On the Absurd
Francone doesn't hold back in this week's chronicle of skepticism, humor, and unyielding action.
by Vincent Francone, Editor-in-Chief
1
The idea is always admirable. The execution is not always impossible, though often improbable. The ultimate outcome is not dissimilar than the last ultimate reality.
If any of the above seems confusing, sorry. I’ll try to clear things up shortly. If any of it seems spot on, well… hello, fellow traveler.
2
Recently, at the start of a meeting— taking place over Zoom, that most necessary and loathsome of technologies—the meeting leader asked us to take part in an ice breaker. If you’ve been to or worked in college, you’ve done these, right? You’re asked your name, your job title or major, depending on which side of the desk you sit, and maybe something quirky like, “What’s your favorite pizza topping?” For this ice breaker at this academic meeting, we participants were asked to describe how we show up in the world. I had zero idea what to say after offering my name and position at the university, so I said, “I show up as an absurdist.”
A few smiling faces in the Zoom boxes. A few confused looks. Likely, if I looked hard enough, a few eye-rolls. Can’t fault that reaction. It’s a ridiculous thing to say: I show up as an absurdist. And be sure that I felt ridiculous the moment it was said, just as I have felt ridiculous after every ice breaker, not to mention after every comment I’ve make in every meeting I attend. Which is perhaps why my ridiculous comment this time was perfect.
3
I am not an absurdist in the sense of the absurdists I admire. Daniil Kharms and Samuel Beckett, for example. Though what underpins some of their work is what Albert Camus wrote about in The Myth of Sisyphus, the text from which I get much of my worldview. If you’ve read it, you’ll know that the end is a bit puzzling. Sisyphus is condemned to push the boulder uphill and then up the other side of the hill again and again. You don’t have to be a philosophy major to see the metaphor for daily existence. But when Camus states that we must imagine Sisyphus happy, well, that used to throw me. I know, I know—Sisyphus is at peace because he has accepted his fate, and accepting fate is a form of rebellion, of not succumbing to our worst aspects, not screaming and cursing the gods, but laughing. Laugh at what you can’t control, because fuck its power over you.
My own, surely flawed, reading of Camus’s book has me less at peace and more amused by the inescapable aspects of being alive in an uncaring, chaotic universe. Despite a lack of meaning, there are inevitabilities. If the inevitable is decline, death, suffering, and failure, how do we find joy? I don’t know about you, but I primarily find it in laughing at the great cosmic joke. Not mocking, not callow rejection—no, I too play the silly game and buy into so much of the bullshit. But I know enough to know it’s all bullshit. And that’s liberating.
4
The meeting I mentioned before was a good meeting inasmuch as I felt it had purpose. So many meetings do not. This one did, specifically to discuss ways to make our campus more inclusive. And though the meeting was not without some tension and awkwardness, I felt better for having attended it, though the absurdist in me suspects that the ultimate outcome will not be the toppling of that which we seek to topple. The meeting was a gesture, a timid salvo, a spray of mist addressing an inferno. Were I less of an absurdist and more a defeatist, I’d not bother. But bothering is the point. The boulder awaits—time to push it uphill. The ultimate outcome: it’ll roll down the other side. But smile, fucker. Don’t let gravity win without a fight!
5
Why are we here? I don’t know. Is there a god? Beats me. Why is there suffering? Who can say? Will there ever be justice? I doubt it. Will bad things continue to happen? Depends on what you mean by “bad,” but yeah, definitely, or at least as long as there are human beings walking the face of the Earth. What’s to be done? Little? Should we give up? Probably. Will we? Never.
6
I’m not a philosopher. Or—honesty time—a great reader of philosophy. I’ve dipped a toe (eye?) into some texts and took a few classes and muddled through Kant and Aristotle, gazed with awe at Spinoza, however little I gleaned, and found something close to joy with Kierkegaard and, slightly, Sartre. But it’s not like I’ve really read these dudes. More contemporary names like Hannah Arendt and E. M. Cioran hit harder, though even while reading them I’ve often felt like I missed something crucial. Which is why I explore, or identify, with the term “absurdist” less as a way of living life (which I suspect philosophy is intended to offer) than as a way of thinking about the things that would otherwise send me to the bottom of Lake Michigan with rocks in my pockets.
Lucian Dan Teodorovici’s novel (translated in English as) Our Circus Presents offers a favorite joke: a circus comes to town with a sideshow containing “the Birdman.” A sign next to this curiosity, which is really just a guy in a costume sitting mostly motionless, reads: The Birdman—Somedays he flies, somedays he does not. Today, he’s not flying.
Aside from Vonnegut’s “No damn cat. No damn cradle,” this is as good as metaphors get.
