To Live a Popperian Life

We like to think of the absurd as a philosophy of doubt. It is a sharp blade that cuts through life’s thickest illusions. The absurd man, emboldened by the idea that life has no meaning or purpose, finds it easy to slay dragons that give other men nightmares, so to speak.

The absurd, in this way, shares its method with Rene Descartes’ methodical doubt. (Cartesian skepticism, as Descartes’ method became known, doubted nearly everything that could not be supported with logic.) As critic John Cruikshank put it, “This is why [Camus] says that The Myth of Sisyphus [Camus’ book on the philosophy of the absurd] offers a method of argument but does not contain a body of doctrine.”

As we’ve talked about before, the absurd does not tell a man how to live. There is no absurd lifestyle, per se. There are absurd attitudes and absurd conclusions, but not a systematic way of life as is the case with religions. The absurd is mostly concerned with sweeping away things that other men think so important and meaningful by showing that all things are unimportant and meaningless.

There is another philosopher of doubt that has always appealed to us and whose ideas, we think, have absurd applications. In our line of work – trying to make a buck in the world’s financial markets – he is the only philosopher anyone ever talks about because his ideas are eminently practical, and profitable.

That man is Karl Popper. In recent years, we have tried to live a more Popperian life by incorporating more of his ideas into our everyday thinking.

We won’t give you his life story, which you can find readily on the internet. We will get to the meat of Popper’s own unique brand of doubt. Let’s start with the famous example “All swans are white.”

Popper thought that no matter how many swans you found that were white you could never prove the statement that all swans were white. However, by finding a single black swan, you could disprove it. In this important sense, the observations we make are not verifiable, but only falsifiable.

Thinking this way, no amount of proof can ever verify a statement. All we can do is prove something is not true. All knowledge, then, is provisional knowledge – and permanently so. At no stage can we be sure of what we know now because at some future date that knowledge can be overturned by a “black swan.”

As Bryan Magee, a long-time scholar on Popper’s ideas puts it:

“If we are rational we shall always base our decision and expectations on ‘the best of our knowledge,’ as the popular phrase so rightly has it, and provisionally assume the ‘truth’ of that knowledge for practical purposes, because it is the least insecure foundation available; but we shall never lose sight of the fact that at any time experience may show it to be wrong and require us to revise it… According to Popper, falsification in whole or in part is the anticipated fate of all hypotheses.”

This is how true knowledge advances. We prove things are not true. We falsify ideas and by that way we get closer to the truth. To a Popperian, to find error is a pleasure.

Now, we’ve just summarized some basic ideas here and we are hardly doing justice to the depth of thought and the complexity of his ideas.

But Popper’s ideas on falsification seem a nice marriage with the absurd. As with the absurd, it is a philosophy of doubt. It has no doctrine. It is a philosophy more aimed at not being fooled by what may not be true, than it is a philosophy about proving something right. It is a philosophy open to the mysteries of the universe and to the idea that what we think we know may not be so. More than that, it actively seeks to falsify ideas.

To put it bluntly, to live a Popperian life means to not be a sucker for ideas that others take as given. Similarly, to live an absurd life means not be a sucker for ideas that other men let bind and constrict their lives.

The Absurd Road to Nowhere

“There is no reason for amazement: surely one always knew that cultures decay and life’s end is death.” - Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962), American poet.

We were driving on a narrow twisty dirt road somewhere in Central America with the jungle all around us. Up and down and around, we finally came to the coastline and followed it for a time. We drove through what was a very poor village. The people live in shacks made of corrugated iron with dirt floors. Chickens and stray dogs roamed about.

“Imagine if you got your start here,” we observed to our friend traveling with us. “Life would be tough.”

“No it wouldn’t,” our friend corrected us. “The beach is right over there.”

We chuckled, but our friend was right. If you knew nothing else, this life would be perfectly fine. Plenty of sunshine, the sea right there, it’s bounty of fish beckoning and fruit trees all over the place, leaden with mangoes, coconuts and papaya.

We made the assumption that life would be hard here because we saw all the things they were missing. And instinctively we assumed that people without those comforts would be unhappy.

Of course, we know that isn’t true. Our rational brain knows better, but we were struck by how we – absurd men after all! – still instinctively made this judgment. It just goes to show us once again how society has drilled all these ideas into our heads about all the stuff we need… We need a good education, a good job, a big house, a car, a clean floor, good teeth… We deserve it, whatever “it” is, be it a fancy watch or a vacation to Disney… And on and on it goes.

We stopped by a little roadside stand with canvas stretched between four poles for a roof. We ordered up some quesillos, thick soft tortillas filled with pickled onions and a sauce of cheese and vinegar. It’s made right there before you and served in a plastic bag. It costs all of a dollar.

The world from which we came seemed very distant… and different. As we’ve talked about before, the absurd man knows that one experience or life is no better than any other. In a world without meaning or purpose, all paths are equally unimportant and meaningless.

The absurd always amazes us on this front. First, it is always amazing how keeping in mind what most people would see as a very bleak thought – that the end is death and life has no meaning – can keep us feeling so mentally limber and light. Far from bleak, we find the thought freeing!

Secondly, we love how the absurd comes out so readily when traveling. We travel the globe quite a bit in our line of work. We’ve stepped foot on all the continents save Antarctica. We’ve seen very different people in all manner of circumstances. Our “hero” Albert Camus traveled widely, too, and he valued travel for its taking him out of his habits and routines.

The self seems more unfamiliar when placed in unfamiliar settings. The “who” you thought you were suddenly seems less real and feels more distant. Travel takes away the masks and disguises. These people had no idea who we were. We could be anyone we chose to be – which again makes the self seem all the more illusory.

And we think, too, that there is no reason why we can’t keep these same absurd thoughts with us when we are home. There really isn’t a self to worry about or fret over for the same reason that living in that poor village isn’t a tough life. It is all a self-imposed judgment. It’s all in our head. Life is absurd.

Surely, as Jeffers writes, there is no reason for amazement…

Operation absurd

Take it easy, take it easy
Don't let the sound of your own wheels
Drive you crazy
Lighten up while you still can
Don't even try to understand
Just find a place to make your stand
and take it easy
--The Eagles, Take it Easy

We embarked on an undercover operation last night in the spirit of our last post. Attending an Easter party with some decidedly anti-absurd people, we played the role of...well, just a "regular" anti-absurd person. Mainly this consisted of not pointing out the inherent absurdity of others' positions, and joining in (often heated) conversations about a variety of topics. We also spent a lot of time listening.

The experience was very illuminating.

Put simply, while we accept that absurdity is a "minority opinion," something we have not focused on all that much is the depth of most people's illusion about reality. It is, in a word, staggering. The concept that there is no meaning to our actions is so foreign, such a fantastic concept to many people, that it might as well be tossed in a bin with time travel and warp speed. Pointing this out, therefore, is on par with explaining financial markets to a five-year-old--you get a lot of blank stares and changing of the subject.

Importantly, this does not necessarily mean some of these people don't understand, or even sympathize with, the absurd on some level. But for many it is simply so overwhelming they choose (consciously or not) to block it out rather than consider its implications.

This is a shame. As we have chronicled, we have found the absurd to be a wonderfully liberating philosophy. We actually saw a great example of this recently on the television show House. Greg House (an absurd character) mentioned that he found the concept of nothing mattering to be liberating, which caused one of his colleagues to exclaim "You think it's comforting to believe this is all there is?" To which House replied "I think it's comforting to believe this is not all a test."

