Still in the emergency room, if anyone was keeping track, and I’m going onto hour 5 of waiting. For a while, I kept wondering—if everything is meaningless, why am I here, subjecting myself to this utter boredom, off some pain which will probably turn out to be nothing?
Well, because it might turn out to be something, obviously. A something which could ultimately cause more pain in the future than I’m experiencing right now.
So leaving would be the wrong choice—not because the universe somehow cares if I stay or if I go, but because I care about me, and Me doesn’t like pain.
And while yes, the universe is meaningless, I still have meaning. I am interesting to myself. I think that the things I think and write and say and do are interesting, and I’d like to keep thinking and saying and doing them. And there’s no reason to just let myself die (potentially) early, because I’m too lazy or annoyed or uncomfortable to sit in the emergency room waiting area all day.
Pain.
In the last episode, we talked about pain and how it relates to the way we judge our own behavior. So I want to go into that a little bit more. But I want to step sideways for a second, because while I’ve been sitting here, watching this horrendously boring house flipping show (to be clear, I actually enjoy shows about architecture and design—this one just happens to be really, really dull), I’ve been trying to think of more practical applications of absurdism.
Most of the conversations I’ve seen about absurdism on Discord or Reddit are so fricking depressing. It’s all people who are just like, “Let’s read more books on absurdism. They’re hilarious because these guys hate everything and the picture they paint is so bleak and… absurd!” or “Life is meaningless! Why ever live in the first place?”
Like, I don’t know—why not?
So figuring out some actually useful way to apply absurdism to life, seems like a valuable line of thought. I even wrote a post in which I asked other people on Reddit how they apply absurdism in a practical way to their lives, and pretty much everyone just said something along the lines of, “I just laugh when things suck,” which, to be honest, isn’t all that practical, in my opinion.
But it does get at what I think the heart of what a practical application of absurdism could look like. It’s about changing the story.
You’re having a bad day? Things keep going wrong for no reason? To the point of utter absurdity? And for no reason?
Laugh.
Okay, cool. But why are you laughing?
You’re laughing because you’re changing the story. It’s no longer, “God hates me. That’s why everything sucks today.” Or “I deserve this.”
Instead, it’s “Everything is meaningless, so the fact that this is happening? It sucks, but it doesn’t imply that I’m a bad person or that God hates me or that the universe is out to get me. It just is. And tomorrow or the next day, I’ll probably forget all about this.”
Granted, this doesn’t really apply to trauma, but for the moment, I’m mostly talking about getting pooped on by a pigeon type stuff. (I’ll dig into trauma later—my own trauma, at least. I don’t presume to know anything about yours).
When I think about the idea of ultimate meaning (or lack thereof), I tend to think about Christianity, since that is my background. I grew up in an Evangelical environment, and am now an #exvangelical. Regardless of my own personal experiences, I think most religious and non-religious spiritual people have some concept of reward or punishment that comes after death, and which of those happens to you is based on your actions and intentions during life on Earth.
So I’m going to start with that concept:
If you are a “good” person, then you get rewarded in the “afterlife.”
If you are a “bad” person, then you get punished in the “afterlife.”
I’m not going to talk about purgatory because while the idea of having a second chance to determine your fate is nice and all, it’s really just an extension of “good” and “bad”—or more like a delay between your ultimate reward or punishment.
Also, I want to mention here that I am operating under the assumption that a possible reward or punishment is the “ultimate meaning” in question, and we’re not talking about something else, like the universe being a giant computer trying to solve a difficult math problem or something. (42?)
To start, we have competing concepts of good and bad. And as we walk through life, we assign labels of “good” and “bad” to a wide variety of things.
For example:
Love = good
Hate = bad
Eating = good
Starving = bad
But we all know that these blanket statements aren’t necessarily true depending on the context. When love becomes obsessive, it is bad. When we hate something that is culturally considered bad (i.e. Hitler or child pornography or racism), that is good. If you overeat, that is bad. If you starve in preparation for a surgery or starve a parasite, that is good.
The meaning behind a thing or concept changes based on context. A bed in a hospital is a very different thing than a bed in a hotel. (Sorry about all the medical examples, lol. I am still in the ER, though I’ve been moved to a room now. Except that they are overfull, so the room I am in is a crisis room, which means really harsh florescent lights, flat blue walls that kind of glow under the lights, and three cameras surrounding me. It’s quite anxiety-inducing, if I’m going to be honest. But there’s nothing like a good discussion about absurdism and abstract concepts like “good” and “bad” to keep a person distracted.)
Already, with just a few examples, the concepts of “good” and “bad” are starting to feel suspect.
Is a hospital bed good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?
Is a pigeon good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?
Is buying an organic tomato from a national corporation good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?
Is filling your tank with gas good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?
