13.5.10

World Upon Your Shoulders

"This world in itself is not reasonable, that is all that can be said. But what is absurd is the confrontation of this irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echoes in the human heart. The absurd depends as much on man as on the world. For the moment it is all that links them together. It binds them one to the other as only hatred can weld two creatures together."

-Albert Camus "The Myth of Sisyphus: Absurd Walls"

     I want to suggest that this world that we live in is an entirely absurd place.  The problem is that what makes this reality so unreasonable is that we force reason upon, transforming it from unreason to absurdity.  But what is to be done about it?  What power hath man over himself?
     The best example of this absurdism is the arguments between so-called atheists and so-called religious types. I shall leave them to their certainties and refrain from getting involved, but I want to examine them, feel them, and smell them.  Religion says God tells us what is good so we can be good.  Atheism says that we can be good without God, because what is good is what is constructive to society.  But how do they know that we can be good at all?  Moreover, why is important to consider ourselves good?  Is it because it makes us feel more noble than the lesser beings of this planet, or that we have some order in the cosmic chaos?  I would prefer to live in ambiguity; to screw, snort, imbibe, chew, and smoke and think to the end of my desires.  What harm does it cause if leave it unlabeled?  None, my friends.  No harm at all.  
    

2 comments:

  1. Wild Geese by Mary Oliver

    You do not have to be good.
    You do not have to walk on your knees
    for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
    You only have to let the soft animal of your body
    love what it loves.
    Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
    Meanwhile the world goes on.
    Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
    are moving across the landscapes,
    over the prairies and the deep trees,
    the mountains and the rivers.
    Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
    are heading home again.
    Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
    the world offers itself to your imagination,
    calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting--
    over and over announcing your place
    in the family of things.

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  2. That is a lovely piece of humanity my friend. Thank you for sharing.

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