Is life absurd? Consider this scenario:
You get up and go to work. You work for four hours and then have lunch. Then four more hours of work, then you go home and have dinner, watch a little TV and go to bed. Five days all the same! One day you wake up and ask yourself:
“WHY?” And suddenly your “life” collapses!
Is this life absurd and irrational? Is there no logic or reason to it? If God is dead, as Nietzsche says, then we have no code of conduct to follow and no meaning to hold onto.
So, we are thrown into this world, live a life of “sameness” and then die. Yet we are constantly on a quest for meaning in a meaningless world!
In the above scenario of a humdrum existence there doesn’t seem to be much meaning. We come from nothing, we live for a very short time, and then return to oblivion. How absurd is that?
So, life is absurd, it doesn’t make sense, how do we deal with it? By living authentically and striving to be genuine. You must confront the world in your own individual way. You must make choices for yourself and make your own meaning.
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Do you realize that you too, are absurd? That’s right we are absurd humans.
You live in the world, you make choices on what path you want to take, but the world doesn’t care what path you choose. You are alone and have to take responsibility for your own choices.
The world of your existence demands that you make choices even though it doesn’t care what choice you make or whether you make choices or not, which is a choice in itself. Now, that’s absurd!
In conclusion, we have to face the truths that come from your human absurdity and embrace them.
Your existence, which is absurd, takes place in the world. We are faced with the task of representing ourselves by creating meaning in our own lives.
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You need to be passionate about things in your absurd existence. We have to care deeply about how we represent ourselves. We must take seriously our choices.
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You are free. The world doesn’t dictate how we ought to live. What you do is up to you.
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You are an individual. Your choices are unique to you and you stand out in the crowd.
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You realize your existence is finite. Our lives are limited. Because you acknowledge this fact it acts as a motivator to create meaning while you are here.
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The opposite side of the coin is living inauthentically. This means running away from making choices. Living authentically is difficult because it requires self-examination. When you make choices it hurts because there is some anxiety involved. The inauthentic person wants to avoid discomfort.
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So, make your meaningful choices and create your genuine self.
I wish you:
HAPPY MEANINGFUL LIVING IN AN ABSURD WORLD!
Also published on Medium.
Made me think that one Dave, not always good to analyse too much,you find you’r going round in mental circles
We make those choices and we live with them until we make a new choice and change our life. We change many times in a lifetime. Each day I wake up and make my first choice. I WILL MAKE TODAY THE BEST DAY YET. That’s my choice every day. I don’t know what the day will bring but I will accept it and enjoy it with enthusiasim. So far that’s worked pretty well. I’m still here and I’m still happy.
Nietzsche is a bunch of bunk (he was at least partially mad). There is no fear of nihilism. Humans live in a society, and evolution has given us the tools to act accordingly. While there is not any objective sense of good and bad, we tend to share a large number of moral rules. They may differ from society to society somewhat, but most share a core of moral principles, such as no murder, no stealing, and no lying. And, Nietzsche was wrong in another sense. There was never any god in the first place, so there was never any god to die.
Is the world really absurd? The universe works through four basic laws and a dozen fundamental particles. Actually, there are more particles which are responsible for how the basic laws interact between the fundamental particles. Then, there are the emergent properties that arise from these particles and interactions. While we may not understand everything about the universe, including us, the universe does not act willy-nilly. If it did, we could hardly navigate our world, if we would exist at all. So the universe makes sense, and is therefore not absurd.
Am I absurd? I have a mind provided by my brain. This includes the perceptions I derive from my senses—our window to our world. It is because of the brain that we give meaning to us and our world as you said. Life can seem topsy-turvy if one does not find something or somethings to derive meaning and purpose from. I have lots of things, activities, and people that provide my mind with meaning and purpose. I am not absurd. Now, the person who is adrift in the world with no sense or meaning, he or she may be absurd.
We are all free because it is the whole person that performs whatever acts he or she does. However, it is the brain and its interaction with the environment that determines those actions. Despite the feeling of free will, which is actually that—a feeling. In this sense free will is as real as any of our thoughts. Matter of fact, if we did not have the feeling of free will, we would not act at all. Feelings are intimately connected to the decisions we make. Free will is the feeling that starts the action. It is the start button so to speak.
Despite these qualms with your blog, I think we both believe it is us that give meaning to our life and world. I would only add that we do not do this in a vacuum. We depend on others to provide part of that meaning, and we depend on the world to make it all go.