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Albert Camus has been acclaimed as one of stalwart proponents of Absurdity. According to him, Absurdity means contradictions in human Life. His novels, writings and lectures have tried to explain that Life on a planet named Earth is not unique for human beings. In fact, the claims that it is unique on the basis of intelligence and culture are camouflages on the surface. Under the surface, little scratching reveals the wild and heinous animal the human being is. The politically and or with religion induced agitations have invariably seen killings, lootings, and vandalism as cruel as wild animals. Only difference is that animals kill for eating, for hunger, for feeding their young because they are carnivorous.
The two world wars and other numerous wars between kingdoms have shown killings of soldiers and the people. The victorious or otherwise uncontrolled mobs have killed, looted, stolen, raped as many people as in genocide or mass killings. The atrocities of people against people is thus a glaring history of past and also contemporary times.
This is the Truth and harsh truth of being inhuman. The people are, in spite of being intelligent, cultured and evolved beings, claimed as superior of all other living animals, are not so. Although, there is logic, rationality, purpose, aim and certain achievements, the very nature of barbarism is absurd to our claims of being educated, modern, intellectuals, highly mannered and sophisticated individuals.
This is existentialism…..the struggle, the fights and superseding, ruling and blindness of forces to rule with the weapons of killings and tortures. Albert Camus gives an example from a Greek epic written by Homer…the act of Sisyphus who was the most prudent and wisest of mortals. He was given punishment for his whatever wrongs, to carry on his shoulders a heavy rock up a steep hill, then let it fall down to the base of the hill. Sisyphus was to carry it again on his shoulder the same rock and climb up the hill…..how long? Till he dies. This is absurd. The people who wanted to kill him prefer to kill him by his own act of killing……and Sisyphus carries out such punishment. This is the absurdity of Sisyphus….this is the absurdity of whole inhuman behaviour.
Camus says that people think, they are intelligent enough to think, they have a reasoning, purpose and a method to do the things which are absurd. So, he says Absurd depends on an absurd world. Because there are masses, the hooligans, the vicious politicians, the religious leaders and saffron clad men and women who know what they are doing is annihilation of humanity and yet do it. Is it not absurdity?
The perpetrators of absurdity are those who know that there is something they possess to take masses with them for whatever they ask masses to do. This something is a thought that does not arise in the desert because unless it finds its bread, it cannot survive. The absurdity survives where there is bread to feed upon. Food for thoughts has to be there and vicious leaders do know what bread must be served to sustain the thoughts.
Next tenet of Absurdity is that there are men, deployed and employed, and some blind enough to get carried away by propaganda and just be traditional supporters. These are the people who defend viciously and vociferously and at times violently the Rights of irrationalities under various names such as nationalism and religion. Political games are part of irrationalities that never seem to stop. Then there is a tradition of what may be called humiliated thoughts that have never ceased to exist. There is always a weapon of humiliation, insults and intimidation that is practised more as the intensity of hope as against efficacy of the reason.
The greatest achievements of absurdities are in terms of fear that it can inflict amongst the people who are rational and reasonable. However, the fear that becomes conscious of itself becomes anguish. Finally, there is also a consciousness of death that calls for anxiety and value of existential life.
To sum up, it is pertinent to note Albert Camus’ words. He said, ” Thinking is learning…to see, to be attentive, to focus on consciousness, So, what justifies as thought is actually the extreme of consciousness…I always fail to understand being the nonsense and the world that is populated by irrational. I believe that the mind, when it reaches its limits, must make a judgement and choose its conclusions and face its predicaments and consequences, like Aristotle or Copernicus. Absurdity arises due to confrontation between human needs and the unreasonable silence of the world to meet those demands and needs.”
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