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The new day was cool, filled with the sound of birds. The sun rose quickly, and in a single leap was above the horizon. The earth was covered with gold, with warmth. In the morning, sky and sea were spattered with dancing patches of blue and yellow light. A light breeze had risen, and through the window a breath of salt air cooled Mersault's arms. At noon the wind dropped, the day split open like ripe fruit and trickled down the face of the world, a warm and choking juice in a sudden concert of cicadas. The sea was covered with this golden juice, a sheet of oil upon the water, and gave back to the sun-crushed earth a warm, softening breath which released odours of wormwood, rosemary, and hot stone. From his bed, Mersault received that impact, that offering, and he opened his eyes on the huge, curved, glistening sea irradiated with the smiles of his gods. Suddenly he realized he was sitting on his bed, and that Lucienne's face was very close to his. Slowly, as though it came from his stomach, there rose inside him a stone which approached his throat. He breathed faster and faster, taking advantage of the respites granted each time it moved. It rose steadily, higher and higher. He looked at Lucienne. He smiled without wincing, and this smile too came from inside himself. He threw himself back on the bed, and felt the slow ascent within him. He looked at Lucienne's swollen lips and, behind her, the smile of the earth. He looked at them with the same eyes, the same desire.
The new day was cool, filled with the sound of birds. The sun rose quickly, and in a single leap was above the horizon. The earth was covered with gold, with warmth. In the morning, sky and sea were spattered with dancing patches of blue and yellow light. A light breeze had risen, and through the window a breath of salt air cooled Mersault's arms. At noon the wind dropped, the day split open like ripe fruit and trickled down the face of the world, a warm and choking juice in a sudden concert of cicadas. The sea was covered with this golden juice, a sheet of oil upon the water, and gave back to the sun-crushed earth a warm, softening breath which released odours of wormwood, rosemary, and hot stone. From his bed, Mersault received that impact, that offering, and he opened his eyes on the huge, curved, glistening sea irradiated with the smiles of his gods. Suddenly he realized he was sitting on his bed, and that Lucienne's face was very close to his. Slowly, as though it came from his stomach, there rose inside him a stone which approached his throat. He breathed faster and faster, taking advantage of the respites granted each time it moved. It rose steadily, higher and higher. He looked at Lucienne. He smiled without wincing, and this smile too came from inside himself. He threw himself back on the bed, and felt the slow ascent within him. He looked at Lucienne's swollen lips and, behind her, the smile of the earth. He looked at them with the same eyes, the same desire.
'In a minute, in a second,' he thought. The ascent stopped. And stone among the stones, he returned to the joy of his heart, to the truth of the motionless worlds.
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The above quote comes at the end of Albert Camus's "A Happy Death", as the main character Mersault (the same name as his hero/antihero from his later work "the stranger" for which he won his Nobel prize- I guess this is an early version of the character) experiences the moments before his own death, from his bed with his wife at his side. Up until a couple years ago, I was extremely fond of the idea of a happy death. We always live in a 'now'. I can remember the past, and even remember happy times in the past. However, if I'm not happy now, what value does my prior happiness have? It is from a prior time, a prior state, which will never exist again. We often look back on loved one's lives after they've passed on, and proclaim "s/he had a good life", remembering the shared happy times we shared, as if these past happy times are what gives a life value. For a person that dies in pain, that dies in fear, the last moment they have of conscious - does it negate everything that goes before? The above passage, then, was the thing we should strive for - true bliss at the ultimate end of our lives.
Well, now I'm in my cynical old age (that is, just over a quarter of a century), I guess I've grown out of this particular idea - not because I've found value in things that happen in the past, I guess just become more pessimistic about the value of things in the present too. Perhaps the ultimate endpoint for an atheist is that nothing has inherent value - that is, absolute value, decided upon by something outside of our selves (ie God, society, biological pressures). Indeed, as a human we can tell ourselves that something is valuable - dedication to our spouse and children perhaps, or always staying on the moral highground. Perhaps if we tell ourselves how valuable these things are enough, we start to believe it, almost brainwash ourselves into believing it. A life without values seems impossible to live, so we must cling onto them, even if reason may be telling us otherwise.
