Amidst and after the devastation of World War II, Camus and his contemporaries were faced with a world with seemingly no external source of meaning. At best, if this external meaning *did* exist, it was not a universal or ultimate one. Or it was a cold and indifferent meaning that had no problem sitting silently as millions were killed in genocide, and ten times more sacrificed to war. To be charitable, external meaning seemed unreliable. So what does one do with this reality, and with the human thirst for meaning?
Camus termed this tension, between the human longing for meaning and the "unreasonable silence of the world", the "absurd."1 And in the face of this absurdity Camus thought that there was just one philosophical question: Why persist? Why even try? Why not end it all?2 On the obverse side of the coin, now parroted to the point of banality in media and on the front cover of countless self-help books, is arguably a far more interesting, relevant, and practical proposition: "choose happiness" (or any of its cousins, like "choose joy" and "choose meaning").
There are many recordings and recountings of the Dalai Lama being asked what the meaning and purpose of life is. In contrast to Camus' (and many existential philosophers') felt anxiety of facing the absurd, the Dalai Lama always responds with glib ease, "to be happy!" The audience is alway stunned, for surely that can't be all, when happiness is what all of us are attempting to do and struggling miserably with every day
I am fascinated by a corollary question that touches on philosophy, neuroscience, simple introspection: Why don't we choose happiness? As I'll outline over the next few posts and the rest of this blog, I've observed that there can be many objections to choosing happiness.
This is a 6-part series:
Myth of Sisyphus, by Albert Camus
Camus' approach: 1) embrace the absurd out of intellectual honesty and don't try to wish it away, and 2) turn to art, perspective, and change of aesthetics to appreciate beauty, embrace agency, while not asserting that such a life has a transcendent meaning (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/#HapFacOneFat).