We now return you to your regularly scheduled programming...

Gone Bamboo, II

Inigo Montoya on assignment for the "Who Is the Absurd Man?" blog...


(Yes, it's a tough life...)

We are in Nicaragua, visiting an absurd buddy of ours from college days. He has gone bamboo, as we wrote about here.

There is the beach… the sun and the waves… He lives a very laid back lifestyle, free of many of the distractions and chaos of modern life. He lives simply. He seemed to not have many material possessions. In fact, he told us when he moved here five years ago he took only what he could carry.

He has since picked up things while here. He is not an ascetic. He has a TV and DVD player, a bookshelf of second hand books and even an internet connection. But it is all modest and yet somehow very comfortable. And always we could hear the ocean.

He doesn’t work at the moment. The cost of living is so cheap; he only has to work occasionally to live pretty well. His living expenses he told us can go as low as $500 a month.

The food is fresh and good. You could eat a big dinner with a couple of beers and it would cost you about three dollars. We walked through an open-air market in the nearby town...



And there you could find fresh seafood pulled out of the sea that morning. A rack of these beauties cost you only about $1.



We were feeling very mellow and absurd the whole time we were there. For whatever reasons, the ridiculous and futile nature of life back home seemed readily evident here. Really, it is as Thoreau once wrote, somewhere, that men need little to be happy.

These feelings made us want to chuck it all and head for life in the sun. As Rick wrote about in his post here, our pangs for going bamboo (GB) have made us think.

However, after being here a week, we have to say we’ve come to a different conclusion than the one we expected. In fact, Rick tipped our hand in his post the other day.

What we started to realize is that this thing – this pang for GB – is really all in our head. The absurd is a sensibility. It’s a way of thinking. There is no reason why we can’t be just as absurd at home as here. Somehow, that seems more clear to us now than before.

After all, we frequently are critical of those that drive themselves to be rich or famous, those that grasp for some arbitrary measure of success. And it occurs to us that the GB pang is no different. It's a grasping of a different sort, but a grasping nonetheless. It is hardly consistent with the equanimity of the true absurd man, able to find a sense of contentment in whatever circumstances he finds himself in.

The truth of the matter is that there is no absurd lifestyle. There is no "absurd way to be." It's all inside. Absurd men can go live on a beach in the GB fashion. But an absurd man may just as well live in a big city and seem, to the outside world, a hard-working fellow.

Camus dealt with these ideas in Myth of Sisyphus. "The lover, the actor, or the adventurer plays the absurd. But equally well, if he wishes, the chaste man, the civil servant, or the president of the Republic. It is enough to know and mask nothing."

He also uses this wonderful metaphor. The absurd men are, he says, like princes, but "they have this advantage over others: they know all royalties are illusory."

The key conclusion then is simply this: The absurd man can live like any other man, The difference is he knows it's all an illusion. The absurd man knows that nothing matters in the end.

Behind Enemy Lines

"I see dead people...Walking around like regular people. They don't see each other. They only see what they want to see. They don't know they're dead."--Cole Sear, The Sixth Sense

First, a mea culpa. We apologize profusely for our (in retrospect) short-sighted and misguided most recent post, in which we fell victim to the affliction we have spent much time and effort railing against--the notion that circumstances matter, and certain experiences are better than others. What can we say? To err is indeed human; still, we are more than a bit embarrassed we let ourselves be seduced by this delusion.

As often happens, however, this brush with non-absurdity has actually strengthened our commitment (as it were) to the absurd--seeing how easily we fell into this trap, despite the fact that we spend much time discussing and writing (some would say obsessing...) about this very topic...well, let's just say our eyes are open a bit wider today than yesterday.

The experience also got us thinking (again) about the difficulty of maintaining one's absurdity in a non-absurd world. Not so much that it is easy to lose one's perspective on reality (although clearly this is so), but instead about devising ways to maximize our ongoing recognition of the meaninglessness of existence.

Our error the other day was in naively assuming there truly was something "different" about living a simpler life--that such a life was somehow more in line with the absurd. But as an astute reader pointed out, "the absurd man doesn't 'belong' anywhere, and certainly not in one place over another...The absurd man gone bamboo represents one style of life playing the absurd. But so does the hard-working dad, should he prefer that. Going bamboo and sitting around in the sun all day long is, albeit perhaps very pleasant, indeed at best a useful trick."

At best a useful trick...We have discussed the concept of tricks in the past, and the more we think about it the more useful we find such ideas. In short, human nature being what it is (most notably the incredibly powerful illusion of the self), we doubt many individuals can sustain true equanimity without resorting to some form of trickery now and then. Indeed, this is true even of "professional" absurdists--we understand some monks move every two or three years lest they get attached to their surroundings.

One trick we have developed of late is the concept of being "behind enemy lines." Let us explain. Since recognizing the absurd, we often find ourselves bemused at the actions and comments of others, but bemusement can quickly turn to frustration or annoyance at the (for lack of a better term) absurdity of others' concerns. One way we deal with this is to treat dealings with non-absurd individuals as we would enemy encounters on hostile ground.

We find playing such a role (akin to an absurd "spy") to be tremendously entertaining; further, it allows us to feign interest in virtually any subject. Coming environmental catastrophe? Fascinating! (And deeply troubling...) Your daughter's field hockey game? Wonderfully elucidating! Features on your new car? Amazing--what will they think of next?!?

You must be cautious, however--playing such a role requires total commitment to the character, otherwise one will simply appear insincere and irritating. (A role we also play on occasion...) Further, one must always be cognizant the other characters likely don't know it's a play (although they may--the absurd lurks in strange places...). Above all, have fun with it! While we sometimes take pleasure in extolling the virtues of the absurd to the uninitiated, we also enjoy playing different roles--the absurd man in disguise, if you will.

We leave you with a quote from Ludwig Bemelmans (originally posted by Inigo):

"People such as I live by rules of their own. We are not happy with the comforts that the group offers. We are off-horses, misfits… In the design that has been imposed upon humanity we are solitary, self-appointed outcasts. Outcast is too dramatic a word; let’s call us alonegoers. That also is not quite true, for I seek people and like them, but still in their midst I am alone…"

Absurd simplicity

As Inigo recently mentioned, he is currently in Central America visiting an old friend who "has a Thoreau-like lifestyle." His updates have been like catnip to us - how wonderful, we find ourselves thinking, to live so simply, with the beach at one's doorstep, no cares, no responsibilities...

Wait a minute! Is not the stated and relentlessly repeated mission of this blog to inform and educate people that such a lifestyle is available to anyone, anywhere?!? Have we not argued extensively (some might say a bit too extensively...) that all experiences are equivalent; that the "pleasures" we think we experience are no better (or worse) than the worst horrors imaginable?!?

We have, and we have. Which, to steal a phrase from a former (and, let it be said, quite awful) Federal Reserve chairman, poses a bit of a conundrum. To wit - if all experience is equivalent, then why do we feel such a pull to the "Gone Bamboo" lifestyle (hereafter referred to as GB)? Indeed, even as we covet this bucolic existence we chastise ourselves for the ridiculousness of our feelings...yet cannot fully shake them. The reality is, when it comes right down to it...we honestly believe we would be happier living such a life.

