What’s Coming… I.What People Want:(Chronological Vs Psychological Age) II.Life & Living III.Camus, ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ & the Absurd IV.Response to the Absurd V.Conclusions

What People Want…Chronological Age I 1) Pleasure – ‘I want to taste all the fruit from the tree of life’. (Wilde) Problems Pleasure = essentially private and the ego too small an object for perpetual enthusiasm. We want more than a kaleidoscope of momentary pleasures. Pleasure = too trivial to satisfy one’s total nature. Pleasure doesn’t equal fulfillment. Pleasure = perpetual striving for an object – yet often it’s not the it that we want; it is the fantasy of it..when we achieve it, boredom/torment follows. We can always imagine + 1

What People Want…Chronological Age II 2) Worldly Success – (Wealth/Fame/Power/Status) Problems Fame/Power/wealth = exclusive, hence precarious and competitive. When is enough? Other people want them too – when will success change hands? Success is a goal without a satiation point – humankind are on the hamster wheel of making money, just to keep pace with the more rapid growth of their subjective wants. Act like immortals in all that we desire (Seneca). Donkey and carrot parable. Fortune & status = meaningless since one lacks so much else Achievements are ephemeral – you can’t take them with you. Hinduism: Path of Desire = like toys – nothing wrong with toys. Children without toys is sad. Worse still are adults who haven’t developed more significant interests than toys

What People Really Want (Psychological Age) Infinite Being Infinite Knowledge Infinite Joy Life = Drawing dots from the finite to the infinite Freud – people hungry for love; Jung, security; Adler, significance

Life and Living: A Short Video Life – Meaning and Purpose from Within? Is meaning a call to unscramble the divine plan God has in store for us? Is the meaning of life simply to give life a meaning? Ernest Becker calls us ‘the meaning makers’.. Is there a blueprint of ‘being’ buried deep within each of us? w w

OR… Meaning for Camus There is no God; there is no blueprint/map for selfhood/life. We owe it to ourselves to ‘cultiver notre jardin’ (Voltaire) Biggest mistake people make is believing ‘there will always be a tomorrow’. Carpe Diem – live for today as if there will be no tomorrow = no regrets/life- affirming/what really matters. Life is ‘not to be built up, but burned up’ (MS) Camus: ‘I don’t know whether this world has a meaning that transcends it. But I know that I do not know this meaning & that it is impossible for me now to know it’ (MS) Challenge: what would you do differently if today were your last day on earth?

What is the Absurd? What do we want from the universe? Meaning (MS); Order; Purpose (MS); Reciprocity (Athlete/clean living person) – we all have a sense of reciprocity (entitlement) that what we invest in the universe will at the very least, be given back to us somehow (or pay dividends). Camus: There is no meaning, no purpose, no grand design, no reciprocity. Gap between how we want things to be and how they really are. The ‘Absurd’ is… ‘the divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, my nostalgia for unity, this fragmented universe and the contradiction that binds them together (MS)... Does one accept (suicide) or refuse (revolt)?

Response 1: The Absurd Hero Sisyphus and Revolt Sisyphus – fell foul of the Gods. Punishment = Even though he needs meaning, he lives ‘without appeal’ (MS); without ‘solace of comforting myths’ (MS) Lives with cards have dealt him and revolts – life without grand-narrative meaning, but without ‘resignation’, without ‘suicide’…and he is ‘happy’…(MS) Question: Is he happy? Pity? *(Sisyphus was immortal)*

Response II: ‘Don Juan’ & ‘The Actor’: Life of Excess Don Juan = seducer of women – expediency of pleasure & life of excess = main goal. He is amoral – no judgment; no moral compass; lives as if no consequences => entirely innocent The Actor = live roles as if they are just that – nothing beyond present, beyond their last performance. No authentic self behind the mask (‘persona)…just who I need to be for the performance

Conclusions Judging whether life is, or is not worth living, amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.’ (MS) Therefore, ‘Suicide’ /‘Revolt’ (Sisyphus) or Excess (Don Juan/Actor) = responses. Criticisms…? ‘Life is not to be built up but burned up. Stopping to think and becoming better are out of the question’ (MS). Camus’s advice: celebrate the ‘invincible summer within’ Rock ‘n’ Roll!!!