least, are met by many religions, promising the timelessness of the consequences of our actions, the immortality of the soul and great prospects for personal growth. Needless to say, these promises, although absolutely understandable and naturally follow from the nature of human aspirations, are incredibly naive? On the other hand, everything that does not meet these requirements, unfortunately, does not make sense in a satisfying understanding, for purely logical reasons, although many thinkers of the last two hundred years have been trying to reconcile a person with the idea that he can be content with a budget version of meaningful existence. so to speak, existence at the minimum. However, it is difficult to come to terms with what our source code itself is rebelling against,therefore these attempts have had only very limited success. We can repress our desire for meaning, that is, infinity, we are doing this, but being repressed, it does not disappear anywhere, and no matter how wonderful the philosophical projects of Nietzsche da Camus are, they have to deal with too strong opponents. This is the third pillar of the absurd.
Loneliness
Unrealizable striving for integrity and completeness, sometimes attacking fatigue from the tight framework of one's being, separation from the rest of the world naturally flow into the need to go beyond one's “I”. We strive to overcome the border separating “I” and “not-I”, as much as possible and at least temporarily. In the company of other people or in unity with nature, most manage to deceive themselves, but even the most myopic ones from time to time come to understand: this line can never really be crossed. The unity that we achieve is almost entirely made up of our own imagination, that is, it is a purely internal experience. We are imprisoned in the solitary cell of our own greedy "I" and cannot be truly understood and accepted either within it, much less beyond it. Although we have learned to be content with simulations of understanding and contact, the truth constantly makes itself felt - and more so the better our eyes see.
Aldous Huxley, in his iconic mescaline essay, Doors of Perception, notes:
He is joined by director Ingmar Bergman (Scenes from Married Life):
Cognition
We are tormented by desires, we cannot disobey them all and, of course, we want to realize them in the best and fastest way. For this we need knowledge, it is he who is assigned the role of determining the means and ways. Truth is vital to us, we need solid knowledge. Alas, they are just as impossible. Since cognition always comes from a limited part of space-time, it is also determined by this limitation (see the article "What is truth and is objectivity possible?", Dedicated to the problem of truth). The fundamental hypothetical nature of any knowledge is not denied by modern science (this idea began to take shape in the philosophy of science already from the beginning of the 19th century, among Americans), and even among philosophers it is already very difficult to find rabid Old Believers who defend the opposite. Anyone familiar with history sees in it an endless series of failures and delusions, replaced by new ideas that are rejected again after several decades or centuries. In the cut of everyone's personal biography, we also quickly notice how unpredictable the results of our actions are at times, how shaky any knowledge, how the most flawless logic can lead to catastrophic mistakes, and the most ridiculous strategies to brilliant victories. We need knowledge, but we are doomed to constant uncertainty - this is the fifth foundation of absurdity.and the most ridiculous strategies for brilliant victories. We need knowledge, but we are doomed to constant uncertainty - this is the fifth foundation of absurdity.and the most ridiculous strategies for brilliant victories. We need knowledge, but we are doomed to constant uncertainty - this is the fifth foundation of absurdity.
And so we are born, live and die, crucified on the cross of fundamental contradictions, unable not to strive for the impossible and unable not to suffer because of its impossibility. Is there a way out of this? There is no one capable of satisfying us (however, we remember that nothing can satisfy us). The exit of Dostoevsky and Tolstoy after awakening in the course of existential crises and crises of faith was to return to the dream of religion. Kierkegaard tried to give absurdity and nonsense meaning on religious (again) grounds. Nietzsche and Camus created atheistic ethical systems that are as difficult to implement in practice as they are inspiring on paper. The paths of the latter two, like the teachings of Buddhism, have, however, many advantages over ritual self-blindness. Although they are difficult (fighting your nature cannot be easy),they are able to move the "Suffering - Happiness" slider located somewhere inside our minds to the right, while allowing a person to honestly look into the eyes of his own destiny and his place in this world.
Earlier I wrote about metaphysical consciousness as a necessary attribute of a person (see "What is metaphysical consciousness?"). Now it seems to me more and more that for the completeness and completeness of human experience, in addition, a clear consciousness of the absurd, or at least a persistent sensation of it, is necessary. Whether it is or not - this is for me, perhaps, the highest criterion of personal development, because our civilization has already reached at least a century and a half as it has reached the point at which we are able, at the very least, to assess our own situation without resorting to grandfather's tales or locking ourselves in scientific narrow-minded indifference. The fact that until now only an insignificant number overcome this milestone, getting lost in the dead ends of history, makes the already not the most cheerful picture even more sad.
© Oleg Tsendrovsky