So we wondered - does such an admission mean we are less absurd than we thought? Is a desire to live a life free of desire...still a desire? Conversely, is the individual who chooses to live such a life actually more absurd, or has he simply put himself in a more favorable position? Put it this way - while we have argued (and still believe) circumstances are irrelevant, we have also written often about the difficulties of living an absurd life in a decidedly non-absurd world. Clearly such issues are less prevalent for one who has GB, and perhaps it is this that explains the appeal.

In other words, the simpler one's life, the fewer the obstacles to truly living in each moment. While we can devise tricks to constantly remind ourselves of the absurd, the fact is that human nature (and much of civilization) is essentially non-absurd (else we would have died off long ago). Thus, to GB could be seen as a strategy to remove such complications - i.e., to facilitate an easier path to living the absurd life.

Hmm...when viewed this way, GB sounds like just another trick (albeit a very sophisticated one) to counteract one's innate nature. The question, to us, comes down to this - would one who has GB continue to live the same carefree life if placed in a different environment? Said a different way - does the decision to live such a life mean one is inherently more absurd...or that one is simply making it easier on oneself to do so? Or are these arbitrary, thin, and irrelevant distinctions?

The unfortunate answer here is...we're really not sure. We honestly believe nothing matters, and that experiences are indeed equivalent. We can argue these points endlessly, citing numerous reasons they must be true. And yet, we cannot escape the feeling that the absurd man, in some way, belongs by the beach, eating seafood and vegetables, taking long walks, and reading tattered second-hand books.

As we said, it is a conundrum...

Bolts of Absurdity

Feelings of absurdity can strike people at any time. It’s like some random bolt hurled from somewhere that cracks open the mind to ask new questions about what’s it all for?

We’re always fascinated when we see this bolt strike other people. For instance, in the last issue of Travel & Leisure, a travel writer explored the bookstores of London. Then, suddenly, in the middle of the piece, it was if Camus took a wet eel and knocked this guy right on his noggin:

“I’ve developed a strange ambivalence about bookstores. I look at the piles and crowded shelves and the specials and the staff favorites, and – some days – I wonder what it’s all for. Why write another book to add to the subdued melee of bookselling? Who buys all these books? Who has time to read them all?”

Ahh… the absurd.

Why do anything? Why care about anything at all?

We wonder these kinds of things all the time. For example, this morning over hot tea and a crunchy bagel, the absurd made its move. Why bother working today, we thought. It’s sunny outside. We read the papers. We felt angry about the pathological stupidity of our government and wished them all dead.

But then it’s like those cartoons where a little angel pops up over one shoulder and a little devil pops up over the other, each with his own counsel. Except in our case, it is a little Albert Camus who pops up on our shoulder in a trench coat, smoking a cigarette. “Qu'est-ce que cela peut faire?” he tells us. “La vie est absurd!”

Of course he is right and equilibrium is restored. We laugh at the silly Congress people and go back to enjoying our tea and the warm sun filtering into the kitchen.

Not everyone comes to such absurd conclusions. Despair seems a common emotion. Tell a man that his life means nothing and – if he believes you – odds are he feels ready to jump off the nearest bridge.

Another common emotion is the “let’s put up a screen and hide this ugly fact!” These are the folks who want to create meaning or purpose of some kind. They may ask the questions, but then they provide their own weak answers… Well, family is important, they might say. Self-fulfillment is important, you know, being the best I can be. God is important.

But, sometimes people will draw the absurd conclusion, which is simply acceptance. It is a great philosophical shrug to the question of “What’s it all for?”

And we were glad to see this travel writer came to an absurd end. Rather than try to make a case for why bookstores were important… rather than prattle on about the importance of reading… or how “we do it for the kids”… this writer answered his questions this way:

“Other days, the same store has rich wonders, and I remember why I’ve been reading all my life.”

In other words, he gives the whole thing a big shrug. He enjoys bookstores because… well, he enjoys them. And that’s that.

Often we come to the same conclusion. We do what we do because we do. That’s the way it is. Not every movement has to be explained or rationalized. It’s just the way it is. Acceptance.

Why bother writing this blog at all? Why bother posting? We wonder about this too… and then we shrug. Because we do. That is enough.

The comfort of irrelevance

"I devoted my life, longer than you can possibly imagine, in service of a man who told me that everything was happening for a reason, that he had a plan, plan that I was a part of, when the time was right that he'd share it with me, and now that man's gone so...why do I want to die? Because I just found out my entire life had no purpose."--Richard Alpert, character from Lost.

We were chatting with Inigo the other day about Karl Popper, the philosopher who said (among other things) that the way to empirically test scientific theories was not to seek confirmatory evidence, but rather to do one's best to falsify the theory. His famous example was that while one could see only white swans one's entire life and (quite reasonably) assume all swans are white, the sighting of a single black swan instantly invalidates the premise.

We find this to be of use with the absurd, as anti-absurd views often bring the benefits (and logic) of the absurd into sharp relief. For example, we keep a copy of Carl Sagan's famous "pale blue dot" picture on our wall as a reminder of our incredibly tiny and insignificant place in the universe. (For those who do not know the story, Sagan had the Voyager spacecraft take a picture of Earth from the edge of the solar system.) A colleague recently asked about the picture, and seemed visibly upset when we explained it to him. Shortly thereafter, he sent us an email with the subject line "More than a dot," with a full-scale picture of the Earth in all its technicolor glory.

While the email was at least partly tongue-in-cheek, it gets at what is so difficult about the concept of the absurd for so many people. Put simply, we live our entire lives being told, either implicitly or explicitly, that things matter--as Richard Alpert so aptly put it, that our lives have purpose. Thus, it can initially seem shattering when that sense of purpose is threatened.

Another example. We are quite fond of Cormac McCarthy's book The Road, and recently loaned a copy to another colleague. (For those who have not read it, the "plot" is that a man and his son are struggling for survival in a post-apocalyptic world. The entire novel seemed to us an allegory for the absurd--i.e., that "hope" is a false god--with the glaring exception of the ending, where the man dies and his son is inexplicably "rescued" by another man who can only be described as "one of the good guys." This, needless to say, was our least favorite part of the book.)

Anyway, our colleague said she liked the book a lot--while most of it was very bleak, she explained, she really liked the end(!) We, being unable to help ourselves, pushed on this point. "You know," we said, "the takeaway is really that all of us are on 'the road.'" She looked briefly panicked, then replied, "Well, that's depressing!"

But why? Why do people cling so desperately to the idea that things have meaning? Why must our actions have significance? Why are we so inextricably wrapped up in the ruinous cycle of achievement and accomplishment that inevitably lead to disappointment and strife?

We recently read Joe Simpson's book Touching the Void, about his near-death experience while mountain-climbing. While we heartily recommend the entire book, one passage in particular was particularly pertinent. Simpson and his climbing partner had just ascended the summit, and he recorded his reaction thus:

"I felt the usual anticlimax. What now? It was a vicious circle. If you succeed with one dream, you come back to square one and it's not long before you're conjuring up another, slightly harder, a bit more ambitious--a bit more dangerous. I didn't like the thought of where it might be leading me. As if, in some strange way, the very nature of the game was controlling me, taking me towards a logical but frightening conclusion; it always unsettled me, this moment of reaching the summit, the sudden stillness and quiet after the storm, which gave me time to wonder at what I was doing and sense a niggling doubt that perhaps I was inexorably losing control - was I here purely for pleasure or was it egotism? Did I really want to come back for more?"

