The Grim Reader: A rally against the absurd

Some musings on Camus, English language and a timeless quote from the past...

The Myth of Sisyphus - Camus’s appeal to life

The reason that this first newsletter starts with Camus should be clear to anyone who knows me. I have a personal beef with a dead philosopher. Decades worth of time difference between us, and yet I would keep this one-sided rivalry alive. You can imagine this rivalry as the one portrayed by Loki for Thor because he knew Thor was right, the same way I know Camus is right, and I can’t bear the fact that he is right. Because Camus being right leaves me with a reality that I am not ready to deal with.

The Myth of Sisyphus is arguably one of the greatest works to come out of the 20th century. We will be covering it slowly with each newsletter. It opens up by claiming the foremost philosophical question is that of suicide. Rest everything is secondary. One first has to judge why it is worth living.

“Killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you or that you do not understand it… It is merely confessing that it ‘is not worth the trouble.’”

All other questions stem from this - whether it is moral to kill, steal or put pineapple on pizza! If we can’t figure out a way to say if it is all worth it, does it even matter? (and the fun part is even if we can say it is worth it, it doesn’t matter, but at least it is worth it). I will bring in an example from the art world here. A few years ago, this art installation below was presented to the audience - A robotic arm trying to wipe the hydraulic fluid back in to survive one more day; it would repeat it every day, and yet every day, the fluid will leak. The robotic arm keeps doing it every day. Eventually, one day it will die because no amount of fluid is ever enough forever. Sound familiar? We eat and work every day to survive another, and yet, in the end, it ends the same way. This is the premise of our problem. An existence so fragile that there shouldn’t be any reason to keep doing it, and yet we do it. Every day we face the absurdity of it all (some don’t, ignorance really is bliss), and yet we continue. This is the point of contention - Why do we? Hoping that in the meantime, you give me your answer to it; otherwise, we will ask Sisyphus in our next edition.

Sun Yuan and Peng Yu’s installation Can’t Help Myself (2016–19).

Did you know?

Goodbye comes from

“late 16th century: contraction of God be with you!, with good substituted on the pattern of phrases such as good morning .”

Do you mean to tell me that I being an existentialist atheist, has been wishing people ‘god be with you’ every time I leave them???? This is why English is a fucked up language, it’s like those small dwarfs dressed in a trench coat to appear as one tall person. English is just a curtain put on 3 languages, faking as a competent language when it is nowhere close to it. HOW IS GOODBYE EVEN CLOSE TO GOD BE WITH YOU?????? Fucking religious tomfoolery messing languages (I know, hypocrite of me, considering I love Urdu and Punjabi for precisely this reason :p but at least they have some resemblance to originality and depth.)

A post out of the blue for you:

I have read this post a thousand times, at least, at different points in my life. It always manages to fetch a visceral reaction from me. I have no context for this quote at all. But the only way I imagine this dialogue being uttered is when the character who has been abused and starved their whole life is in their last moments. And this is their last plea, the hope, the commitment that they will make sure if there is life after, it will be filled with nothing but love. It will be so full of love that all it will be remembered for is the overflowing of love. Maybe the reason I resonate with it so much is for exact same reason. To fill life with so much love that there is no need for anything else to exist. The abyss will be hidden behind the wall of this overflowing love. You wouldn’t need to find meaning in life because with love, it will be worth it to even do laundry with you.

So imagine this, a character with a mortal wound, looking at their ‘found family’ and saying - “I will rewrite this whole life, and this time there’ll be so much love, you won’t be able to see beyond it.” Defying the fates and gods to claim it for themselves. I can’t imagine a better reason for existence. Camus would agree; to rebel against the very fabric of reality and to rewrite it to reflect the most human essence - love. GODS! I will cry again.

I will re-write this whole life, and there will be so much love that every dinner conversation will end with dessert around the kitchen slab and not alone in the room wishing for a swift death.

A treat of a song for you - I mean, it is Hozier and game soundtrack; it can not go wrong. Blood Upon Snow - To all things housed in her silence, Nature offers a violence.