Camus – Rebel With a Cause
Camus did not believe the universe was absurd. Unlike the Existentialists, Camus did not search for meaning and come to the conclusion that there was none; that was the premise from which he started. He believed humanity’s innate desire for meaning from an indifferent universe was absurd, and even then, he used the word in its original Latin form meaning ‘out of tune’. Camus’ consideration relies on a relationship rather than an abstract concept held independently of humanity.
Camus defined rebellion as a protest against the relationship between the whole of creation and conscious humanity; a refusal to accept that the condition people find themselves in is anything but darkly amusing. Rebellion to Camus is a search for freedom.
“Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
Albert Camus
In the face of the absurd nature of humanity’s relationship with the universe, the choice to rebel is a means of transcending, to be free. Free from attachment to, or reliance upon a meaning imposed by an external source. That means freedom from everything including learned habits, socialisation, ways of seeing the world and even right down to personal identity which is just a construct reinforced by society.
To rebel is to challenge, to find the meaninglessness meaningful, to not give in to habit and the unconscious, unaware response to life. To rebel is to become distrustful of everything people and society takes for granted. To rebel is to take the serious lightly, to make the profound profane and vice versa. Rebellion is an option against unconscious existence.
Rebel against playing by existence’s rules. Rebel against believing there are rules, or even that you are playing. Camus placed himself in opposition to the Absurd nature of life, not denying, negating or dismissing it, but accepting and acknowledging it.
That doesn’t mean you have to go along with it.
The rebel worships the absurd sense of our ridiculous predicament, the irreverent, mischievous, subversive sense of play in which one is so engaged that the child’s fantasy game becomes true. The rebel is the joker in the pack, the jester in the court holding the momento mori above the triumphant Caesar reminding them that all life is fleeting, and this too shall pass.
In an act of rebellion, the Absurdist accepts the hypocrisies and paradoxes of their predicament and the responsibility for ultimate meaning, that which scared the Existentialists so much. Part of that responsibility is to point out the ridiculous relationship we all find ourselves in and make fun of it so others can see it for what it is. It is a beautiful and fun act of rebellion to wear the ultimate responsibility lightly and mock it.
The Absurdists understand that you can see existence in whatever way you like – see it as the Brahman dancing, as a play on a stage or a game – but whatever you see it as decides its quality and your attitude toward it. You may see it as a dance, but is it a waltz or the funky chicken? Is it a Beethoven symphony or Baby Shark? Is it a tragedy or comedy, a game of quoits or a blood sport?
Absurdists see life as a game, but not a competitive one. More like a child’s game of pretend than points being accrued. The reason for this distinction is because there is never an implication of a winner. One doesn’t dance to get to a certain place in the room, or play music to get to the end of the piece, otherwise the best orchestras would be the fastest.
If one does see life as a game, but thinks themselves more important, they may object to the implied irreverence. “This is not ‘just a game’ that we are ‘only playing’”, they say taking life and themselves very seriously. They take offence at the universe’s indifference to their existence and their attitude toward life illustrates their response to this uncertainty.
Alan Watts categorised these attitudes into the responses Repentance, Rebellion, Resignation and Reincarnation, but needed to explain that the last was only to continue the alliteration and didn’t refer to the common use of the word, but more like the joyful cry of “Do it again!” a child makes when delighted by something. Perhaps Reaffirmation would better suit - literally saying ‘Yes!’ again – or to take the focus away from an individual perspective, perhaps the word Resonance works best.
The Repentant sees something wrong with the game of life and determines that it must be themselves. They spend life attempting to be worthy, addressing their shortcomings and suffering guilt. They believe in a ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ and that they need to do something, or act in a particular way in order to be worthy of being ‘right’. When they follow their philosophy through, they find that attempting to take responsibility for ‘correcting’ everything is actually grossly egotistic, which of course, makes them feel incredibly guilty.