For a moment, we found this terrifically insightful. For a moment. But then we read the next passage. "But these moments were also good times, and I knew that the feelings would pass. Then I could excuse them as morbid pessimistic fears that had no sound basis." (Emphasis added.) Indeed, when we searched the Internet for this passage we actually found it in a thesis that argued "if we do have a good reason for living, if we can give life meaning, impending
death is easier to bear. Some desires to die are the result of a lack of worthwhile purpose."

No doubt this is the case--many people find it so difficult to come to terms with our lives' lack of meaning that they contort themselves into all manner of logical fallacies to avoid accepting this simple fact. We have spent much time on this blog, for example, disputing the notion that individuals can create "meaning" for themselves, partly because we believe it is a bit silly, but also because it is the idea of meaning--rather than whether that meaning is defined as universal or personal--that ultimately creates conflict and unhappiness. In short, if one believes certain things "matter" more than others--regardless of why--it is inevitable that one's life will at some point not conform to these preferences.

The absurd man, by contrast, recognizes the folly of all such beliefs. While he certainly feels such things--he is human, after all--he laughs at his own foibles the same as any other individual. He rejects the notion of the "self," instead choosing to view life as akin to acting in a play, where actions seem to have consequences, but ultimately have no significance whatsoever.

To bring this full circle, we take great comfort in our own irrelevance. Rather than despairing over our lack of purpose, we celebrate it!

Until next time...

Gone Bamboo

"Here lies one whose name was writ in water.”

John Keats requested that those words appear on his tombstone.

We like it, as a kind of absurd statement. We also thought of these words after we recently had a shocking conversation with a very old friend, which we will share below. We found it inspirational and it plunged us into deep thought for several days...

But first, a few thoughts on Keats' words. The idea recognizes the temporal nature of our existence and its meaningless “here today gone tomorrow” sort of nature. It’s our contention that one can live a full and content life embracing the absurdity of existence. We need no goals or mission or meaning. We simply are.

It’s not a popular opinion. And some even feel vaguely threatened by it. We came across this recent editorial, which laments the decline of Judeo-Christian traditions and our “moral compass.”

“[W]e are threatened with the thought that human existence is absurd and pointless,” the editorial says. “That was the dread possibility explored by Albert Camus and the pessimistic existentialists in the 1940s and 1950s. For them it raised the question of whether, faced with meaninglessness, one would do better to kill oneself; and this prompts the question whether rising rates of self-harm and suicide among young people today may be connected to a similar sense of the absence of human meaning.”

If this were a political arena, you can see how the debate would unfold. People who espoused an absurd point of view would quickly be dubbed “pro-suicide” regardless of the arguments. Makes us think the absurd is better off on the comfortable fringe.

In any event, this is always the challenge. The absurd doesn’t really offer a formula for living in the same way the world’s religions do. The absurd is an expression of doubt – doubt about the meaning and significance people put on life, the universe and everything. It is an effort to live free.

Few can master this, it seems. Almost everyone feels the tug of societal pressures of some form or other – and gives in. Part of what we do on this blog is gather examples of people who didn’t or don’t give in, or at least resist better than others. (Rebels, as Camus would say…)

One good example came to us recently when we spoke to an old high school and college buddy. We haven’t spoken to him in 5 years, when he ditched the U.S. and decided to live in Nicaragua.But our business will take us through Central America in the coming months and we thought to find our old friend.

We were surprised to find an absurd man.

We say surprised… well, we knew he had absurd inclinations, as did we. But he seems to have really bloomed into an absurd man par excellence.

We chatted over the phone. We found out he doesn’t work. Well, he works sometimes as a general handyman, you might say. And otherwise doesn’t. It’s very cheap in Nicaragua and one can live very well on very little - even more so if you save and forgo luxuries we don't think twice about spending money on here, but which you could readily do without when you think about it. As he put it, with a laugh, “This is how I can work for a year and take off for a year.”

He has a Thoreau-like lifestyle. He lives by the beach, the grand Pacific Ocean at his doorstep. He watches the sea roll in and out. “You know there are people who pay money for CDs with these sounds,” he told us. “Here you have all you want for free.” The sea lulls him to sleep at night, the sky a canopy of bright stars here, invisible to most people who live near city lights.

He eats fresh seafood and locally grown fruits and vegetables for practically nothing. He reads tattered second-hand books. Takes long walks. Enjoys the culture of living near an old Spanish town that dates to the 1500s. He watches sports on TV. He has plenty of friends around the town in which he lives.

The man has no occupation at all and no ambitions. And he seems completely fine with that. He’s “gone bamboo” as the saying goes. He told us, “I don’t really care about the future. I just live my life in the here and now the way I want to live it…” To think we were in business school together nearly 20 years ago. Wow.

That’s not to say he has been foolish with his money. He told us, “I have saved almost enough to live on my savings alone. I bought some lots around here when they were very cheap. So, I am not poor. Either way I am very happy here.”

No wonder he’s not come back to the states. We made plans to visit him on our trip there. But it was refreshing to find an absurd man in an old friend. A man who completely rejected the normal measures of success, who finds no compulsion to seek a career or do any of the things society expects of a man.

And why not? We are all merely names writ in water…

Uncertain Destiny

Financial markets, it is said, abhor uncertainty. Put another way, stock markets tend to suffer their worst falls not due to some terrible event, but rather in anticipation of a future occurrence where specifics remain unknown. This, of course, is due to the fact that humans tend to overestimate the impact of future events (both good and bad). Indeed, studies have shown that people who lose their sight, or both their legs, or some other "critical" function deemed "necessary" by most of us, tend to generally adapt quite well to their new state of affairs. Conversely, the positive effect of things we expect to make us happy (new job, big house, beautiful wife) tend to wear off must faster than we expect (again, as we adapt to our new reality).

In short, reality is relative. Thus, many people remain unhappy despite the fact that large swaths of humanity today live better than the most powerful king a few hundred years ago. The fact that we have central heat, and air conditioning, and unimaginably plentiful food supplies is simply not all that impressive when our neighbor has a new boat...

But this is not really the path we want to follow today. Instead, we have been thinking about uncertainty as it relates to our own destiny. The ultimate destiny is well known, of course (even if we take extreme measures to avoid acknowledging this fact), but the timing remains uncertain. But what if it were not?

Consider, for the sake of argument, that the maximum human lifespan has been conclusively proven to be 50 years. While people can die before reaching 50, no one survives past this age. Society, therefore, is organized a bit differently. People who fall ill in their late 40s, for example, generally reject expensive and involved treatments, instead opting for smaller measures that simply make them more comfortable. Moreover, there is little grief for those who die at or near 50--after all, they lived as long as possible!

Indeed, 49th birthday parties are generally lavish affairs where people celebrate their achievement of this penultimate milestone. Time Magazine interviewed someone on the day before his 50th birthday and asked if he were afraid. "Of what?" he answered. "I know what is coming, and there's nothing I can do to stop it. I made peace with my destiny many years ago."

Often, when we see stories about terminally ill patients, the patients themselves have come to terms with the inevitability of their own death (even as family members have not). The knowledge that death will come soon, in other words, forces one to confront death as real (as opposed to some abstract concept). No need to save for retirement! No need to worry about next week's party! Promotion? What promotion?!?

Hmm...sounds like a pretty good way to live. Pity it's only available to those with a finite lifespan...

Happiness from Within, Unhappiness from Without

“We all carry within us our prisons.”
- Albert Camus

Most of us live in a sort of unthinking routine. We get up in the morning. We eat breakfast and read the paper. We go to work. We come home. We have dinner. We go to sleep. And the next day we do it all over again.

