“For the absurd man it is not a matter of explaining and solving, but of experiencing and describing. Everything begins with lucid indifference.”—Albert Camus
“To me, absurdity is the only reality.”—Frank Zappa
“Absurdity is what I like most in life . . . there’s humor in struggling in ignorance.”—David Lynch
I’m talking about absurdity, not absurdism.
Organizing the components of our reality into categories is useful, of course—we have to create paths through the incomprehensible; my complaint is that this arbitrary packaging has a way of nullifying further thought, and confusing mechanism with essence. By making absurdity a school of thought rather than an essential quality of reality to be experienced—that is, the thing without the commentary—absurdism robs one of life’s delights of its vitality.
Of the making of isms there is no end.
Absurdism—the school of thought that the universe is irrational, and human search for meaning in it, pointless—is a staple of fatigued 20th century thought. As Camus saw it, we are all Sisyphus, searching for meaning in something that doesn’t have any. Absurdism is not exactly existentialism, which holds that human meaning can be, and only can be, willed, and is not absolute—or de Beauvoir’s ambiguity—that right and wrong are not givens. Absurdity encompasses all of that, but for lovers of it, it is a predilection, not a philosophy. A lot of traditional structures of meaning collapsed in the 20th century—but it was the structures, not the universe, that collapsed. Unlike absurdism, absurdity is just itself.
Which brings us to the real question: why is absurdity (to some of us) so appealing?
We could start by examining the idea that the “problem” is man trying to find rationality in an irrational universe. The universe is not irrational, and is not absurd. The universe simply is. If there is any irrationality it is in us, in our refusal to accept what the universe is. The conundrum is not why the universe is the way it is, but why the human mind is the way it is.
I’ll grant you, not being able to find meaning in life can be inconvenient. It can also be funny. There is a spark of the divine in everyone—the brighter the spark, the more “enlightened” the mind. A sign of enlightenment is empathy—the movement of focus to outside the self—but even more tell-tale is humor. There is no goal in life, only the experiencing of it, and the relief in that fact—that the simplest thing was true all along—leads to life-affirming laughter. Humor is not an attribute but a primal force. Implicit in laughter is the intuition that everything is okay in the end.
All of our “psychological” problems, on the individual and social level, come from our attempt to impose borders of meaning and structure on our naturally unbordered lives. Of course our dreams don’t come true, and if they do, they usually just create new nightmares, everything that comprises “something” exists in an ocean of nothing, we build up possessions and meaning and relationships only to see them all decay and disappear, we systematically lose everything we ever had or loved—and it doesn’t matter! Our lives are a variety of rich experiences, and we habitually take everything we experience another step: what does it mean, where does it fit, what do I compare it to, how does it affect my concept of myself, what ism do I belong to?
Happiness lies in leaving out the second step.
There’s far more meaning in simple gratitude and compassion than anything we can manufacture to restate it.
When we try to impose a narrative where it doesn’t fit, the inevitable result is absurdity. And it’s the narrative, not the place where we’re trying to force it, that’s absurd.
The word “absurd” first appeared in English in the early 16th century. It came to English via Middle French from Latin. The Latin root “surdus” meant “deaf, dull, or silent,” and with the prefix meant something like “out of tune.” The word exists out of necessity. From a soup of inanimate particles the universe evolved to structures and ultimately, at least here, to organisms, and somehow, consciousness. We can’t explain any of that, and certainly our consciousness cannot account for itself. To have the craving to explain in a context where it’s not possible results in a sensation that needs a word, and “absurd” got the job. Absurdity is innate to human experience. It doesn’t matter that people experience and express different versions of it. There’s still an “it.” At a pretty young age children have a sense of it. Just offer a banana to a three or four year old and say “Would you like this purple banana?”
If God exists, and can be experienced, it will be in the realm of the absurd. This absurdity of God from our perspective is not something to be solved, but lived.
There is such a thing as “absurd” because there’s such a thing as “normal.” Normal is state-sanctioned reality, and since it carries with it the assumption that it is the only way to process reality, and the essence of reality doesn’t submit to words—i.e. rationality—absurd happens when we attempt to apply it. The party line is absurd, and the only sane response to that absurdity is to reflect it back with some absurdity, more artful of course, of one’s own. It is a mirror. There is nothing more important for the First Amendment to protect.
The appropriate response to the absurdity of human life is laughter. Laughter is an expression of liberation. And what could be more hilarious, more liberating, than the primordial meaninglessness of life? What could be funnier than the realization that all language, all meaning, is a translation of the untranslatable? That life has no point but to be lived?
With love, honesty, and gratitude.
As Kierkegaard knew, rationality and faith can’t co-exist. A leap of faith is an embrace of the absurd.
I’m not saying anything you can’t find in Ecclesiastes.
* * *
Our fractious species seems to have two sub-species: those who feel lost without a sense of metaphysical absoluteness, and those who feel lost with one. Order vs. wonder. Stasis vs. flux. State-sanctioned thinking vs. free thinking. Obedience vs. creativity. Servitude vs. imagination. As I’ve observed before, maybe the teeming, colorful, multicultural society that, given its history, America had no choice but to become, cannot be susceptible to democratic governance. Maybe Justice Alito is right: “One side or the other is going to win.”
But I know how much authority hates creativity, and I fear the jackboot.
The saving grace of America has always been the middle—but what happens when the middle abnegates its responsibility and migrates to the extremes is anybody’s guess.
Hope is absurd. Embrace it.