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tried reading The Myth of Sisyphus but eyes glazed over & gave up (consuela)
| Consuela | 10/22/26 |
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Date: October 22nd, 2026 12:07 PM Author: Consuela I tried reading Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus; I had read The Stranger in high school and remembered little other than it was boring. I was hoping to find resonance with one of the most famous existentialists out there, but my eyes quickly glazed over - part of it is a stylistic problem, but the bigger issue is that I don’t agree that the world is “absurd”, which he uses to describe the gap between man’s expectations for an ordered world and the silence of what reality actually provides.
To me, the world is ordered and meaningful, but in a very disconcerting and unpleasant way. From my perspective God, as an infinite being outside of spacetime, is also an unconscious being, because consciousness arises from subject/object differentiation, which are otherwise united within it.
Humanity and life in general exist to experience the lived, conscious crucifixion of opposites which arises from this subject/object differentiation; this provides totality the one thing it lacks - the lived experience of the opposites from within finitude. It is a very painful thing to be constantly pulled between endless impulses, ideas, feelings, etc. This perspective is a tragic one - we are all limited, finite beings under totality, with limited, partial perspectives, and there is no redemption, there is no final curing eschatology, what we experience now is what there is.
To me, ultimately, saying this is all “absurd” and that one should “rebel” against “absurdity” as Camus does is a copout, with rhymes of Nietzsche (who suffered catastrophic breakdown). |