It’s a comfortable pattern. It has its own rhythms. We are barely conscious of the ceaseless passing of days. But then one day we start wonder “Why?” This when all things begin, says Camus. The chain of daily existence is broken. This is when some of us will experience feelings of the absurdity of existence.

Those feelings run along familiar grooves, Camus thought. Among them: An awareness of the inevitable grinding away of our physical existence, knowing the end is our inevitable death. A sense that the powerful forces of nature mock our frail physical existence; that there is this big, incomprehensible universe that is unmoved by anything we do. A feeling of being alone or apart from other people, even a sense of alienation from “self,” a questioning of what is self, like lingering over an old photograph of “yourself” and wondering who that was, doubting it was the same person who gazes at the photograph today.

All of these things Camus writes about. And though they may sound depressing, Camus turned it all on its head. He instead leads us to embrace absurdity. And in this embrace is a release, a kind of liberation. He stresses the joy of life in the flesh, of living in the moment.

Happiness or equanimity, then, comes from within.

Ah…

But modern life conspires against this idea. That is the thesis behind a new book titled “The Age of Absurdity: Why Modern Life Makes It hard to Be Happy” by Michael Foley. If happiness comes from within, then unhappiness comes from without.

We caught this review and found the idea of the book fascinating. After all, we’ve made the same case on this blog.

As the reviewer (who seems to get the idea of the absurd) writes:

“Modern life, Foley argues, has made things worse, deepening our cravings and at the same time heightening our delusions of importance as individuals. Not only are we rabid in our unsustainable demands for gourmet living, eternal youth, fame and a hundred varieties of sex, but we have been encouraged – by a post-1970s "rights" culture that has created a zero-tolerance sensitivity to any perceived inequality, slight or grievance – into believing that to want something is to deserve it. As Foley puts it: "Is it possible that a starving African farmer has less sense of injustice than a middle-aged western male who has never been fellated?"

(Well… that’s an interesting question!)

We agree with the idea that society is decidedly anti-absurd. It wants us to buy things. It wants us to realize our potential – a potential defined by societal norms like having physical things… a nice house, a new car (you deserve it!), a sleek body, a college education, a promising career and on and on it goes…

The futility of the ceaseless striving is obvious when we reflect that our drive for these things is never satisfied. As the reviewer goes on to write:

“It's not even as if we want what we have once we've got it. Foley calls this "the glamour of potential", a relentless churning of desire by which the things we have are devalued by the things we want next. The only way out of the churn is "detachment", an idea as compelling to the Greek and Roman stoics as to Sartre and Camus: if you can't change the world, don't let it change you.”

Many great minds have arrived at the same general conclusions. Happiness is within and we make ourselves miserable with unmet desires. The great point of absurdity is that you find happiness in the absurdity of existence itself.

The book’s opening chapter is titled “The Absurdity of Happiness” and the last chapter is titled “The Happiness of Absurdity.” Sounds like a nice progression. And it also sounds like something we have to read if only for the pleasure of finding a fellow traveler in this absurd world!

Why Tiger Still Doesn't Get It

"Buddhism teaches that a craving of things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught."--Tiger Woods

"If this is true, he's one of the worst Buddhists of all time."--Bill Simmons

A couple of months ago we penned an essay about why Tiger Woods was not happy. Unfortunately, things seem not to have changed much in the interim. Not that we particularly care one way or the other about Tiger's state of mind, but the fact that he chose to invoke the tenets of Buddhism--which closely resemble our outlook--caused us to reflect on his situation once more.

One of the things we have discussed frequently in this blog is the perplexing fact that so many people are willing to go right to the edge of the absurd...but unable to follow through. For example: "Yes, I accept that all is meaningless, but family - that's what really matters." Or: "Material possessions don't matter, but having a robust network of friends is essential to a happy life." Etc.

With that in mind, go back and read Tiger's comment again. The first sentence is...well, we couldn't have said it better ourselves. Indeed, we have often written about this illusory (and counterproductive) search for security. And yet, it is clear from the rest of Tiger's speech that he has simply substituted one set of things that "matter" (his wife and children) for another (cocktail waitresses).

In short, he is falling into the well-laid trap of believing family occupies some special and exalted niche in this purely physical world--that our protective feelings toward relatives come not from evolution and simple biology, but are instead...well, somehow different.

A craving of things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security.

It seems pretty clear that Tiger's wife and children exist outside him, so why the double standard? Why do we delude ourselves into believing one set of things (family) is more meaningful than the other (possessions, or even other people not related to us)?

The answer, of course, is that for all our delusions of grandeur, for all the hoping, striving, and achieving we undertake on a daily basis in the vain hope of validating our nebulous and ephemeral self, we remain gene replication machines and nothing more. However, we want so desperately to believe this is not the case that we set up vast, elaborate structures to distract ourselves from our true nature, codified by established (and strictly enforced) social mores.

Think back to why Tiger got in trouble in the first place - he violated the terms of his marriage contract. But so what? As we once noted, the idea that it "matters" whether a spouse has intercourse with another person is merely an idea certain human civilizations have codified, for a variety of reasons. As we put it then, "such beliefs--drilled into us by society--are like religion, in that we accept them wholly and unquestioningly, despite the lack of any logical reason for doing so."

This commitment to family is so hard-wired into our nature that most people are unable to even converse about it. For example, we recently watched an episode of the (often absurd) television show House, in which a character questioned his wife as to why he should care more about his son than about others simply because they are biologically related. His wife looked at him with horror and replied: "Because he's your son!" (We, feeling mischievous, turned to our wife and commented that the patient had a point. We are still awaiting a reply.)

The problem, of course, is that there is no answer, but this concept is so overwhelming to most people that they retreat behind elaborate defenses ("He's your son!) to avoid dealing with it. There is no objective reason to favor one's family over other, unrelated individuals. It is not "better" for Tiger Woods to spend time with his family than with cocktail waitresses. Any and all preferences we think we have are mere manifestations of biological processes and millions of years of evolution, mixed together with our present and past environments.

To clarify: we do indeed have wants and desires, but we recognize their transient and ephemeral nature. We had a wonderful bottle of wine last night, and today we are at work in an office. But we are not wishing we were back enjoying the wine. We are content where we are, with what we are doing. It is this simple insight that continues to elude Tiger Woods.

The Overexamined Life

"On the way back,
we passed by
the stone walls again.
The stones had no mortar;
they were just stones
balancing against the sky."

- Simon Ortiz, "Toward Spider Springs"

The unexamined life is not worth living, Socrates once said.

But, we would add, the overexamined life isn’t worth living either. We like the thought expressed in the Ortiz poem quote above. Sometimes, it's good to just be the stones - to just be.

But for many people that won't be enough. They will seek out the mortar. And if it isn't there, they will invent one. In other words, they can't live a life without believing that something holds it together, shapes it, gives it meaning and purpose.

We have a friend who is very interested in defining himself through his chosen pursuits. He lays them out with great thought and vision, rationalizing and justifying choices he's made. He speaks often about personal performance and achievement, as if life was a kind of self-improvement plan.

We are not passing judgment. To each his own. If he finds contentment in this self-analysis, then so be it.

But we can't help but wonder about the wisdom of investing so much of a sense of self in external things, achievements or pursuits.

