In my last post on absurdism, I more or less defined the philosophical construct of absurdism, talked about how we can apply it to the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and our lives and the world around us, and then asked:
If your mother asks but you don’t want to, should you or should you not go to Thanksgiving dinner?
And I ended with the idea that if there are no ultimate consequences, then other people’s opinions about whether or not you “should” go to Thanksgiving don’t matter.
It only matters what you think.
But that’s not the end of the story.
Does skipping Thanksgiving make you a “bad” person? No.
But how do we know that if there are no ultimate consequences?
Should you go to Thanksgiving?
That depends.
Do you think family is inherently valuable? Does the idea of family and maintaining family relationships have meaning to you? Even if you don’t want to go to Thanksgiving dinner, do you still think it is an important action to take?
If yes, then go to Thanksgiving dinner, whether you like and get along with your family or not.
If no, then feel free to skip.
It is rare, however, for answers to be so simple.
Because there are a lot more variables and moving pieces in a situation like this than simply whether or not “family” is something that matters to you or not. Because perhaps you don’t believe that “blood is thicker than water,” but you do have other reasons for maintaining relationships with family.
Like money, for instance. Maybe you like watching drama. Or maybe you don’t care about Family with a capital F, but you do care about specific family members, like your mother. Or a niece or nephew.
In which case, going to Thanksgiving despite your dislike of your other family members will make your mother happy, or allow you to see the people you do care about, and therefore bring you meaning.
Or maybe staying connected to your past has meaning to you, and going to Thanksgiving would give you a simple reason to visit your hometown. Perhaps you’re not sure what you think of your family or how you feel about the whole holiday in general, so you decide to go to learn more about your own feelings and priorities.
One of the challenging parts of figuring out this whole absurdism thing, is creating a new system for evaluating the pros and cons of actions. Because even if there is no ultimate meaning in the universe, your actions still do have consequences.
If you skip Thanksgiving, you could get written out of the will, for example.
Or you will never find out that your aunt died.
These things could have implications down the road in a way that does matter, in a personal or contextual way.
Regardless, there is great freedom in allowing yourself to question everything. But it is also challenging. For example, let’s look at the story which states: “Killing people makes you a bad person.”
Question: does it, though?
There are tons of stories that question this narrative just in pop culture. Look at NCIS. Bones. Pretty much every cop or military show features characters who have killed other human beings.
But to make it more palatable, we give the characters PTSD, or make them feel guilty even though it was state-sanctioned, or we couch it with “buts” like, “but he was a really bad guy,” or “but he was about to kills someone else,” or “but he was pointing a gun at me.”
Not to mention, we are surrounded by military men and women. They are an integral part of our community. Are they bad people? Not only for potentially killing others, but for choosing a profession in which it is likely they will eventually be in a position to kill someone?
I was only 18 when I 19-year-old friend of mine who was a service member who had already served time in Iraq confessed to me in whisper at 3 AM what it felt like to kill a person.
Were they a bad person?
Was it bad to kill Osama Bin Laden? Was it bad to kill Mussolini? If a person murders a serial killer or a serial rapist or a child molester, are they bad? What about police officers in high stress situations where someone is shooting at them? What about soldiers, following their commander’s orders in war?
And many people imagine that they had a time machine, they’d go back and kill Hitler. Would that make them a bad person?
No.
On the other side of things, there are some actions that I do believe to be wrong. For example, I believe that molesting children and rape in all instances is inherently evil or bad or wrong or whatever phrase you want to use, even though I do not believe in cosmic consequences.
And if I get called into a room in emergency (though at this point, it seems unlikely that this will ever happen—I’m going to become like that character in that movie who gets trapped in the airport and just lives there, except I’ll be trapped in the emergency waiting room, slowly starving to death), if the doctor deliberately lies to me about my health, I would believe that was wrong or bad or whatever.
But without ultimate meaning, and without the consequences of an eternity in hell hanging over our every move, how do we draw these lines?
So there are two different sides to this. The first is how do we make judgements about our own behavior, and the second is how do we make judgements about other people’s behavior?
I’m going to start with talking about my own behavior, and then in the next episode, I will talk about other people’s behavior, because that’s a lot more complicated.
There are two ways I can make good/bad judgements about my own behavior.
Does it hurt?
Does it align with my own personal meaning?
I am going to get more into the pain side of things in the next episode, but let’s say I decided to leave the emergency room without seeing a doctor.
Mysterious abdominal pain? I can handle it, right? It’ll probably go away. And surely, the physical pain is much more tolerable than the emotional boredom I’m experiencing and the physical discomfort of these god-awful waiting room chairs.
Well, I’m the most important thing to me. Because without me, I wouldn’t exist. Without me, I wouldn’t be having this pain, I wouldn’t be having this experience, I wouldn’t be observing or experiencing anything, so this conversation wouldn’t even be happening.
