by James Park
Outline for Chapter 3:
Existential
Absurdity:
Is Life Worth
Living?
I. ORDINARY DISHARMONY AND EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY
II. HOW WE DISCOVER EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY
III. CAMUS' ENCOUNTER WITH THE ABSURD
IV. HANDLING THE ABSURD—COPING
A. Denying the Absurd.V. REBELLING AGAINST THE ABSURD—AUTHENTIC EXISTENCE
B. Reinterpreting Our Awareness of the Absurd.
C. Preoccupying Ourselves with Other Things.
D. Escaping into Personal Relationships.
E. Turning to 'Objectivity' and 'Science'.
F. Accepting Religious Beliefs.
VI. FREEDOM FROM THE ABSURD
VII. CRITERIA FOR VERIFICATION
Chapter 3
Even in the middle of
an apparently meaningful—at least ordered—universe,
human life seems absurd, out of joint, useless.
The ant-hill may not seem absurd to the ants,
but from the human point of view
—from the perspective of the only creatures on
the third planet from the sun
who are not satisfied merely to live out the
life of their species,
the creatures who ask more questions than there
are answers—
life is absurd, ridiculous, inconsequential.
I. ORDINARY DISHARMONY AND EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY
The ultimate absurdity
of human existence is not obvious.
But sometimes when we just walk down the street,
we suddenly notice the deep absurdity of the
events surrounding us.
Such a flash of awareness may move us to laughter,
even tho the feeling is more tragic than comic.
Being able to laugh at what we and other human
creatures are so busy doing
—and taking so seriously—indicates that we have
transcended the situation.
Evidently it takes a special perspective or sensitivity
to see the absurdity
underlying the ‘obvious’ organization and purposefulness
of human life.
1. Describing this condition
of existential absurdity
depends on metaphors drawn from our experience
of ordinary absurdity
—any clash, out-of-placeness, or incongruity.
Finding a hat in the refrigerator or a banana
in the bed makes us laugh
because these things are out of their ‘proper
places’.
When familiar things are juxtaposed in unexpected
ways,
absurdity is created, which often strikes us
as funny.
Anything ‘out of tune’ creates a sense of disharmony.
But the deeper sense
of total absurdity
does not arise from a specific clash we can point
out.
It is a free-floating, all-engulfing sense of
disharmony,
not an intelligible problem of something out
of place.
Human existence itself seems to be ‘out of place’.
When we ask for the ultimate meaning of the accidental
universe,
the only answer is—silence.
We cannot imagine what modification would create
fundamental harmony.
This absurdity is not the intellectual perception
of clash or disharmony
but the existential collapse of our whole sense
of order.
Seen from within the absurd, nothing has a proper
place.
And no amount of rearranging of the furniture
of human life
would result in a non-absurd pattern.
Chapter 3 EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY: IS LIFE WORTH LIVING? by JAMES PARK 53
2. The causes of ordinary
absurdities are well-known and easily-described.
In the realms of logic, esthetics, household-order,
or political harmony,
it is easy to point out elements that upset proper
balance and ‘fit’.
Asking for the sex of the sun is logically absurd.
Interrupting Beethoven’s 9th Symphony for a commercial
is esthetically absurd.
Finding sand in the brown sugar is an offense
against household-order.
And equally incongruous would be a Ku Klux Klansman
in the NAACP.
In each of these examples of obvious incompatibility,
we immediately know how to correct the clash
or disharmony.
Ordinary contradictions have obvious causes and
solutions.
But our inward, existential
absurdity is not as easy to understand.
It is disclosed from within rather than intellectually
perceived.
Perhaps objectively—empirically—nothing is out
of place,
but inwardly—subjectively—everything is at sixes
and sevens.
When we are possessed by existential absurdity,
nothing seems right, ordered, harmonious, or
proper.
This awareness of the absurd has no specific,
intelligible cause;
it does not even have a definite channel by which
it takes over our beings.
We just find ourselves thrown bewildered into
the absurd.
3. Ordinary incongruities
are temporary, usually short-lived.
As soon as we discover the hat in the refrigerator
or the banana in the bed,
we know what to do to restore proper order.
When we know where things belong, we can easily
set them right again.
But existential absurdity
cannot be easily corrected.
This absurdity is a permanent dimension of human
existence,
even tho we may seldom notice it.
But when we do recognize the existential absurdity
of our lives,
we wish we could return to our previous naivetè,
when everything was harmonious, meaningful, and
purposeful.
4. The ordinary absurdities
and incongruities of life are all self-contained.
Holding meaningless and useless jobs
does not necessarily make our interpersonal lives
absurd.
Nor do the political absurdities of any culture
necessarily affect its art.
Each of these inconsistencies is independent
and isolatable from the others.
And each individual clash can be handled by itself.
But existential absurdity
is not limited to one dimension of life.
Rather, it possesses every nook and cranny of
our existence.
If we initially blame our jobs for our existential
absurdity,
we find no relief by turning to our families.
Because existential absurdity arises from within
our selves,
wherever we go, everything is colored absurd.
54 OUR EXISTENTIAL PREDICAMENT: LONELINESS, DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, & DEATH
5. Ordinary clashes and
incongruities can usually be resolved,
as already noted, by putting things back into
their proper places,
by reestablishing the familiar order and harmony
of the system.
And even when confronted with an insoluble clash,
we can sometimes accept the paradox and attempt
to live with it.
For instance, it may be absurd to hold a job
to support a car to get to that job,
but this is an everyday absurdity most of us
can tolerate.
The ultimate, existential
absurdity, however,
cannot be resolved, no matter what we try.
No social reform, economic adjustment, or marital
counseling
will ever successfully overcome the ultimate
absurdity of human existence.
The following chart summarizes
these 5 differences
between normal incongruities or disharmonies
and existential absurdity:
INCONGRUITY, DISHARMONY |
EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY |
1. Anything out of its proper place, any clash or contradiction. |
1. Total disharmony, clash of our hopes with the silence of the universe. |
2. Intelligible incompatibilities arising from our sense of propriety. |
2. Inward, inexplicable clash, disharmony; existentially disclosed. |
3. Limited in duration —until the clash is corrected. |
3. A permanent, continuous inner state-of-being. |
4. Limited to its own universe of discourse; isolatable. |
4. Every aspect of life is absurd; floods everywhere; not isolatable. |
5. Often the clash can be resolved, sometimes accepted. |
5. The absurd cannot be overcome; we cannot achieve ultimate harmony. |
II. HOW WE DISCOVER EXISTENTIAL ABSURDITY
The rest of this chapter on
existential absurdity
—15 pages in all—will be found in
Our Existential Predicament:
Loneliness, Depression,
Anxiety, & Death.
See the publisher's website for details: www.existentialbooks.com.
Return to the index page for Our
Existential
Predicament.
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James
Leonard Park—Free
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