If you want freedom, or emancipation from societal or personal chains ... if you want equanimity - that sweet sense of "unattached awareness of one's experience as a result of perceiving the impermanence of momentary reality... a peace of mind and abiding calmness that cannot be shaken by any grade of both fortunate circumstance and unfortunate one" - as the Wikipedia puts it - then this would seem counterproductive to that idea.

The reason is because these external things will not abide your wishes. You cannot always be what you want to be. Life and circumstance force changes upon you. How you react to life's vicissitudes will determine whether you can maintain that sense of equanimity or not.

If you have important life goals, activities that you believe define who you are, then you are less likely to maintain that equanimity.

The words of Albert Camus come to mind. "To the extent to which he imagined a purpose to his life, he adapted himself to the demand of a purpose to be achieved and became the slave of his liberty...

To the extent to which I hope, to which I worry about a truth that might be individual to me, about a way of being or creating, to the extent to which I arrange my life and prove thereby that I accept its having a meaning, I create for myself barriers between which I confine my life."

He goes on to write:

"The absurd enlightens me on this point: there is no future."

All that is, is the here and now. At some point, we're all dead men. The absurd man draws strength from this insight. "Death," Camus writes, "has patrician hands which, while crushing, also liberate."

In conclusion, we prefer to let life happen. Whatever wish or goal we have, we hold to it lightly, like a little bird we coddle gently in the palms of our hands. If it should flutter away, our life will be no poorer for having lost it.

Absurd Man v. Simian Man

So, are there ways to change your behavior, to mold the hard-wiring of your brain in some way? That is the focus of a new book titled Switch: How to Change things When Change is Hard.

The answer is yes. The authors maintain there are psychological principles you can use to change your behavior and overcome some hard-wiring. We’ve not read the book and don’t plan to. We saw a review in this morning’s Wall Street Journal and the thoughts in there inspire today’s post.

See… we’ve often talked about how there are parts of us that are hard-wired to be anti-absurd. And so in the past we’ve written about ways to be more absurd and overcome this hard-wiring.

The authors have some ideas… and it begins with the idea that humans don’t have one central decision-making unit. You may think of the brain as one unit, but in fact, our brains have two halves. There is a rational and logical part of the brain. And there is an emotional and impulsive part of the brain.

For our purposes, let us call the first the Absurd Man and the second, Simian Man. The first is what writes this blog. It’s our thinking, deliberate side. The side that weighs evidence and does the heavy lifting of (trying) to figure stuff out.

The Simian Man is the anti-absurd part of our brains that make us do un-absurd things – like getting upset in traffic or ticked off at work. It is the reactive, emotional part of our brains.

Having these two sides is like having your own internal Jekyll and Hyde show. Absurd Man tries to wrestle down monkey brains and keep things copacetic, while Simian Man has his own ideas and plays havoc with Absurd Man’s neat view of the world.

Simian Man can get in the way of the liberating feelings of absurdity. In the past on this blog, we’ve often talked about this Simian Man as something to beat down and control. But we are leaning more and more to accepting Simian Man and his non-absurd impulses as part of what it is to be human. If sometimes we act non-absurd, then so be it. Recognize it and move on.

The authors, however, have a few other useful ideas we thought we’d pass on. They say that in order to change your behavior you have to address both sides of your brain. So if you want to be more absurd, you have to appeal to both reason and emotion. You need concrete information (the rational arguments of the absurd) and you need a more emotional mental image of why it is “good” to be absurd (say, peaceful images of how calm and care-free you might be, of equanimity and acceptance, of the idea of emancipation).

The bottom line is you need to bring both systems onboard for change to occur. You need good rational arguments to appeal to Absurd Man… but he can’t do it alone. You also need to appeal to Simian Man.

The authors have other principles, too. One is to recognize that we are influenced by those around us. Our environment is an important part of the puzzle of our behavior. So, in order to be more absurd, the authors would advise you seek out like-minded people and create an environment more conducive to want you want to do.

This blog, we suppose, can serve that kind of purpose. It creates, in a way, a place where like-minded people can find some reinforcement and swap ideas about the absurd and similar viewpoints. It’s helped us be more absurd in our daily living. After all, absurdity, like a good offal restaurant, is a rare thing in today’s society. Even Simian Man would agree with that.

Options and Choices

If today was your last day
And tomorrow was too late
Could you say goodbye to yesterday?
Would you live each moment like your last?
Leave old pictures in the past
Donate every dime you have?
--If today was your last day, Nickelback

We went through a period a few years back where we put four pets to sleep (two dogs and two cats) in 14 months. Leaving aside some of the obvious existential issues, what has stuck with us is the manner in which our vet discussed each pet with us. He would lay out the facts of the pet's ailment, pause briefly, then say "OK. Options and choices." In each case, the "options and choices" were basically: 1) spend a small fortune for (at best) a few extra weeks or months of life, or 2) put the pet to sleep.

We opted for the latter in each instance, but that is not the point. Rather, we want to discuss how this concept of options and choices can impact the way we live on a day-to-day basis. Put simply, it is far different to choose to live each day than to continue living through inertia. (As we have noted in the past, we consider suicide to be a viable and perfectly valid option for one to consider.)

Think of it this way. Do you begin each day (as Will Smith opined in the otherwise-forgettable movie Hitch) "as if it were on purpose"? When you are stressed out about a deadline, or worried about a relationship, does it occur you that none of it would matter if you were dead? (We are not advocating suicide as a relief for one's stresses, mind you, but instead using such a "negative visualization" as a means to illustrate the inherent absurdity of all our worries and stresses.)

You. Could. Be. Dead.

Not only that, but you are free to end your life at any time. To us, thinking of life this way has a clarifying (and bracing) effect. We are choosing to live. Not only that, but we acknowledge that everything we do involves choice. We are choosing to write this blog post instead of innumerable other options available to us at this moment. Even when we do things that seem mandatory (go to work, care for our family), we recognize that there are other options available. The fact that such options may seem unpalatable (getting fired, for example) does not render them moot.

Basically, this boils down to the way perceptions can alter one's state of being. To view life as a choice puts one in control, while to cling desperately to life through biological inertia...does not.

Interestingly, such a conclusion flies in the face of the most common complaint against the absurd - that it is a depressing outlook on life. Indeed, we have found that to contemplate suicide on occasion is a wonderful tonic for easing life's ills - the fact that we had a hard day at work, or our wife is upset with us, seems laughably irrelevant when put side by side with our ceasing to exist.

Also, such an outlook is an essential element to living without fear, which gets at the recent debate in the comments about whether the absurd is consistent with living an "accomplished" life. To us, this is a fairly simple issue: the absurd man recognizes the futility of all endeavors, but may certainly choose to play the role of a high achiever. Indeed, the recognition that all is futile, and the liberation it entails, frees the absurd man to pursue pretty much anything.

After all, what's the worst that could happen?

Jerry Seinfeld, absurd man

Parade Magazine published its interview of Jerry Seinfeld over the weekend. Seinfeld, a comedian who needs no introduction, voiced a powerful absurd idea in the interview – one that we were, frankly, shocked to see in print. Few – especially one so famous – are willing to say the same thing about the death of a loved one as Seinfeld did. We’ll get to that below…

Seinfeld has always struck us as a man totally comfortable in his own skin. He always seemed totally at ease with the world and his fame. Part of that comes from his willingness to submerge his ego. Or maybe a better way to put this is that Seinfeld seems to successfully hold on to his sense of self with a light touch.

