Realists of the Absurd World
an Addendum to The Contemplation of Happiness
1 | An Absurd Pragmatism
Nihilism… teaches its students that there is no meaning to be found in life and living. Practitioners of a nihilist philosophy tend to think themselves pragmatists instead—realists who understand the true and meaningless nature of the world—who are liberated and freed of the delusions which mar the minds of lesser men. Nihilists are encouraged, thereafter, to gorge themselves upon hedonism—to take without restriction whatever action it is which they find most interesting or appealing. Because nothing matters—because everything crumbles to dust in the end—you may do whatever you think feels best in the moment without any consideration for consequence; for the humanity of the Others or the reality of the world which exists all around you.
               —Marcell Hise: The Contemplation of Happiness
Nihilist-absurdist philosophy is irredeemably inconsistent with the nature of reality. It cannot, by the very nature of its logic, be twisted or framed in any such way which would support its empirical validity. The nihilist-absurdist posits, after all, that because nothing matters in the world—that we, as individuals, are nothing more than an emergent phenomenon of our bio-chemistry—nothing which we could ever feel or do can ever be truly real. Thinkers such as Schopenhauer, Cioran, or Camus—the archetypal representatives for their own philosophies—believe themselves to be such Realists: wielders and possessors of this incredible, fundamental truth. Of a transcendent wisdom of tremendous gravity; the knowledge that nothing is truly real, and that all things flow in inexorable march toward a meaningless finality.
The fundamental flaw in the philosophy of our Realists is this, then: that in the formulation of its logic, this absurdist Realism accounts only ever for the Subjective facet of faith and fantasy, choosing to perpetually ignore and neglect the existence of its equi-present counterpart—it’s Objective aspect. The Realists see that we cannot observe a metaphysically Objective reality, and therefore conclude instead that everything which we believe we perceive must be nothing more than an illusion—the product of our imaginations. Here is the place in which their logic finds its fundamental failure: that is to say, in its refusal to acknowledge the existence of a social Objectivity—their denial of the fact that fantasy itself is, thereafter, what constitutes reality.
In the terms of Sartre and Beauvoir, our Realist imagines himself pure essence—pure Subjectivity, unconstrained by the weights and burdens of a fictitious Objective reality. This, however, is fundamentally inconsistent with the actuality that—though he believes himself above Objectivity—he must still live and survive the world in which he actually exists, and must still yet concern himself with the people whom he lives beside.
2 | Order and Chaos: an Absurd Conflation
All men begin as Children—all Realists must take the leap. Seeking that which lies beyond the Peak, the proto-Realist flees the Serious World, vaulting over the bottomless Pit in an attempt to reach the other side.
To grasp the ledge—the distant edge of the hope for an Absurd World.
The act of crossing over—of taking the leap itself—is a declaration of the realization that the Serious World is a lie. Nihilists, Adventurers, and Passionate Men—all Realists in their own right—believe that, because the Serious World from which they’d fled was a fiction created to serve the fantasies of the weak-minded man, then the Absurd World in which they’d arrived must, therefore, represent the true and unadultered nature of reality. In this way, they thus conclude that they have arrived at a rational finality—that the world is Absurd, and that nothing can ever truly mean anything.
This, however, is where the finality of their logic falls astray—for here is where they make the damning assumption that the world is itself rational. Like the Serious Men of the other World, the Realists assume that the nature of reality is one which is perfect—that the world must exist in one or the other flawlessly defined state:
That the world must be either Serious or Absurd—if not ruled by law of Order, then by law of Chaos.
Here the philosophy of our Realists finds its ultimate immaturity: the conflation of the concept of Absurdity with that of Sartre’s fundamental contradiction.
Man is not either Being or Nothingness—rather, instead, he is both one in the same. So too is the nature of reality necessarily neither Order nor Chaos—but instead both one in the same.
The Realists believe that the Serious and the Absurd—Order and Chaos, Being and Nothingness—must necessarily be mutually exclusive in their existence. They hold that it is a logical contradiction to claim that what is and what isn’t both are—and here, they are correct.
It is a contradiction—Sartre’s fundamental contradiction—for in theory it would make perfect sense to assert that the Serious and the Absurd may not exist in tandem. And, in a sense, this is the case; for they do not exist in tandem.
Order and Chaos are just one in the same.
No more than simple manifestations of our imaginations, these twin concepts are just this: linguistic constructs, manipulated and created by human minds in an attempt to better understand their world. Their long separation within our awareness as distinct semantic entities has for millennia led us to believe these properties to be inherent and opposed, imprinting upon us the notion that these forces are fundamentally irreconcilable.
Every man of either World—Dreamer or Realist alike—assumes that the world must make sense somehow. Thus, they take to a corner or an edge of our little box, each asserting his claim resolutely. But from Chaos comes Order—and from Order, Chaos.
Reality has never made sense.
Subject and Object emerge from nothing—for before we were men, we were but ash and stardust.
Man is neither Being nor Nothingness. Instead he is both, all at once—
Being and Nothingness.