So I have to make a call: which will hurt more? Sitting in this stupid chair watching other people cough outside their masks during a pandemic, or going home and hoping the mysterious pain vanishes on its own and then it turns out there wasn’t anything wrong with me in the first place?
Sometimes these value judgements are impossible to make. We can’t predict the future—we can only guess. We can look at statistics and probability. And just make a choice and hope for the best.
But sometimes we can also add another dimension to the judgement—which is pain + relationship to our own personal meaning.
I would like to wait to die for as long as possible, so I can write more books. So if my discomfort at waiting in the emergency waiting room and my physical pain are about equal, all I have to do is say: well, the chances of me dying if I leave are slightly higher than the chances of me dying if I stay. Probably.
I’d like to stay alive, so I’ll stay.
Alternatively, perhaps I find some personal meaning in my health. Or this essay I’m writing. Or the simple experience of being in a hospital.
Is staying here good or bad?
Let’s go back to the Thanksgiving example.
Your mom wants you to attend Thanksgiving dinner. Is skipping good or bad?
Will it hurt?
Maybe. You don’t like your family. It will be an uncomfortable day. (Neutral.)
No. You don’t like your family, but it’s more of a passive apathy, not an active dislike. But going will make your mom happy and not going will make her sad. (Skipping is neutral/bad depending on the nuance of your relationship with your mom.)
Yes. Your family is cruel and unkind. They will do everything within their power to insult and demean you. (Skipping is good.)
Will it align with your own personal meaning?
Maybe. You do believe family is important, but not more important than anything else. (Neutral.)
No. You think your family members are vocally racist, homophobic, and cruel, and going only lets them know that you’ll suffer through that type of behavior for the sake of “family.” By not attending, however, you can communicate that you won’t tolerate this. (Skipping is good.)
Yes. You love your mother and want to make sure she knows it, so attending will ensure that you can maintain at least one relationship that has meaning to you. (Skipping is bad.)
Let’s shift the example slightly. This time, you are the mom. You want your kids to come to Thanksgiving. You believe that family has value. After all, you chose to birth them, you gave up your body, suffered a lot of pain, and spent 18 years raising them and spending money on them. You have decided and devoted your life to this particular meaning.
One of your children has decided that they don’t want to attend. You are disappointed and want to tell them. Would telling them be good or bad?
Does it hurt?
Maybe. You want them to know your feelings, but you don’t know how they will take it. They may be understanding about it, but they might also not care how you feel. (Neutral.)
Yes. You know your child will not respond well to hearing of your disappointment. They will tell you it’s their decision, not yours, and be upset because they feel you are pressuring them into trying to attend. Then they would withdraw more from you and it would likely hurt your relationship. (Telling is bad.)
No. You believe your child will respond well to hearing your feelings, and appreciate that you expressed how you feel. And even if they still choose not to come, you think that sharing your feelings will strengthen the relationship. (Telling is good.)
Will telling them align with your own personal meaning?
Maybe. Family has a lot of personal meaning to you. You want good relationships with all of your kids, even if they don’t get along with each other. You’re pretty sure your kid would be okay knowing your feelings because you’ve worked to have a strong, open relationship with them, but there is a chance they will feel like you are manipulating them. (Neutral.)
Yes. You believe that in order to have strong relationships with your children, you need to be able to express how you feel. (Telling is good.)
No. You believe that in order to have strong relationships with your children, sometimes you have to accept their decisions and deal with your feelings about it on your own. You believe that it doesn’t always help to share every feeling, and that by not telling them, they won’t feel pressured and therefore be more likely to come to a future family gathering. (Telling is bad.)
One of the catches to this process is that you could always be wrong.
Because the thing is, guessing the future is always, always, always telling a story. We guess the future by making up stories about what we think will happen based on things we believed happened in the past.
We get cut off on the highway. We tell ourselves a story: that person is a jerk.
But we don’t know that person. We have no idea if they were a jerk.
Perhaps they didn’t see us. Perhaps they were rushing to the hospital. Perhaps it was a simple mistake.
So when we get on that particular highway again, we might say, “Yeah, someone will probably cut me off.”
It’s a story we tell ourselves.
“Yeah, my kid will probably fly off the handle if I tell them I’m disappointed they’re not coming for Thanksgiving.” Because perhaps they flew off the handle last time we said the same thing.
So we choose not to tell them of our disappointment—but it turns out our kid really wanted us to talk them into attending, but since we didn’t, they assume we didn’t want them after all, and the family divide actually widens.
Because our stories… they were just stories we made up. Inaccurate stories. Stories that reflect our understanding of the world.
Were we wrong to tell those stories?
No.
Because stories are all we have.
To be continued…
