Albert Camus, the Absurd and Life Extension: The Big Picture
This paper examines Albert Camus’s notions of absurdity in The Myth of Sisyphus, and draws parallels with the movement to extend life indefinitely and the big picture of being.
Calorie-vacuums playing in mud isn’t what we are at the end of the day? We guess at the meaning of our lives, trying to keep the level of despair low, while waiting to be cut off. This challenge is like a mountain that hasn’t reached its top yet.
Albert Camus wrote that people are attracted to the meaning of life, which is the most pressing question. This is a question that’s in the ballpark. People are thirsty to find meaning in their lives, to grasp what is happening, to discover the deepest implications. Gaston Bachelard claims that thirst is proof of water’s existence. Even rocks have profound meanings, and we’re self-aware computers in a space that is filled with variables. It is highly unlikely that such circumstances do not have a profound impact.
How can we make sense of the world? How can we make sense of our existence?
The people who try to correct one another on this issue say that it is work and not hope that builds dreams. Yet, when they believe that reincarnation or living a good, meaningful life or an evolutionarily consequential will save them from the hypothetical eternal chroniclers’ eyes, no one corrects them. It is important to think through the issue, and work hard to understand it. This duty is not distracted by hopping and jumping.
Camus explains to us the leap:
\”I will only analyze as examples here a few themes dear both to Chestov, and Kierkegaard. Jaspers, however, will give us a caricatural example of this attitude. […] The transcendent is beyond his reach, he’s incapable of gaining the depths of experience and he is conscious of the universe that has been upset by his failure. Will he learn from this failure or at least make progress? He does not bring anything new. He admits his inability and has no basis to draw any conclusions from experience. He suddenly declares, without any justification and in his own mind, that the transcendent is the essence of experience and that life has a superhuman significance. This reasoning is not based on logic. \”I can call it a jump.\”
\” The sacrifice of intellect [-] the effect of the \”leap\”
\”Husserl’s aim is to establish a rational rule. After having denied the integrating powers of human reason, by this expedient he leaps to eternal Reason.\”
The way you leap matters little. It’s the desire to get there that counts.
People have a lot pet coping methods, leaps. They are positive in that they provide a great deal of insight, and also uncover a number of new leads. Many of them returned with valuable reconnaissance notebooks. We want to finish the job, but we also want real results.
Friedrich Nietzsche warns against being misled by the collective leap when he talks about the revolts of \”mediocres\” which tend to occur in anarchic and unrestrained \”tropical tempo\” in rivalry for growth and extraordinary decay. Can we live in the absurd jungle of growth without leaping into it?
I am only interested in knowing if one can live without appealing. I don’t want to be out of my depth.
Camus is on a quest to find out if people can live in a world where they don’t need to know, or even think that they know, what’s going on. It’s a great question.
\”I now know the link between what I want and what I offer, as well as what he wants.\”
The three are: hope/nostalgia/absurdity and irrationality/the shortness of life.
\”And I have to choose between a description which is certain but tea
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