Sisyphus was a great king of Greek mythology so clever he was able to outwit Gods themselves twice he cheated death first by capturing Thanatos the god of death then by tricking the goddess of the underworld Persephone into releasing him back into the lands of the living the gods weren't happy with this and so for his arrogance Sisyphus was given a deceptively simple punishment roll a boulder up a hill the problem was that the boulder had been magically Enchanted to fall back down to the bottom every time Sisyphus managed to get it to the top effectively
condemning him to an eternity of repeating the same impossible and meaningless task able interpretations of the myth view it as an allegory for the futility of trying to escape death no matter how powerful or clever a person is we're all doomed to meet the same fate more modern audiences have found something more relatable about sisyphus's struggle seeing it not as a simple parable about the inevitability of death but more like a metaphor for the drudgery and monotony of their own lives every day we wake up make coffee take the train to work stare at a
computer for hours get yelled at by our boss stare at the computer some more then take the train back home binge Netflix or YouTube while eating dinner go to bed and then wake up and do it all over again just like Sisyphus we seem condemned to repeat the same meaningless tasks over and over and over most of us do this every day for the rest of our lives as though we're sleepwalking never waking up or stopping to ask why for some of us one day we're standing on a street corner preparing to go to work
when in an instant we're struck by the strangeness of it all suddenly nothing appears to have purpose life is haphazard and meaningless you look around and you whisper to yourself why are all of these people even in such a hurry for that matter why am I what's what's the point of all this why am I even alive there's a modern day problem with absurdism money or the lack thereof the reason many of us never pause to ponder our meaning is because we don't have the economic stability to do so it's difficult to think about the
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however subscribers can claim a free no obligation account at the link in the description today back to our story human beings crave meaning it's part of our biology we're evolutionarily programmed to search for patterns and chaos to try and understand why things are happening it's how we learn the problem is that existence is that best random and irrational nothing really seems to matter your loved ones die stars explode natural disasters wipe out entire cities millions of people spend half their day on Tick Tock and for what yet we keep going constantly striving to create order
by giving these things purpose despite the universe denying it this conflict is what the french Algerian philosopher Albert Camus referred to as the Absurd it's an irreconcilable Paradox we yearn for meaning in a meaningless universe Camus uses the myth of Sisyphus as an allegory to describe this relationship we can try to push the boulder to the top of the hill but inevitably it will roll back down more often than not the effects of this are intense feelings of anxiety alienation and hopelessness we shout into the void but are met only with deafening silence not even
in Echo for most of history people have turned to religion for answers you didn't need to worry if your life had meaning because some higher power was there to provide it this all changed in 19th century Europe as new forms of Science and philosophy threatened to replace Christianity as the central axis around which people's lives revolved notable texts such as Charles Darwin's the Origin of Species challenged previously held beliefs about the nature of humanity leading to a radical shift in society away from religion German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted this famously declaring God is dead and
we have killed him despite what some may think that statement wasn't claiming that God had literally been murdered nor was Niche celebrating rather it was an observation that without Christianity Society had lost the foundation upon which it had built centuries old systems of morality metaphysics and meaning Nietzsche felt a great deal of anxiety about this swearing that without a clear replacement people would succumb to nihilism I've talked about nihilism before in another video so I won't go into depth here but to give a brief explanation nihilism is the belief in nothingness a belief that rejects
the idea of objective truth According to Nietzsche nihilism was a necessary step on the journey away from religion but it wasn't the destination because it presented a very real problem if people viewed life as having no inherent meaning it would likely lead them to despair because of this he sought to speed up the arrival of nihilism so that he could in turn speed up its departure he believed that after nihila's Met past Humanity could finally arrive the true philosophical foundation on which society could thrive unfortunately while he successfully expedited nihilism's arrival he failed to do
so with its departure in fact Nietzsche's philosophy was taken up by many of the violent ideologies that Define the early 20th century well over a hundred years later nihilism remains rampant throughout Global culture trust in both secular and religious institutions is at an all-time low our governments are corrupt there are CEOs with more money than some countries and our spiritual leaders often appear ineffective and Out of Touch most people today report that Faith plays little to no role in their lives instead we've begun looking to science and reason for answers but these haven't been able
to offer a sufficient solution to the problem of meaning either so what are we to do should we just simply accept Our Fate concluded our lives were without purpose and allow the boulder to roll back over us well 20th century philosophers Albert Camus and Jean-Paul sarta didn't think so both argued that in the absence of objective meaning we as freaking rational beings must fight to create our own purpose sart is credited as the father of modern existentialism a philosophical School concerned with our plate as individuals forced to assume responsibility for our lives without certain knowledge
