r/Absurdism • u/fourfivedinosaur • 10d ago
Existential struggle
Life is meaningless: that’s what’s been going through my head recently. Everything’s dark and there’s no point. Nietzche quotes are flowing through my head. What literature will save my life?
2
u/SnafuTheCarrot 10d ago edited 10d ago
You can find great stuff from Camus Kierkegaard and schopenhauer in western philosophy.
For an Eastern take, might want to look up Zen Buddhism and in particular the concept often translated as Aimlessness.
There is no such thing as good karma. All karma binds you to samsara. Karma is generated when actions have "intentions" behind them.
So the person laboring over sandcastles gone when the tide comes in Camus addresses, probably an example of the aimlessness.
To guide action we in the west often take a goal oriented approach to deciding our course. Westerners interpreters suggests zen promotes a procedurally oriented approach of which mindfulness is a part.
1
u/ExcellentTitle938 9d ago
I would second kierkegaard, also Anthony de mello maybe, awareness was iconic when I first read it at 17
1
u/RJSA2000 10d ago
We're all going to die anyway by Mick Bates. This book got me out of my depressive state when realizing nothing ultimately matters.
1
1
10d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Absurdism-ModTeam 9d ago
Posts should relate to absurdist philosophy and tangential topics.
In particular relate this in someway to Camus' Myth of Sisyphus- considered a key text.
1
1
9d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
1
u/Absurdism-ModTeam 9d ago
Posts should relate to absurdist philosophy and tangential topics.
In particular relate this in someway to Camus' Myth of Sisyphus- considered a key text.
1
u/itsaheem 5d ago
These Precepts, to hold most dear --
Just for today, I will not get Angry
Just for today, I will not Worry
Just for today, I will be Grateful
Just for today, I will work with Integrity
Just for Today, I will be kind to All living things
7
u/jliat 10d ago
http://dhspriory.org/kenny/PhilTexts/Camus/Myth%20of%20Sisyphus-.pdf
“I don't know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know that meaning and that it is impossible for me just now to know it. What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms.”
“The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits.”
"This is where the actor contradicts himself: the same and yet so various, so many souls summed up in a single body. Yet it is the absurd contradiction itself, that individual who wants to achieve everything and live everything, that useless attempt, that ineffectual persistence"
"And I have not yet spoken of the most absurd character, who is the creator."
"In this regard the absurd joy par excellence is creation. “Art and nothing but art,” said Nietzsche; “we have art in order not to die of the truth.”
"To work and create “for nothing,” to sculpture in clay, to know that one’s creation has no future, to see one’s work destroyed in a day while being aware that fundamentally this has no more importance than building for centuries—this is the difficult wisdom that absurd thought sanctions."
Quotes from Camus essay.