Is spending 20 hours of time and electricity watching The Good Place good or bad? Or both? Or neutral?
What gives “good” and “bad” meaning?
Eternity? Heaven and hell?
Except, why does our behavior or the relative “goodness” or “badness” of a thing, concept, or action matter if there are no ultimate consequences? What happens when you take ultimate meaning away? How do you know if something is truly “good” or “bad”?
According to absurdism, you get to choose your own meaning. But it’s not so simple, right? How do we judge what is good or bad in the world with no cosmic consequences? Is it just a gut feeling? An instinct? Or is there a pattern that we can pick up on that doesn’t rely solely on ultimate cosmic consequences to keep its head above water?
Enter: pain.
Pain is everywhere. Pain is ubiquitous. I am in the ER right now because of… you guessed it—pain. And pain comes in many varieties and is felt by every living thing (yes plants, and probably the Earth, included).
There is physical pain, mental pain, emotional pain, even spiritual pain. There are all forms of discomfort (which I am including as a form of mild, bearable pain) and conflict. And alternatively, there is pleasure, which comes in the same varieties—physical, mental, emotional, spiritual.
Pain as a measure should start first with us.
We exist before our pain. Or perhaps, in spite of our pain. We exist whether we are in pain or not, which suggests that any pain we feel is not us. It is a separate thing, though it can feel as if it is intrinsic to us. Within us. A critical part of us.
But I would posit, that though our pain is separate from us, our ability to experience pain or lack of pain is as inextricable from us as our consciousness. Perhaps it is the same thing as our consciousness. It is the entire role of our consciousness to describe and understand what we are experiencing.
Any meaning that we want to find or create in our lives is centered around who we are, what we want, and what interests us. Therefore, our pain starts with us, as in, we experience it as though it is part of us, yet it is still separate from us. Our consciousness works to understand that pain or lack of pain.
And other people experience pain too. We might not know or fully understand other people’s pain, but we know they feel it.
To use pain as a measure for determining meaning, we must first acknowledge our own pain and accept that it is a constant across living beings. If you don’t want to accept that as a basic premise, then I suggest skipping the rest of this essay, lol.
So first we acknowledge and validate our own pain.
Then we recognize that others have pain too. It may be different than ours, or less or more, but it still exists. Then we have to acknowledge that our actions can have one of three different types of impact:
It can increase pain in either ourselves or others
It can not increase or decrease pain in ourselves or others
It can decrease pain in either ourselves or others
You might have noticed an interesting parallel to this particular structure:
Pain = punishment
Pleasure = reward
In the same way that hell is an eternal punishment and heaven is an eternal reward.
The good news, is that we already do this pretty naturally:
I feel sick, therefore sickness is bad.
My brother hitting me causes me pain, therefore my brother’s action is bad.
My child has said that my words caused them pain, therefore my words were bad.
Taking medicine reduces my pain, therefore medicine is good.
My brother giving me a gift as an apology reduces my pain, there for this action is good.
My child has said that my words caused pleasure, therefore my words were good.
We can continue to do this but minus the moral judgement of bad = you’re going to hell, and good = you’re going to heaven. Instead it would look like: bad = it causes pain, and good = it does not cause pain. Heaven and hell have nothing to do with it.
In this system, we can ask ourselves, “Did I want to inflict pain? Did I intend to inflict pain?” and know that even if the answer is yes, there are no ultimate consequences to that. Which means that a person could potentially make, “inflicting pain,” the meaning of their life. Or “inflict pain because it causes me joy,” and use absurdism as their justification for that. I think most of us would call that person a psychopath, and guess what—they’ll continue to exist whether or not ultimate, cosmic consequences turn out to be real.
We will all experience pain in our lives; it’s not something we can control. But we can control how we respond to our own pain, and how we respond to others’ pain.
I believe that we can us relative and varying pain as an equivalent to the cosmic reward or punishment measurement system, as a metric for understanding the impact of our actions on ourselves and the world around us even in the lack of cosmic consequences. Especially as pain can be changed or influenced through direct and immediate action, and we can see the results of our actions. As opposed to cosmic consequences, where we cannot see the results of our actions until after we die.
This allows us to be more agile, willing to change, and able to adapt our behavior if we realize that we’re causing pain (if our goal is to not cause pain). As opposed to waiting around until we’re dead to find out if we did it right. We get to decide in the moment how we’re doing and react accordingly.
“So, I should avoid all pain and seek only pleasure in life, then?”
Nope.
Because sometimes short term pain is necessary in order to reduce long term pain.
It’s all about feathers on a scale.
I mean, be a hedonist, if that’s what you want. But my personal opinion is that hedonism is a short-sighted philosophy. Because pain is everywhere. And sometimes, pain that others experience can ricochet onto you.
