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Hegel’s labor of the negative: you find something wrong — inequality, injustice — and break the existing system to fix it.
But what drives you is still a negative, the absence of perfection (a lack). So you must find the next flaw, break again, rebuild again. The engine never stops, as perfection is unattainable.
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When you know you are right punishment is not rehabilatory, it is fate.
If you know who you are, and what you love, then you know what you must do: there is no choice.
Others may profess righteousness and attempt to drown you in punishment and exile, but this cannot be punishment since you knew the rules (accepted them) and (knowingly) accepted your fate.
This is how Sisyphus can smile: he knows himself and the world without illusion.
“He achieves a knowledge without illusions which negates everything they profess.” ~ Albert Camus.
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Nietzsche says revenge is an attempt to “will away” what happened in the past.
As Nietzsche says, trying to erase the past to reset boundaries is an extraordinary folly.
It is impossible, which means your willful logic enacted is self-deception, which creates a version of you that can never return to reality or forgiveness.
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To be free, you must find a purpose beyond yourself. Which is slavery to a purpose.
It will be championed (and reflected) by your friends, which provides a sense of joy.
This freedom that is not freedom, providing you with reflected joy, is absurd. Wallowing in purpose can create a disgusting bureaucrat or motivated altruist, or any manner of thing between.
Be cautious: see it, be wary of it, and yet still maintain a disposition beyond contradictory futility.
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For dignity we pursue honor, love, or power. These often take the form of conquest, simultaneous desires, and discipline.
The conundrum is to distinguish our singular “self” we become embroiled in self-defeating behaviors. The more victorious you are, the more divided you become.
And yet, this game persists, and the trick is to play it well.
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Camus says churches, political or religious, care not for the truth. They establish doctrines, which declare eternal aims, which never last.
The truth is at hand: touchable.
Even if you claim it does not last, at least it makes no false declarations of eternity.
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No argument makes sense until you are conditioned to believe it.
If a secularist reads every holy text (Bible, Koran, Upanishads, etc.) and is convinced by one, this is not a valid decision. Because Christian reasoning works only if you already believe as a Christian. (Kierkegaard)
Belief primes us to use rationality, which makes us reason toward irrationality.
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If suffering can never be eradicated, our purpose must account for suffering.
Our purpose must make the pain worthwhile or meaningful. If not, life, suffering, and pain are all absurd.
In a moment of clarity (seeing the absurd), we can see the religious/humanistic impulse to validate suffering is attractive (giving meaning to pain retroactively).
The leap is to trade up: swap the obvious irrationality of suffering for a portentous, impossible dream. Upgrading absurdities maintains purpose by excluding logic and, in so doing, secures comfort.
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The absurd is when your aim does not match your strength or ability, according to Albert Camus.
To charge a wall armed only with anger is absurd.
To expect success while ignoring reality is absurd in direct proportion to the scale of your goals. A situation becomes absurd when the odds are infinitesimal, yet the individual persists.
This defiance against reality is equal parts hopeful and bravery, yet also insanity.
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To see clearly we should look to reality.
Yet the insensate brutality of reality will destroy you.
Maintaining delusions is what allows us to fully live: to thrive, rather than just survive, because to only survive is existentially meaningless.
