Абсурд и вокруг: сборник статей - Ольга Буренина

The speed of technological change is a function of a contemporary desire to escape from the stasis of absurd to the dream of virtual reality as a permanent super session. Subjectivity is the inhabiting of a complex of actual occasions, a nexus of events which is unique in its temporal occurrence, no matter how much it is a function of repetitive structures or subject to what Whitehead calls the «ingressions» of the non-actual (for example, the recurrent causality of technical progress or the serial law of neurosis). In that sense the subject is a function of belief, not as the object of desire but as a mode of desiring, principally desiring to be conscious of the material reality of mortality. Hence the antithetical dualisms, which riddle our thinking and our culture: as Beckett writes in The Unnamable, «the role of objects is to restore silence». The role of technology has become one of abolishing silence as the belief in the reality of the object has been eroded. Yet, again, the object is no more an object of belief than belief itself is an object of thought: they are complex events seized in the spatiotemporal meaning, the putative unity of finite experience. Both cultural and technical objects, whether element, individual or ensemble, are events like entering a skyscraper, reading a poem, overcoming the fear of flying, learning how to use a computer or mourning the death of a parent. All these situations can comprise elements of melancholy, anxiety or absurdity inscribed within their temporal occurrence.

The well-known French writer and philosopher, Albert Camus, claims in his «Myth of Sisyphus» that the absurd exists because reality does not satisfy our requests. In a way, this points to the fact that reality could satisfy these requests if it were different.

Let us see for example the myth of Sisyphus. Sisyphus is the absurd hero. This man sentenced to endlessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain and then watching its descent is the epitome of the absurd hero. Sisyphus is conscious of his plight, and therein lies the tragedy. For if, during the moments of descent, he nourished the hope that he would yet succeed, his labour would lose its torment. But Sisyphus is clearly conscious of the extent of his own misery. It is this lucid recognition of his destiny that transforms his torment into his victory. It has to be a victory for as Camus says:

I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain I One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well.

This universe enceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night-filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy[280].

Sisyphus's life and torment are transformed into a victory by concentrating on his freedom, his refusal to hope, and his knowledge of the absurdity of his situation. This myth can be used as a good example to portray the difference between man's intent and the resultant chaos he encounters.

The ideas behind the development of the absurd hero are present in the first three essays of the book. In these essays Camus faces the problem of suicide. In his typically shocking, unnerving manner he opens with the bold assertion that:

There is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide (p. 3).

He goes on to figure out whether suicide is a legitimate answer to the human predicament. Or to put it another way: Is life worth living now that God is dead? The discussion begins and continues not as a metaphysical cobweb but as a well-reasoned statement based on a way of knowing which Camus holds is the only epistemology we have at our command. We know only two things:

This heart within me I can feel, and I judge that it exists. This world I can touch, and I likewise judge that it exists. There ends all my knowledge, and the rest is construction (p. 14).

With these as the basic certainties of the human condition, Camus argues that there is no meaning to life. He disapproves of the many philosophers who «have played on words and pretended to believe that refusing to grant a meaning to life necessarily leads to declaring that it is not worth living» (p. 7). Life has no absolute meaning. In spite of the human's irrational «nostalgia» for unity, for absolutes, for a definite order and meaning to the «not me» of the universe, no such meaning exists in the silent, indifferent universe. Between this yearning for meaning and eternal verities and the actual condition of the universe there is a gap that can never be filled. The confrontation of the irrational, longing human heart and the indifferent universe brings about the notion of the absurd.

The absurd is bom of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world (p. 21).

and further:

The absurd is not in man nor in the world, but in their presence together… it is the only bond unitingthem (p. 21).

According to Camus people must realize that the feeling of the absurd exists and can happen to them at any time. The absurd person must demand to live solely with what is known and to bring in nothing that is not certain. This means that all I know is that I exist, that the world exists and that I am mortal.

Doesn't this make a futile pessimistic chaos of life? Wouldn't suicide be a legitimate way out of a meaningless life? «No». «No», answers Camus. Although the absurd cancels all chances of eternal freedom it magnifies freedom of action. Suicide is «acceptance at its extreme», it is a way of confessing that life is too much for one. This is the only life we have; and even though we are aware, in fact, because we are aware of the absurd, we can find value in this life. The value is in our freedom, our passion, and our revolt. The first change we must make to live in the absurd situation is to realize that thinking, or reason, is not tied to any eternal mind which can unify and «make appearances familiar under the guise of a great principle», but it is:

… learning all over again to see, to be attentive, to focus consciousness; it is turning every idea and every image, in the manner of Proust, into a privileged moment (p. 20).

My experiences, my passions, my ideas, my images and memories are all that I know of this world — and they are enough. The absurd person can finally say «all is well».

I understand then why the doctrines that explain everything to me also debilitate me at the same time. They relieve me of the weight of my own life, and yet I must carry it alone (p. 41).

Camus then follows his notions to their logical conclusions and insists that people must substitute quantity of experience for quality of experience. The purest of joys is «feeling, and feeling on this earth». Of course, this statement cannot be used to claim a hedonism as Camus's basic philosophy, but must be thought of in connection with the notion of the absurd that has been developed. Man is mortal. The world is not. A person's dignity arises from a consciousness of death, an awareness that eternal values and ideas do not exist, and a refusal to give in to the notion of hope or appeal for something that we are uncertain of and cannot know. Is it possible in the technological civilization?