Every action we take has an impact on the world and people around us. Sometimes that action has a neutral impact, not increasing or decreasing anyone’s pain. Sometimes, that action increases our own or someone else’s pain; sometimes it decreases or provides pleasure to ourselves or another person.
And sometimes (more often, I’d wager) it is extremely complex and can cause a little bit of everything—good, bad, neutral—and it’s impossible to tell whether the net outcome of the statement was to increase or decrease the amount of pain in the world (or neither).
Take for example, the doctor coming into tell me what’s wrong with me. On one hand, I now have an action to take. The doctor has done his job. I can leave the hospital once my discharge papers have been delivered. On the other hand, it is very difficult to listen to a doctor tell you what’s wrong with you. It is stressful, anxiety-inducing. In addition, if I’m not actually technically fixed, I will have to go see another doctor to follow up on the issue. And who knows what else that doctor might find that could cause not only me pain, but my spouse or my family?
The doctor at the hospital could have chosen not to tell me, chosen to send me home with no information. I would have still felt some pain, but probably moved on with my life assuming indigestion or muscle spasms. Perhaps the issue would have resolved itself over time. Or perhaps it would have caused more pain down the line.
So, the doctor telling me his hypothesis about what’s wrong with me has caused me pain in the short term, but will allow me to take the steps necessary to reduce pain in the long term.
Most actions we take are extremely complex and have a cascading effect that we can’t even see or predict the results of—the reason why people say you shouldn’t step on a butterfly because it might cause a hurricane. Or the whole premise behind time travel stories.
Let’s say you go for a walk. The walk is “good.” It feels good, and creates pleasure for you. However, during your walk, you step on an ant. As a result, there is a slight increase in cosmic pain because of the ant’s pain. Then you cross the road at the wrong time, and a Black man who was walking toward you perceives it as a microaggression, even if you didn’t intend it that way (in this scenario, I am assuming “you” are white. I am also white.). Though the man probably eventually forgets about it and gets on with his life, you have caused another slightly higher increase in cosmic pain, and if this was the third or fourth microaggression of the day, the man might be experiencing higher than average levels of mental or emotional pain. Then, a few minutes later, an acquaintance walks by and says hello, but you are listening to your podcast and don’t see or hear them, and they think you’re upset with them for some reason—more cosmic pain.
So you’ve gone for this lovely walk, but accidentally caused some pain along the way—and you’re not even aware of it.
The point here isn’t to say that you should always be constantly aware of every potential impact of every action, and be constantly trying to measure how much pain or pleasure you’re releasing into the world. We can’t possibly know that. (Speaking of which, watch The Good Place for an interesting, hilarious, and well-done exploration of this.)
However, I believe that if we strive to behave and act in a way that reduces pain in the world (and for us), and gives pleasure on a cosmic scale, to the best of our ability, I think we could equate that to “good” even if the whole concept of “goodness” is technically meaningless. Likewise, if we strive to behave in a way that increases pain in the world (and for us), and causes pain on a cosmic scale, I think we could equate that to “bad,” for lack of a better term.
Practically speaking, if we wanted to use increasing or decreasing pain as a measure as we find and create meaning in our own lives, I think we could draw a few conclusions:
It is important to understand the potential impact of our actions and the things we say, not only on ourselves but on others and the world around us.
It is important to put in an effort to try to understand other people’s pain, even knowing we will never fully succeed. (Absurdity, anyone?)
In a vacuum, all pain is equal, but in context, it is not.
Our own pain, though it may seem enormous, is not as big as it seems to us (on a universal scale) and it does not automatically mean we are deserving of immediate attention from others.
Believe people when they say they are hurting.
Be patient with people and always strive to be kind.
Let other people be themselves. Especially if it costs us nothing.
This whole time I’ve been in the hospital, I keep thinking that if only I could let go of meaning somehow. Life is meaningless, after all, right? We might desperately seek meaning, but the universe has none to give. We can only give it to ourselves.
So why can’t I let go of it? Of the weight of being in the hospital? Of the fear? Of the stress? Why can’t I lean back and say, “Whatever is, is. Whatever will be, will be.”?
And then I realized: because it’s me.
I’m the one in the hospital. The pain is mine. The solution, if there is one, is mine too. And I am meaningful to myself.
I will always be meaningful to myself, even at my most apathetic, even at my darkest, saddest—I value me. Because without me, there would be no way to experience the world around me. Without me, nothing else would exist—at least, not to me. (Actually, this is crux of the main argument Camus makes for why suicide is not the answer to ultimate meaninglessness.)
And so yeah, the hospital has meaning. My life has meaning. My health has meaning. And that is good (if such a thing exists).
Everything is meaningless, except for me. And in this, I am free.
To be continued…
