The Myth of Sisyphus and The Fall



The topic of suicide is no doubt a heavy one. It seems silly to point out such an obvious truth, but the taboo around suicide makes it feel almost impossible to discuss without emotional charge.
I’ll start out by saying much of my teen years was devoted to the topic of suicide; not from a philosophical standpoint, but from a deeply personal and painful standpoint. I struggled and watched my friends and other members of my family struggle. Last year, during my first week of college, I had to leave my second class to answer a call that my friend’s father (a successful, wealthy, seemingly happy man) had killed himself.
I bring this up not because I want to open up or ask for sympathy, but to highlight the truth in The Myth of Sisyphus. To decide whether Sisyphus’s life is worthwhile, and whether he can be happy with it, is in a way to ask whether our life is worthwhile.
One quote that I wished we had gotten to touch on more comes from page 189: “in a sense and in melodrama, killing yourself amounts to confession.” The use of the word confession is so important to me. It brought me back to the memory of my friend’s father, and my stark realization that I had no clue what anyone in my life was really going through. We are all faced with the absurdity of existence. We all have to find meaning at one point or another, whether through our religion or career or other status. Ending your life provides people an almost disgustingly voyeuristic view into it, as everyone tries to rationalize your action. It’s experienced, as Camus says as a “social phenomenon.” And the people who commit suicide do not get to be a part of the conversation. They cannot answer for themselves as people try to pry into their life and pinpoint exactly which trauma pushed them over the edge.
But Camus’ conclusion about the absurdity of life is what struck me as most powerful because it forced me to confront an idea I had about suicide: that suicide is a form of revolt or rebellion, and that to be alive is to accept the absurdity of life. Before this, it seemed kind of intuitive. But Camus’ painting of suicide as “acceptance of the extreme” shed a light on a perspective on life that really was revolutionary for me. Because if we’re all going to die, and if we have no guarantee that anything matters anyway, isn’t living in spite of that the most revolutionary thing we can do? To find meaning in a meaningless world is certainly the more rebellious (and probably more fulfilling) option. This reading, and that quote in particular, gave me so much to think about.
The position that life is meaningless and so nothing matters is no doubt an appealing one, but it’s not a very imaginative one. I struggled reading about suicide, and then leading a discussion with the rest of my group about suicide. But overall, I found this reading very inspiring. I was grateful to have a frank discussion about such a difficult topic. Also here's a song I like:
Thanks for reading my blog.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's Up Nietzsche? Pt. 2

Power is an incredibly motivating force. Power gives one the ability to achieve most other things that might motivate us; whether that be money, success, influence. Power is instrumental in all of that. According to Nietzsche, power is also instrumental in morality. Morality, as he says, started with people, not actions. And who were these people? The powerful. Nietzsche is not saying that certain people were inherently more powerful than others. In fact, Nietzsche does not believe in inherent morality at all. Nietzsche is saying that people were acting, and it was powerful people who had the influence to name actions moral or immoral. They acted and were able to call those actions moral, in their own best interest, and they were also able to punish those who acted in ways that went against their interest, thus imposing their morality onto others. This process had nothing to do with actual, inherent morals, but had everything to do with power. At this point, I’m pretty much on...
Read more

Dostoevsky Reflection: Freedom and Utopia's

Feodor Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground was one of my favorite readings since Camus. I was most intrigued by the speaker’s take on free will and how that had to do with him refusing to seek treatment for his illness. There is something in human nature that seems to drive us to self-destruct just because we can. It’s hard to talk about because it’s at times so obviously irrational or selfish that we cannot avoid trying to justify it to ourselves. We tell ourselves we are not going to the doctor because it’s too expensive or we’re too busy or we don’t trust doctors. Sometimes these are in fact our true reasons, but other times we say things like this because it would be ridiculous to explain that we are risking our own lives out of spite. Spite for who? Our doubt? I don’t know if we have free will, though I am inclined to say that we do. But the scariest part of that question for me is not the idea that maybe we don’t have free will, but the fact that there is any doubt ...
Read more

Heidegger: What the Fuck?

Early Childhood Explorations of Da-sein When I was a little kid, I asked my mom if fish went to school. My mom inferred that I had heard the phrase “school of fish” on one of my PBS educational programs, and explained to me that the word school meant different things in these contexts, and that, no, fish do not go to school. But this was not the question I was asking her. Even as kid I knew that fish did not go to school. What I was really asking, without fully realizing, was why fish (an all other non-human animals) didn’t go to school, and why humans did. What was it that drove humans to seek knowledge and education? Why weren’t we satisfied with an understanding of the world that allowed us to survive and not much else? There seems to be something uniquely human about being concerned with questions like why we exist and what our purpose is and what’s going to happen when we die. Heidegger’s ability to give terminology to our existential dread was extremely confusing but onc...
Read more