Monday morning, is this absurd or is life just absurd?

[Eugenics 5,000+ posts]

go paint some pretty pictures druggie.

 

[Hydrastas 10+ year member]

whats up with the Korean club link?

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

Camus outlines the legend of Sisyphus who defied the gods and put Death in chains so that no human needed to die. When Death was eventually liberated and it came time for Sisyphus himself to die, he concocted a deceit which let him escape from the underworld. Finally captured, the gods decided on his punishment: for all eternity, he would have to push a rock up a mountain; on the top, the rock rolls down again and Sisyphus has to start over. Camus sees Sisyphus as the absurd hero who lives life to the fullest, hates death and is condemned to a meaningless task.
Camus presents Sisyphus's ceaseless and pointless toil as a metaphor for modern lives spent working at futile jobs in factories and offices. "The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious."

Camus is interested in Sisyphus' thoughts when marching down the mountain, to start anew. This is the tragic moment, when the hero becomes conscious of his wretched condition. He does not have hope, but he also figures out the truth and Sisyphus, just like the absurd man, keeps pushing. Camus argues that Sisyphus is truly happy precisely because the futility of his task is beyond doubt: the certainty of Sisyphus' fate frees him to recognize the absurdity of his plight and to carry out his actions with contented acceptance. With a nod to the similarly cursed Greek hero Oedipus, Camus concludes that "all is well," indeed, that "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

tasty.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

live life as an absurd hero.

 

[Eugenics 5,000+ posts]

one morning I just woke up early, got dressed and ran for 5 miles, got back home then got back in bed, woke up again and got breakfast, shower, etc.
it was weird when I though about it.

you disgust me.

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

I like how any thread involving any sort of drug use just turns into a huge thread about drugs.

To be clear, I was more going for a social angle on casual drug use in the face of a blisteringly numb professional existence.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

In the tale, Christ comes back to earth in Seville at the time of the Inquisition. He performs a number of miracles (echoing miracles from the Gospels). The people recognize him and adore him, but he is arrested by Inquisition leaders and sentenced to be burnt to death the next day. The Grand Inquisitor visits him in his cell to tell him that the Church no longer needs him. The main portion of the text is the Inquisitor explaining to Jesus why his return would interfere with the mission of the church.
The Inquisitor frames his denunciation of Jesus around the three questions Satan asked Jesus during the temptation of Christ in the desert. These three are the temptation to turn stones into bread, the temptation to cast Himself from the Temple and be saved by the angels, and the temptation to rule over all the kingdoms of the world. The Inquisitor states that Jesus rejected these three temptations in favor of freedom. The Inquisitor thinks that Jesus has misjudged human nature, though. He does not believe that the vast majority of humanity can handle the freedom which Jesus has given them. Thus, he implies that Jesus, in giving humans freedom to choose, has excluded the majority of humanity from redemption and doomed humanity to suffer.

Despite declaring the Inquisitor to be an atheist, Ivan also implies that the Inquisitor and the Church follow "the wise spirit, the dread spirit of death and destruction," i.e. the Devil, Satan, for he, through compulsion, provided the tools to end all human suffering and unite under the banner of the Church. The multitude then is guided through the Church by the few who are strong enough to take on the burden of freedom. The Inquisitor says that under him, all mankind will live and die happily in ignorance. Though he leads them only to "death and destruction," they will be happy along the way. The Inquisitor will be a self-martyr, spending his life to keep choice from humanity. He states that "Anyone who can appease a man's conscience can take his freedom away from him."

The segment ends when Christ, who has been silent throughout, kisses the Inquisitor on his "bloodless, aged lips" (22) instead of answering him. On this, the Inquisitor releases Christ but tells him never to return. Christ, still silent, leaves into "the dark alleys of the city." Not only is the kiss ambiguous, but its effect on the Inquisitor is as well. Ivan concludes, "The kiss glows in his heart, but the old man adheres to his ideas." The kiss that Christ plants on the lips of the Grand Inquisitor is the equal of Christ's whispered words to Judas (John 13.27) "that thou doest, do quickly." Just as Jesus in no way condones Judas' betrayal, so Christ's kiss does not excuse the Grand Inquisitor.

The Brothers Karamazov is another great book which contains this gem about organized religion.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

I like how any thread involving any sort of drug use just turns into a huge thread about drugs.
To be clear, I was more going for a social angle on casual drug use in the face of a blisteringly numb professional existence.

you b quiet Sisyphus.

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

Doesnt it seem like life is a huge waste? We worry so much about how to better ourselves, and make the most for the future, but in the end we all know we will die, but yet its still accepted.

Completely inane.

That's the Absurd popping up again.

I approach this feeling with something I have internally dubbed "the cosmic shrug". It's a freedom I try to infuse myself with that is driven by my complete powerlessness in the face of my life's insignificance. It is inane, in a way, but because of this I feel inclined to look at humanity with a warm smile, and try to connect with the greater body of mankind where I can before I fade back into nonexistence.

If nothing matters, it is not nihilism that beckons, but freedom to live a beautiful life free from the mental constraints of objective forces that seek to bend your will to power.

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

you b quiet Sisyphus.

I got sick of pushing that shit, so I tagged it up and rolled it off the edge.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

If nothing matters, it is not nihilism that beckons, but freedom to live a beautiful life free from the mental constraints of objective forces that seek to bend your will to power.

its all the same in the end.

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

its all the same in the end.

werd

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

werd

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

 

[elementxero 10+ year member]

If there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.

That's an epitaph candidate if I ever saw one.

 

[faulkton 5,000+ posts]

That's an epitaph candidate if I ever saw one.

i was thinking a tatoo.