Member-only story
philosOphy
A Brief History Of The Absurdity Of Everything
After a week of reading and writing nothing but satire, everything begins to appear absurd
In philosophy, The Absurd refers to the conflict between the human tendency to seek inherent value and meaning in life, and the human inability to find any in a purposeless, meaningless or chaotic and irrational universe. That’s what wikipedia says anyway. The absurdist philosopher Albert Camus said that individuals should embrace the absurd condition of human existence. Hear, hear, I say.
David Sedaris famously wrote about his time working as an elf in Macy’s Christmas Village in his legendary 1992 NPR radio piece titled the SantaLand Diaries. In the course of relaying what it was like on a day to day basis to work for Santa in a Manhattan department store, he talked about the day when they welcomed a contingent of mentally handicapped individuals to visit Santa. I’m paraphrasing here, but he made the observation that after awhile he had a hard time telling where the handicapped people stopped and the so-called normal New Yorkers began. “Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it,” he said. Of course this was back in 2002, when presumably we were still saying retarded, but you get the idea.