This probably helps explain why he is such a good observer, and hence a comedian. (We have a guess that humorists are closer to the absurd than the average man). Harlan Corben, the interviewer, begins by walking with Seinfeld through Central Park to the Upper West Side. “While he strolls,” Corben writes, “his eyes are always searching.” Seinfeld takes note of a man in a business suit on a bicycle far too small for him, an adept skateboarder, teens playing by a frozen lake…

“A born observer,” Corben writes, “Seinfeld enjoys commenting on what he sees. Whereas most celebrities like nothing more than to talk about themselves, he seems to find it tedious, if not painful.”

He is less focused on himself – his ego, his needs, his purpose, etc. This seems to help him in two ways. It helps him become more accepting of the world as it is and it helps make him a very astute observer of the world around him.

And the irony of this effort is to know yourself better than the navel-gazing crowd looking inward for meaning and purpose. “To know the self, of course, is hopefully to forget the self,” Jim Harrison once wrote, memorably adding: “The especially banal wine of illusion is to hold on tightly to all the resonances of what we see in the mirror, inside and out.”

And now we get to Seinfeld’s more shocking absurd admission. Near the end of the interview, Corben asks Seinfeld about the death of his father, “the first great loss of Seinfeld’s life.” ‘“Did it crush him?” Surprisingly, after a brief pause, he says no.’

An excerpt from Corben as to what follows…

“I tend to accept life as it is,” he says. “I’m not one of these ‘Life isn’t fair people.’ I tend to accept whatever the limits are, whatever the rules are.” He sits back. His love for his father is evident, but no more evident than his acceptance of the basic fact that the man is no longer around… “It’s okay.” Seinfeld says. And you get the feeling that it is.

How many celebrities would say that? We venture to say not many. Most would feel compelled to extol emotions of sadness and loss. Rather than go to pieces, Seinfeld has found acceptance.

This acceptance is the key to the whole idea of absurdity… and finding equanimity and contentment in life. And while not a uniquely absurdist keystone, it is connected to the absurd as a man’s head is connected to his body. One of our great inspirations on acceptance is Henry Miller. “Only through complete acceptance,” he writes, “does one arrive at emancipation.”

Miller goes one to say that “this doctrine of acceptance” is “the most difficult yet simple of all the radical ideas man has proposed for himself.” We agree… and the payoff for mastering it is immense.

How immense? We’ll end with the words of Herman Hesse, who gave such eloquent voice to the idea in Siddhartha:

“I learned… to love the world, and no longer compare it with some kind of imaginary vision of perfection, but to leave it as it is, to love it and be glad to belong to it… Everything is necessary, everything needs only my agreement, my assent, my loving understanding; then all is well with me and nothing can harm me.”

Thin veneers

"It was toward the end of my career; I knew it was probably my last shot. That set bad with me. It's like, what is life all about?"—Former Purdue University basketball coach Gene Keady, on failing to make the Final Four in 2000.

We have not posted in quite a while, due in part to the epic snowstorm that hit the mid-Atlantic U.S. last weekend (and knocked out our power for two days). Indeed, we and our family, including our black lab, ended up fleeing our house early Sunday morning when the inside temperature hit 44 degrees.

Not surprisingly, the experience provided us with an interesting insight into the absurd.

As you know, we have argued extensively that circumstances are irrelevant, and all experiences equivalent. Thus, our weekend (which consisted mainly of shoveling snow, trying to keep warm (and fed), and searching for flashlights and candles) was no different than that of someone sitting on the beach drinking pina coladas. And yet…

In fact, our early Sunday flight to a hotel was prompted by being awakened at 4:00 by our 4-year old daughter, and our abject pain at watching her sit in the cold, dark bathroom—our protective instincts (which reside in the ancient, reptilian part of the brain) simply overrode any other (i.e., more rational and objective) assessment of the situation.

This was of course obvious in retrospect, as we sat in our warm house this morning and considered that there was no objective difference between Sunday and today; in other words, there was no particular reason to prefer one environment over the other. Yet clearly we did.

This was particularly interesting to us in light of the recent discussion on the blog (and a recurring theme) about the existence (or lack thereof) of meaning. In short, our feelings and actions were certainly consistent with preferring one situation over another. So how can we argue they are the same?

The rub is this: Just because we have a preference for one over the other does not mean it is inherently better. To fully grasp this, consider our weekend experience from the perspective of our dog. Indeed, we joked with our wife several times that the dog seemed to be enjoying the weekend more than usual; she spent the entire time with us (as opposed to being outside or in her crate), and the trip to the hotel was even better—not only was the whole family in two rooms (and thus easily accessible), but she was allowed on the bed!

The message here is pretty simple, of course—the inherent “goodness” of experience is purely subjective.

Now, at this point we are sure some of you (you know who you are…) are chomping at the bit to tell us your version of meaning is subjective—it is, as the Buddha said, your world, and you create it with your thoughts. So let’s explore this.

The view expressed by certain commenters is (as we see it) essentially this: what they refer to as meaning is not some transcendent experience, but rather some sort of personal meaning inherent to them (and them only). Thus, to say a sunset (or anything else) has “meaning” could be true to one person and not to another. The meaningfulness, in other words, is internal rather than external.

However, when looked at through the lens of our recent experience, it strikes us that such beliefs are mere illusions, made possible thanks only to the thin veneer of civilization. Put it this way—the man struggling day and night for survival has no time for thoughts of meaning (internal or external); it is only when he is able to sit and reflect that his actions and desires take on a “significant hue.” What are mere instincts when survival seems to be at stake (protect my offspring!) somehow transform into deep and meaningful statements of “who” we are under less stressful circumstances (I am deeply committed to my family—they matter to me).

The difference, of course, is purely ephemeral—under both circumstances we are merely physical beings playing out ancient scripts hard-wired into our genes—but as the latter feels different, we delude ourselves into believing it has some significance outside our physical (and instinctual) reality.

Nonsense

Recently, we were unable to visit a certain remote lodge in New Zealand because the foggy weather grounded our small airplane in Wellington. Reaction to this varied, as you might expect, from those who acted as if it completely ruined their life to those who shrugged their shoulders and looked for the nearest inviting pub. (We were in this last camp.)

One member of our crew said “Well, it doesn’t matter anyway, we’ve got plenty of other things we can do.”

Ears perking up a tad, we said, smiling, “Of course it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. A few weeks from now this will be just another memory.”

“Well you’re right,” he said. “Nothing really matters in the end.”

We are always curious about how many people seem to agree initially with elements of the absurd, but back off when the full import of what it means hits them. In this instance, thinking we had perhaps found an absurd man amidst an un-absurd society, we probed a touch deeper.

But he soon told us how happiness centered around three things: personal health, friends and family, and positive experiences. We nodded politely, but we found it fascinating how this fellow in one instance can see so clearly how nothing matters and yet in the next he places three things at the center of his universe. Different strokes for different folks, but as absurd men, we see greater appeal in taking that idea of a meaningless universe as we find it. Just accepting it as it is, rather than build a screen around it.

But how people think and respond is an interesting subject itself. Though not directly tied to the absurd, we found the following principles in Robert Gula’s book Nonsense: Red Herrings, Straw Men and Sacred Cows: How We Abuse Logic in Our Everyday Language. It aptly describes the general tendencies of how people think – and goes very far in explaining why an idea, like the absurd, that goes against so much of what people hold dear, has little chance winning the hearts and minds of most people.