The reason I'm writing this is due to a death of a colleague and friend a couple weeks ago, a random case of a young man falling asleep and never waking up again. "A tragedy", agreed by everyone. Times like these are related to extreme social pressure - in the face of death, everyone is expected to 'stick together' and express grief. Of course, I mourn - I will miss his presence from my life, and certainly mourn the loss of the connection we had. I find these days, though, that I seem not be able to grieve in quite the same way as others - stopped the mourning of death itself, but instead despair over the tendrils of family and community that are broken when someone passes away. If I don't see the value in life, how can I see the sadness when it ends? As far as I can tell, my friend has gone back to the state he was in before he was born - absolute nothingness. There is no more joy and no more suffering, no more love and no more despair. But somehow, I know that those feelings are all products of evolution, things that have kept human beings reproducing and dominating our world. They are the equivalent of an opposable thumb - something that is useful for us to stay alive.
The result, for me, is that our rationality is a useful evolutionary tool, and has lead me to secular, scientific view of the world - yet somehow, a totally rational view seems to reduce the worth of our emotions, lowers the volume of our natural biological urges, and leaves us in a state of confusion in a world without absolutes. I wonder if this is the reason for human's natural state of treading the line between rationality - finding how things work, exploiting our environment - and irrationality - to believe in fairies, and to 'trust our gut'. If we became completely logical beings, would we just deduce the pointlessness of our existence and cease to function?
I've said it before, and I'll say it again - the life isn't an easy place for an atheist! It becomes a world of doubts and half-formed thoughts, feeling you're always on the edge of breaking new ground, and yet in the knowledge that there will never be a "final answer".
Ah well. My friend, I hope you've embraced the return to "the truth of the motionless worlds". All of us will be following you soon - to the ultimate freedom from doubt.
Hi Nick,
ReplyDeleteFirstly, my condolences on the death of your colleague. We never know when death is going to come, we might live to be 100, or we might get run over by a bus tomorrow. Or, as in the case of your friend, simply not wake up one morning.
You seem to be craving some larger meaning, some way of making sense of things in a more cosmic way. People have been craving this for for millennia, and have created countless religions, which to seem to help people make sense of the world. I crave it too, although I never seem to find it.
I think Marx was probably right in his comment about religion and the masses. The world is a tough place, and even for those of us who live a relatively comfortable life the feeling that this all makes sense and has some larger meaning is something we crave. This leads me to think that religion and "spirituality" will never really disappear, because they fill such a fundamental need.
So what does all this mean? Is our existence pointless because it doesn't have a transcendent meaning handed down from on high? I don't think so. We are short-lived creatures whose time passes very quickly, and we must find the point of this time for ourselves, rather than just having it handed to us. Perhaps the search itself is the point.
Hi TDR,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment - I'm really glad to hear your thoughts. You're certainly right about the inherent craving for larger meaning, this is certainly a question without an answer, yet one that will surely always be the foremost in the minds of any thinking creature. I suspect you're right about religion as a crutch in which to get through life, as a way of avoiding facing the big questions. Maybe we need some sort of spirituality to be able to focus on the 'important' things in life of securing food and reproducing.
It's very interesting to hear you talk about us needing to find value in our own lives. In a way, having a 'pointless existence' in terms of not having a transcendent meaning is one of the greatest freedoms a man or woman can have - it does give us the power to create what value we want from life. I think this freedom can allow us to control our negative emotions somewhat - for example, instead of getting nervous about a job interview, if one properly pictures the lack of importance of the interview in the 'grand scheme of things' it is possible to really minimise nervous feelings. On the other hand, when feeling a positive emotion, like love, we are free to pour our hearts and souls into the emotion - we can be the masters of our own universe.
Well, that's the way I wish I could learn to think anyway! Trying to get there, but the path is dangerous, and sometimes end up lost and alone on a dark cold night with only a bottle of whiskey and our darkest thoughts for comfort... must persevere!