The human subject is at one remove from the technological subject because the authority of the former precedes that of the latter by virtue of the instability of the dynamics of consciousness. Creativity is multidirectional: Janus has many faces, some of which are forever hidden from knowledge. Meaning occurs at the interface of what exists and what does not yet exist, the one infinitely regressive, the other infinitely progressive; hence, for example, the ambivalence of art in relation to the past, and the determining function of memory in thought. Technique is what inscribes the subject in the world where absurdity and creativity are the reciprocal conditions of the event itself, rather than of the subject. Technique is the sanction of the finite subject, because it brings to bear a multiplicity of constitutive energies upon a circumscribed occasion of meaning. This is the creative, non-transcendent obverse of Husserl's re-activation of the past: what is more urgent is to find the value of the activation of the present, its precariously creative plenitude and catastrophic self-evacuation, its paradoxical status as both temporal process and a temporal form, its inability to be either identical to itself or different from itself. The irony is that such values can only be performed, not thought; and this is precisely the motive of technology. There is no greater power, political, moral etc., that could direct at will its potential. And finally, science, especially after Hiroshima, is not a pursuit for truth any more, but for power. An emerging ideology of science is soteriology — the view that only science holds the key to the future. Science has become divine. This image of science entails a high status of experts, who all too often fail and resolve nothing. Many needs and trends are absurd. A pursuit for producing more and more at all costs and doing it faster and faster is also absurd. The latter feature strikes a blow at democracy, which is slow. Moreover, some very costly projects are launched with no clear vision for their purpose (e.g. orbital stations, space anti-nuclear defense systems), or knowing that their full power will not be used (e.g. fast cars), only because technology makes it possible. It is absurd to rely on technology as the means of increasing productivity. Specialized technology requires specialists, which easily lead to emergence of the class of technocrats. This technology results in centralized power that has to oversee, for instance, nuclear power plants.

Our civilization is characterized by an inability to leave anything in nature alone. «If it can be done, do it» is a maxim of technological civilization. Technology is the starting point for the moral imperatives of present time. Technology is the starting point of moral imperatives of modern time that make moral considerations of our forefathers, both individual and social, to seem ridiculous. Ethical considerations become irrelevant, and the sense of sanctity of life unimportant. For example, to satisfy technological needs, i.e. to do what can be done, man has manufactured weapons for mass destruction of our civilization and human beings in general. The use of such weapons would lead to a situation in which it would not be required, or moreover, it would not be possible to use technology nor any of its products. However, what is more frightening and absurd in our technological civilization is that technology does not end with «If it can be done, do it» maxim. On the contrary, this maxim is being transformed into a new maxim or imperative: «Everything that has been invented, has to be applied». This means that not only every invented weapon could be effectively manufactured, but also that every manufactured weapon had t be used effectively. We can say that we live in a civilization that has been constantly manufacturing its own apocalypse for half a century. The only thing we cannot claim with certainty is to predict the moment when it will happen.

Such conditions, to a great extent, go hand in hand with the arguments about the absurdity of life. There are different arguments which might vary from individual to individual, but the most common argument is that whatever we do as individuals throughout our life does not make any sense after a 100 years or so. Behind this argument of the absurdity of our existence is the fear of death. Inconsistency of human life makes us wonder what the ultimate goal is. Man works to earn money to pay living expenses, to create a family and take care of it, to build a career, but where does this all lead to when at the end we face death, not only individual, but also death of the whole human civilization?

Some people try to avoid absurdity by looking for wider foundations for their desires that could not be digressed from. In a way, the idea is to give life some meaning by imagining a certain role or function within something bigger than themselves. Often such meaning of life is being searched for by having a particular function or role in the society, the state, a revolution, development of mankind, scientific development or in religion. We must admit that when people take part in something big they feel that that is part of them. This makes them feel less worried about what is typical of them because they identify themselves with the big challenge that fulfills them. In this way, their life has meaning. However, we must not forget that even such a big goal can be doubtful in the same way that we doubt the goals of individual life. Since we can step aside the goals of individual life and doubt their meaning, we can do the same with any higher goal that we have set ourselves — our participation in scientific development, society, or our devotion to God. The reason for this lies in what we believe makes sense, justification and meaning of things, and that is the fact that after a certain point we do not need additional reasons. Eventually, the reason for having doubts on the limited goals of individual life initiates the existence of the same doubt in terms of any higher goal that gives support and meaning to our life. Once this fundamental doubt exists, it can not be avoided.

However, we must admit that observing ourselves from a much wider perspective than the one we have as individuals, we become observers of our own life. Being aware that we cannot do much as observers of our own life, we continue to live our life, and as Thomas Nagel says, «we dedicate ourselves to something that is nothing more but something extraordinary, similar to a ritual of an unknown religion» [281]. In this case, our unimportance as individuals and the fact that the whole mankind will disappear in the end with no trace are just metaphors that we use when we make the step forward to observe ourselves from outside and to discover that the unique form of our lives is interesting and at the same time unusual. This means that we as human beings are aware that the transcendental step is a natural thing for us humans. The absurdity of our existence faces us with a problem that requires appropriate solution. This, of course, is the way Camus approaches this question He finds support in the fact that we are anxious to avoid absurd situations. He rejects suicide as a way out from absurdity of our lives and suggests resistance and despise instead. Camus believes that we as human beings can save our own dignity by opposing the reality that does not listen to our desires, and by continuing to live despite the situation. Of course, this will not void our lives of being absurd, but it will give them a noble trait. Yet, there will be a certain amount of doubt. I would not say that our absurd guarantees so many opposing accidents to happen. Although I risk being labeled not original at the end of this essay, I would like to finish with the words of Thomas Nagel:

The absurd is one of the most human things for us; it is a manifestation of our most advanced and most interesting features. As skepticism in epistemology, the absurd is interesting because we possess a form of analyzing things — an ability to transcend ourselves in our thoughts [282].