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Hm, Absurdity is an interesting concept, M. Camus. Thank you for posting it to HN, I have looked through the docs and I got curious. How does it compare with B

by EGreg 2mo ago

Hm, Absurdity is an interesting concept, M. Camus. Thank you for posting it to HN, I have looked through the docs and I got curious. How does it compare with Buddhism of Siddharta Guatama and the preceding buddhas, or Stoicism by Zeno? I have been a big fan of Stoicism 2.0 by Marcus Aurelius. Why should one continue to download and install Absurdity? Can anyone who’s been running Absurdity in production do a comparison of its features vs the existing philosophies ..

PyWoody 2mo ago
The SEP article on Camus will answer most questions wrt Camus, absurdity[0]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/
albert-camus 2mo ago
[dead]
thrance 2mo ago
Camus would call Buddhism, and other religions, "philosophical suicide", because you're basically believing in a made-up justification for your existence and what its purpose is. Stoicism is a guide on how you should live your life: stay in the place that was given to you at birth, and be satisfied from it. So Camus would call it "philosophical suicide" too. Camus commands you to accept fully that your life has no purpose despite how bad you would like the Universe to give you one, and then choose to continue living on anyway. This desire for meaning vs the lack of answer from the Universe is what Camus labels "absurd".
- Viability1936 2mo ago
  Camus saw the problem (or got close to it) but kept it. He noticed the craving for meaning, noticed the world won't answer it, and then chose to hold on to the craving anyway and call that defiance freedom. That's just suffering with extra steps and rationalizing it. The buddha didn't offer a "justification for existence." He pointed out that the demand for one is the problem (part of it anyway). You crave meaning, the craving hurts, so abandon the craving (not just for meaning and not by an act of will). Camus couldn't conceive of that, so he made a virtue out of carrying the boulder
  - halperter 2mo ago
    At least for me, the idea of giving up the craving for _everything_ seems to be rather...undesireable. I'd argue that a futile existence, with full knowledge that it is futile but living anyways, is much more "life-affirming" than giving up all desire. I want to feel, to touch, to yearn. Even if those don't mean anything, I think it's much better to do rather than to not do. And I think that humans, more than anything, want to feel alive. That's why we can never abandon that craving, why we must live with it and surpass it rather than retreating from it.
    - throwaway17_17 2mo ago
      I wrote the following and then realized it sounds a little pretentious, but I think it get my point across regardless. Also, I’m not a scholar of Buddhism or a practicing Buddhist, so I could be grossly generalizing or misunderstanding what I have read, but I believe I’m not to far off base. I think the Buddhist reply would be that living without craving and without yearning leads to truly being ‘alive’ and enables one to feel, to touch, and to experience the world as it is and in the immeasurably short time a person is alive within it. An existence where the present is experienced and cherished in the moment of having it, while knowing and accepting the inevitability of this moments ending. Such a life, in the Buddhist tradition, embodies the knowing and accepting of the ultimate emptiness of reality and then proceed to live, not in spite of the emptiness, but in the full appreciation of the act of living.
      - halperter 2mo ago
        Huh, haven't looked at it that way. I'm just not sure about the leap from a lack of craving allows us to truly experience the world. As a general rule, I think humans want more. We usually aren't satisfied with "okay enough" and is what led us to do basically everything we have done. Nobody does something if they don't have a motivation to do it. I think that desire is so fundamental to life that to lead life without desire is empty, but I can definitely see how chasing your desires can blind yourself to everything else.
        2mo ago
worldthruword 2mo ago
I think Reality is so big, you can superimpose any Quality (Absurdism, Discordianism, Hedonism, Lovecraftian Horror, Bhakti Devotion, Theatre metaphors, Infinite Games metaphors, etc). The way I think is : all these qualities are of a subset and we are applying these qualities to a superset through morphing step by step. One just has to be clever enough with words.

by EGreg 2mo ago

PyWoody 2mo ago

The SEP article on Camus will answer most questions wrt Camus, absurdity[0]. [0] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/ https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/

albert-camus 2mo ago

[dead]

thrance 2mo ago

Camus would call Buddhism, and other religions, "philosophical suicide", because you're basically believing in a made-up justification for your existence and what its purpose is. Stoicism is a guide on how you should live your life: stay in the place that was given to you at birth, and be satisfied from it. So Camus would call it "philosophical suicide" too. Camus commands you to accept fully that your life has no purpose despite how bad you would like the Universe to give you one, and then choose to continue living on anyway. This desire for meaning vs the lack of answer from the Universe is what Camus labels "absurd".

Viability1936 2mo ago
Camus saw the problem (or got close to it) but kept it. He noticed the craving for meaning, noticed the world won't answer it, and then chose to hold on to the craving anyway and call that defiance freedom. That's just suffering with extra steps and rationalizing it. The buddha didn't offer a "justification for existence." He pointed out that the demand for one is the problem (part of it anyway). You crave meaning, the craving hurts, so abandon the craving (not just for meaning and not by an act of will). Camus couldn't conceive of that, so he made a virtue out of carrying the boulder
- halperter 2mo ago
  At least for me, the idea of giving up the craving for _everything_ seems to be rather...undesireable. I'd argue that a futile existence, with full knowledge that it is futile but living anyways, is much more "life-affirming" than giving up all desire. I want to feel, to touch, to yearn. Even if those don't mean anything, I think it's much better to do rather than to not do. And I think that humans, more than anything, want to feel alive. That's why we can never abandon that craving, why we must live with it and surpass it rather than retreating from it.
  - throwaway17_17 2mo ago
    I wrote the following and then realized it sounds a little pretentious, but I think it get my point across regardless. Also, I’m not a scholar of Buddhism or a practicing Buddhist, so I could be grossly generalizing or misunderstanding what I have read, but I believe I’m not to far off base. I think the Buddhist reply would be that living without craving and without yearning leads to truly being ‘alive’ and enables one to feel, to touch, and to experience the world as it is and in the immeasurably short time a person is alive within it. An existence where the present is experienced and cherished in the moment of having it, while knowing and accepting the inevitability of this moments ending. Such a life, in the Buddhist tradition, embodies the knowing and accepting of the ultimate emptiness of reality and then proceed to live, not in spite of the emptiness, but in the full appreciation of the act of living.
    - halperter 2mo ago
      Huh, haven't looked at it that way. I'm just not sure about the leap from a lack of craving allows us to truly experience the world. As a general rule, I think humans want more. We usually aren't satisfied with "okay enough" and is what led us to do basically everything we have done. Nobody does something if they don't have a motivation to do it. I think that desire is so fundamental to life that to lead life without desire is empty, but I can definitely see how chasing your desires can blind yourself to everything else.
      - 2mo ago

worldthruword 2mo ago

I think Reality is so big, you can superimpose any Quality (Absurdism, Discordianism, Hedonism, Lovecraftian Horror, Bhakti Devotion, Theatre metaphors, Infinite Games metaphors, etc). The way I think is : all these qualities are of a subset and we are applying these qualities to a superset through morphing step by step. One just has to be clever enough with words.