The Resigned sees the game as rigged and decide that they won’t play. In the face of arbitrary rules that are inconsistent, unfairness and injustice, they give up. They’re better than that. What they don’t understand is that, because this game is so vast, even refusing to play the game is still taking a part in it and defining yourself according to it. If you’re on the field, you’re playing, whether you like it or not.
The Rebel sees something wrong with the game of life and decides that somewhere in the design there is a mistake. The game is wrong, it makes no sense. This is the Existentialist point of view. Eventually they find the paradox that the final thing to rebel against is rebellion. When they do, they discover they are the player, the opposition and the game itself. They have just been playing themselves, rebelling against themselves the whole time. Or to use another analogy, they have spent their life looking for and avoiding traps to find that the act of looking for a trap is a trap. They are the trap. Player and game, trap and trapped, they are two sides of the same coin.
And so, each live their lives responding accordingly, playing the game with awareness or not. The game started when they took an attitude toward it, when they stood apart from it to judge it, when they started to believe in this individual vantage point as outside of everything else. In other words, when they started to see themselves as distinct from everything else, an identity, an ego. The game then becomes finding out what lies beyond the ego.
“The final conclusion of the absurdist protest is, in fact, the rejection of suicide and persistence in that hopeless encounter between human questioning and the silence of the universe.”
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Like any system, there is no place outside of existence from which to objectively judge existence. The belief that we can do so must partly be the responsibility of the cultural belief in binary distinction that we can see reflected in many traditional belief systems. In the Bible, God made man and set him apart from animals, but he was already distinct from God. This same distinction doesn’t exist in other creation myths such as the Hindu where, in order to enjoy the experience of existence, The Brahman, or unified being, split himself innumerably and became each thing that comprises existence. Humans then, were not distinct from, but part of God, just like everything else.
There is a beautiful liberation in letting go the illusion of identity, distinction and separation and realising that you are, in fact, everything in disguise. You are the Brahman dancing, and you are the dance. You are the unity of all things, but the catch is that you couldn’t have worked that out without first identifying as an individual.
This understanding upsets a lot of people, because when someone says that they are both nothing and everything, the Alpha and Omega, they are essentially declaring that they are God, blasphemous in some religions. If consciousness is mere perception and perception is subjective, then each person, God-like in their ability, creates their own universe. Currently quantum physics supports the idea that all reality is subjective.
The Sufi mystics say, “Ana-al-haqq”, “I am the Truth” or “I am God” by which they describe the Tawhid, or the unity of the individual merged with the divine. The ‘he’ in theism is really ‘me’, or as The Beatles put it, “I am he as you are he, as you are me and we are all together”.
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.
Carl Sagan
Once a person comes to this realisation, they can transcend this ego driven state, or choose to return to play the game, but now like a virtuoso playing for fun; like the Harlem Globetrotters playing a high school basketball team. As they play, the enlightened Absurdist makes it clear to everyone else how the rules are self-imposed, and how they can be bent. They remind the players that the nature of the game is to play and the nature of play to have fun. Their joy is infectious, and it bounces off everyone it encounters overlaying itself again and again. They resonate as they cry “Do it again!”
In this way they show others how to transcend the game, like the Boddhisatva who achieve enlightenment, but return to the world of illusion and suffering to play lightly in the deep. Subversive, irreverent and now finally egoless, the rebel evolves into the Trickster, the Holy Fool who, charged with the spiritual duty of responsible mischief, acknowledges the absurdity of reality, and chooses to have fun with it.
His presence reminds us that rebellion is not merely an act of defiance, it is a catalyst for transformation.
“Become so very free that your whole existence is an act of rebellion.”
Albert Camus, The Rebel
Nietzsche said that only as an aesthetic phenomenon, an expression of beauty, is the world and the existence of man (sic) eternally justified. The rebel justifies their existence by rebellion. The Fool defines their existence by another singular concept.
Fun.
Only as a Cosmic Joke, as the Great Gag is existence justified.
Humour is an anaesthetic that dulls life’s sharp edges. If we can laugh at the absurdity, we stand taller against it. Satire, properly done, is the most delicious form of rebellion available.
John Cleese