Gula writes, people:

1. Tend to believe what they want to believe.
2. Tend to project their own biases or experiences upon situations.
3. Tend to generalize from a specific event.
4. Tend to get personally involved in the analysis of an issue and tend to let their feelings overcome a sense of objectivity.
5. Are not good listeners. They hear selectively. They often hear only what they want to hear.
6. Are eager to rationalize.
7. Are often unable to distinguish what is relevant from what is irrelevant.
8. Are easily diverted from the specific issue at hand.
9. Are usually unwilling to explore thoroughly the ramifications of a topic; tend to oversimplify.
10. Often judge from appearances. They observe something, misinterpret what they observe, and make terrible errors in judgment.
11. Often simply don’t know what they are talking about
12. Rarely act according to a set of consistent standards. Rarely do they examine the evidence and then form a conclusion. Rather, they tend to do whatever they want to do and to believe whatever they want to believe and then find whatever evidence will support their actions or beliefs.
13. Often they do not say what they mean and often do not mean what they say.

That’s a pretty damning list. And we’re not saying we haven’t fallen prey to these principles. We simply offer them as a neat synopsis on thinking itself. Not only is there a lot of hard wiring that makes people resist absurdity, there is also a lot of baggage in their ways of thinking that prevent them from accepting new ideas (or old ideas in new ways).

Gula also quotes from J.A.C. Brown’s Techniques of Persuasion: “Most people want o feel that issues are simple rather than complex, want to have their prejudices confirmed, want to feel that they ‘belong’ with the implication that others do not, and need to pinpoint an enemy to blame for their frustrations.”

It seems some institutions make their entire living on these principles… religion and politics comes immediately to mind. But really any set of ideas and beliefs (including the absurd) can fall prey to these issues.

Interesting stuff…and helpful in trying to think clearly and to understand why other people think the way they do.

Melancholia

We recently returned from a long overseas trip. A day after our return, a feeling of melancholy set in. We had an unsettled feeling. We were blue.

But what’s this? We are absurd. Nothing matters. What could bother us? Well, we thought about it and wrote the things that were irritating us down on a little pad: The pile of mail (and bills) that had accumulated in our absence that had to be sorted out... The need to run an errand to the bank, which is never convenient… A deadline at work that we had no chance of meeting…

We wrote these things down and studied them a bit; facing them directly and recognizing how each thing didn’t matter. We started to feel better. Bomstein pointed out over coffee one day that he read somewhere how stress makes the brain release some chemicals that stay in the body for a time even after the stress is removed. That, too, made us feel better. As if this feeling was instinctual, one of those hard-wiring things that makes us anti-absurd sometimes.

All of this got us thinking about the idea of feeling blue. In the past on this blog, we have often emphasized happiness… how to get it, or keep it, or what makes it happen or not happen, and even trying to figure out what the heck it is and so on…

But we are starting to like the idea of acceptance better. That is to say, the idea should not be happiness, per se, but acceptance. We shouldn’t fight feelings of melancholy. We should accept that, too. The ultimate absurd man, we think, is one who has mastered acceptance. He finds equanimity in accepting the world as it is and not, necessarily, in thinking about being happy regardless of what befalls him.

We know we’ve talked about acceptance often, too. But we think perhaps we should emphasize acceptance more. There was a man who saw some of these things early. When we think of the word melancholy, we think of his name. His name is Robert Burton, author, famously, of An Anatomy of Melancholy, first published in 1621.

Part of Burton’s message – and we know he had some strange ideas, like eating too much pork or too many cucumbers made one sad – is simply that feelings of melancholy are part of what makes us human. There is no escape. We should accept it and move on.

Burton writes, in his usual purplish prose:

“From these melancholy dispositions, no man living is free, no stoic, none so wise, none so happy, none so patient, so generous, so godly, so divine, that can vindicate himself…

Q. Metellus, in whom Valerius gives instance of all happiness, ‘the most fortunate man then living in that most flourishing city of Rome, of noble parentage, a proper man of person, well qualified, healthful, rich, honorable, a senator, a consul, happy in his wife, happy in his children,’ etc, yet this man was not devoid of melancholy, he had his share of sorrow…

For a pint of honey thou shalt here likely find a gallon of gall, for a dram of pleasure a pound of pain, for an inch of mirth an ell of moan; as ivy doth an oak, these miseries encompass all our life.”

Burton says here that feeling blue is normal. It happens to all. Don’t sweat it. Just accept that it happens. (Well… he also has his prescriptions, some of which are not bad. He says you should drink more beer, because it makes one happy, or, as he puts it, “the hop… hath an especial virtue against melancholy.” We can’t argue…)

To know these feelings are natural and to recognize them when they occur is itself a great anti-depressant, we find. It goes along with the idea that to observe your own actions and thoughts in a dispassionate manner is a wonderfully revealing exercise.

All is to say, don’t fight your bouts of melancholy. Recognize and accept is, we think, a better approach. And, ironically, this approach may dissolve those blues anyway.

Gilgamesh

We live and die, but it is our unique fate to know that we live and die.

That’s an old insight, probably realized by our early ancestors, when they were hunting their prey to exhaustion on the African plains.

From there, one can go in many different directions. The absurd man takes that insight at face value. He accepts it and, in fact, finds it freeing. If we’re all going to die anyway, what’s the point in worrying about stuff? Might as well live for today.

That too, is a very old idea. We didn’t realize just how old until we found it in the ancient tale of Gilgamesh. And when we say ancient, we mean ancient. When the tale was lost in the destruction of Nineveh in 612 BC, it was already 2,000 years old!

Gilgamesh was very popular throughout the ancient world. Lost lines were found in many of the languages of the Near East – Sumerian, Akkadian, Babylonian, Elamite, Hittite and more. And there are many variations of the tale.

While traveling Down Under, we picked up a copy of Martin Edmond’s Zone of the Marvelous: In Search of the Antipodes. (The antipodes is often used to mean Australia and New Zealand.) It was here we found the discussion on Gilgamesh.

“Gilgamesh is about an ancient Middle Eastern king’s quest for immortality and his coming to terms with the inevitability of death,” Edmond writes. Young Gilgamesh lives it up. He has many lovers. He parties and drinks a lot. In the process he angers the gods (by killing the Bull of Heaven). The gods decide to kill his pal, Enkidu, in retribution. Gilgamesh is distraught, “fearful…that his friend’s fate will also be his.”

Afraid of death, he goes on a journey to achieve immortality. We’ll skip over his many adventures here and focus on just one encounter. In the earlier versions of the story, he meets with Shiduri, who is a kind of tavern-keeper. She is the absurd woman in the tale.

Her advice to Gilgamesh is to give up his quest and accept his inevitable death. As Edmond writes: “Shiduri tries to dissuade him, using words later echoed in Ecclesiastes: ‘fill your belly with good things, day and night, dance and be merry, feast and rejoice…’”

Shiduri is the absurdist voice in this old tale. She is the one who gives the wise advice that says if you are going to die, you might as well live life to the fullest and not worry about your death. Shiduri advises Gilgamesh to live an absurd life.

We don’t know who put those words in her mouth. The author (or authors) of the tale is lost forever. But the fact that the words exist at all means there was an ancient absurd man somewhere back there in the mists of time.

Absurdity, perhaps, is as old as consciousness. When the first man (or woman) looked up at the sky - perhaps frustrated by his hunger or angry at the sun - and wondered why... and then accepted his fate, he was on his way to absurdity.