of Truth though its roots can be traced back to 19th century figures like Soren Kierkegaard and fjordor Dostoyevsky sart differentiated himself by rejecting the idea that humans are reliant on an external power like God to provide us with meaning he claimed that man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself and referred to those who would Outsource this responsibility to a higher power as acting in what he called bad faith in sarto's view existence precedes essence we are conceived in only after being born do we figure out what our purpose in life will
be this might seem like an uncontroversial opinion to us today but in the mid 20th century this was a radical idea for most of human history it was assumed that Essence precedes existence since the time of Plato and Aristotle it was widely believed that our purpose as individuals was assigned to us before birth the meaning of your life was ready made by the gods pre-packaged before you were even born sarta's claim was a direct contradiction of this widely held belief a declaration that we as humans aren't beholden to gods or Kings to provide us with
meaning only to ourselves or Santa the only problem of existence was in its lack of meaning but rather it's absolutely terrifying level of freedom after all without an objective meaning or morality every one of us is responsible for Designing our own purpose according to our own ethical code largely agreed with Santa's diagnosis that we live in a meaningless Universe where we as humans are in his own words abandoned to Freedom however he didn't agree with the cure to commute this solution to the problem of meaning wasn't as simple as making up your own the universe
would naturally rebuke our attempts to do so no matter how hard we tried we can push the boulder up the hill but it will always fall back down this in turn would still give rise to feelings of the Absurd as well as the associated sense of anxiety alienation and hopelessness that accompanies it there were only three possible reactions to this the first of these is suicide which famously wrote is the one truly serious philosophical problem rather than grappling with the absurdity of life you can simply refuse to play the game the only issue is when
you're gone you can no longer enjoy life however meaningless it may be it also doesn't actually solve the problem it only allows the Absurd to decide your fate it's essentially admitting defeat the second possible reaction is the solution of Faith which kamu dubs philosophical suicide similar to SARS concept of bad faith it's when a person rejects the burden of creating their own meaning by Shifting the responsibility to an external ideology this amounts to a kind of denial where the individual deludes themselves into thinking they've conquered the problem when in reality they're just avoiding it it's
simply an attempt to replace the Absurd with a set of man-made beliefs the consequence of which is the abdication of existential freedom importantly kabu doesn't limit this to religion any ideological system can serve this function nationalism capitalism or even the values of our own family when we allow external systems to dictate meaning to us we give away the potential to determine our life's purpose how many of us took a job or studied for a degree solely because our parents told us that we should in a world as complicated and confusing as ours it can be
tempting to contract out our thinking and just go along with what we're told but the risk of Ruin we run in doing this is ending up in a situation where we're unhappy and unfulfilled it's why many of us pause on that random Tuesday afternoon and ask ourselves why am I doing any of this If instead we make our own choices we can decide meaning for ourselves and follow a path that calls to us instead of one that's just prescribed of course there's no guarantee of success in fact according to Camus you are destined to fail
again and again what he argues though is that this is the only true solution to the problem to acknowledge the meaninglessness of life and continue living anyway or as kamu puts it the only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion the universe will always reject all attempts by the individual to create meaning just like Sisyphus were doomed to Forever push the boulder up the hill knowing that no matter how hard we try it will inevitably roll back down to the bottom
yet we must fight back against the Absurd because it is by virtue of our struggle that we Empower ourselves to live life the way we want it's not about the destination it's about the journey this philosophy effectively rejects nihilism as nothing more than a stepping stone on the way to absurdism life is meaningless sure in the only rational course of action is to behave as such there is no plan no objective truth and everything happens purely by accident but this doesn't necessitate nihilism if we instead choose to embrace the Absurd we can view our circumstances
as an opportunity to change our perspective Camus notes that it's not meaninglessness that hurts rather it's the desire for meaning being continuously rejected if we can put aside our desires and simply accept life for what it is we open up ourselves to experiencing it fully living as passionately and as intensely as we like in a world without meaning we are free to constantly invent and reinvent our life's purpose changing it as often as it suits us today you may be stuck in a redundant dead-end job but tomorrow you could easily quit and go about completely
redefining your existence maybe you want to be a chef for a classical composer maybe you want to spend the next year backpacking through the Wilderness or volunteering with an aid organization all you have to do is find the courage to acknowledge your own freedom and you can be whoever you want to be knowing this we can abandon any expectations for the future and instead choose to live in the present moment it isn't necessary that our actions lead to something bigger there's no goal we have to reach no afterlife to prepare for then we can find
joy in every situation no matter how unpleasant or absurd because well it doesn't really matter although we may be fated to fail there's no reason we can't be happy while we do it this might lead to Greater empathy for our fellow humans as we recognize that every person alive is fighting the same fight that we are we can feel a sense of camaraderie and knowing that we're all in this together we'll never make it to the top of the mountain the meaning of Our Lives will forever elude us but as Camus says the struggle itself
towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart it's because of this that one must imagine Sisyphus happy [Music]