Cleary, my sense of the world, in all its absurdity, comes from fiction more than philosophy, for these two examples, along with the ending of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the entirety of Barton Fink, sum up life as I find it. A cruel joke that nevertheless forces a laugh. Inescapable ultimate outcomes that defy our ongoing efforts. But just as these outcomes defy us, they define us. Are we anything other than beautiful in our toil?
Teodorovici’s Birdman cracks me up because that’s mostly what I’ve encountered: the promise of something. Work hard and you’ll be fine. Find something you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Vote and you’ll effect change. Who dares wins. And other platitudes. The promise of possibility, that life is about to really begin—not the warming up that’s been your life so far, but the next stage, the level you’ve been working/fighting for: the place where it’ll all start to feel right. Tomorrow, tomorrow that Birdman is flying. Today, he’s not.
Surely, not everyone feels this. Those who peaked in high school, still have their class rings and Letterman’s jackets and look back on their days in college swilling beer in a fraternity? They may feel life is over and accept that the remainder of their days will be mediocre. I can think of nothing sadder, though perhaps they have the right view.
7
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is the reason why I’m not a full communist.
8
So much opportunity for absurdity has been created by our dumb ideologies. The nightmare of Soviet communism seems unignorable, though it’s all too easy for those of us born in the USA to put our heads in Capitalism’s sands. And while our prisons and their gulags have more in common than I do with most people running for office, I’m not about to make a list of which is worse. No absurdist would. I do wish to express that it’s easy to be an absurdist if one merely observes the outcomes of both economic ideologies (though I grant you those ultimate outcomes might not have arrived yet). Having lived my entire life in a capitalist society, I can only rightfully opine on that system. And boy, let me tell you… not awesome. Baubles and gadgets galore, sure, and tasty distraction—YUM! I love my TV and junk food and booze and decadence as much as the next slob, but what is increasingly referred to as “late stage capitalism” is no picnic. For some, sure, but they’re the minority. The majority (by which I mean the oft-mentioned 99%) worry, struggle, placate, self-medicate, capitulate, tolerate, facilitate, have infinite images and avenues by which to masturbate, yet so much of it is temporarily soothing at best. There’s always a smoldering coal, always the threat of tomorrow, of downsizing, the stock market tanking, portfolios collapsing, plans thwarted, hopes dashed, the whole house of cards falling apart. We might get fired or insultingly “laid off,” foreclosed upon, evicted by eminent domain, ushered away from a public park for the crime of being unhoused. We endure because we have no choice. Oh, we might revolt, overthrow the powers that be and restructure the world so that is more equitable and just, but… well, forgive my cynicism, but… nah. Ain’t happening.
Perhaps that is the uglier side of the absurdist coin: the suspicion that nothing will change and that those who could make a difference will either cease, fail, or be bought off. I know many a young communist revolutionary activist turned comfortable mortgage holding careerist. And I don’t blame them one bit. The Birdman simply isn’t flying today.
9
One need not be an atheist to be an absurdist. I’m not—not really. Agnostic here. Yeah, one of those wishy-washy fuckers. I simply don’t know if there’s a god. Nor do I care. If there is (or isn’t), I don’t think it matters, for if there is a god clearly that god isn’t doing much to help out.
But!
But if one embraces (surrenders to?) an absurdist worldview, isn’t that essentially accepting that there is a design? The universe is chaotic, sure, but within that chaos there is at least a plan of some sort, though it only manifests in the ultimate outcomes (injustice, failure, decay, death). Absurdists believe in the inevitable decline, in entropy and disorder, but if these things are the ultimate outcomes of all endeavors, well, it seems like that’s by design. Thus… a designer.
Maybe. Maybe someone’s rigged the system, but was that God? Maybe the only certainty is in the fallibility of human beings. Design flaw or merely the way things are ex nihlio?
I don’t know. And saying I do would be absurd.
10
Sure, this isn’t exactly what most folks would call a sunny outlook. But the absurdist is not always glum. They are often chipper. Happy, even. At least amused. A joke, however dark, accompanies them throughout their days, as does the will to go on trying in the face of the ultimate outcome, which none of us cannot control. We may make a difference, though. We may actually effect real change. Even lasting change. Not everything is doomed. We’re not completely fucked. Because, in the face of so much we cannot control, we have constructed systems of power that have real effects on people’s lives. And being an absurdist does not exempt one from action. In fact, it necessitates it. We vote, we fight, we toil because to not would be surrender. And fuck that. We are rebels without a chance. But what are you going to do, give up? An option, I guess, but not mine.
11
If I were not an absurdist, I’d quit trying to be a writer. If ever there were a losing battle.
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