When truth, justice, harmony – a utopia – are posited to exist in the future, the realization of this utopia located at the “end of history” becomes the sole measure of value, and any means that are thought to contribute to the actualization of it are justified; be it a denial of individual freedom, torture, or even genocide.
“If it is certain that the kingdom will come, what does time matter? Suffering is never provisional for the man who does not believe in the future. But one hundred years of suffering are fleeting in the eyes of the man who prophesies, for the one hundred and first year, the definitive city” ((The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt)"----
We are like Tantalus, who was condemned for eternity to stand in a pool of water beneath overhanging fruit which receded every time he reached for it. Our deep yearnings for a beyond to justify this earthly existence will forever remain unfulfilled, and beneath the flux of daily existence we will at our core feel like strangers in a strange universe. For this reason Camus concluded that human existence is absurd:
“Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.” (The Myth of Sisyphus)
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Camus viewed both types of suicide – physical and philosophical – as possible responses to the awareness that life is absurd:
“Does its [life’s] absurdity require one to escape it through hope or suicide —that is what must be clarified, hunted down, and elucidated while brushing aside all the rest. Does the Absurd dictate death?” (The Myth of Sisyphus)---
To revolt is to say ‘no’ to one’s absurd existence, and in the process to say yes to some other, more desirable, existence.
This affirmation implicit in revolt leads to rebellion, which is the attempt to re-fashion human existence through one’s own efforts:
“In every rebellion is to be found the metaphysical demand for unity, the impossibility of capturing it, and the construction of a substitute universe. Rebellion, from this point of view, is a fabricator of universes.” (The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt)
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“No doubt the rebel demands a certain freedom for himself; but in no circumstances does he demand, if he is consistent, the right to destroy the person and freedom of someone else. He degrades no one. The freedom which he demands he claims for everybody; that which he rejects he forbids all others to exercise. He is not simply a slave opposing his master but a man opposing the world of master and slave.” ((The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt)
In our day freedom in many areas of life is dwindling, and governments across the world are rallying people to sacrifice personal freedoms for the promise of future harmony and security. If such a trend continues, Camus had some prescient advice for those who refuse to walk this line, but rather prefer freedom:
“The only way to deal with an unfree world”, he wrote, “is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.” ((The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt)
I sat through 4 fucking mosquito bites to read this
spiders you disappoint me
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