The Solution to 2016: The Absurd (1 min read)

Written by Millionaire’s Digest Team Member: Austin Wiggins

Founder & Owner of: Writing by Ender

Millionaire’s Digest Team, Contributor, Books, Writing Writer and Author of the book Bonds that Bind

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The Absurd is a fairly simple philosophical concept. It is the conflict between the pursuit of meaning in life and the inability to find it. We don’t find it because life itself is ambivalent, because, with all the uncertainties in this world, total certainty is impossible. Most of us know this inherently, we blame the construct of “life”, as it were, for things that slight us. We’ve blamed an entire year for what’s happened within it because we expected a fortune. We received nature’s cold uncaring instead.

2016 is the year people confronted the absurd. Celebrities we cared about passed away, there was Brexit, and the appoint of Donald Trump as president also befuddled and infuriated many. This and much more made it an absurd year, but how did we cope with the absurdity? Not well. On the appointment of Donald Trump people were altogether so distraught it seemed they were near-suicide. We need to be better.

Albert Camus, a French-Algerian philosopher and writer, wrote extensively on this issue. In fact one of his essays, The Myth of Sisyphus which focuses solely on the absurd and suicide, one the Nobel Prize in 1957. The premise was also simple: Does realizing an absurd life doesn’t require suicide but rather a rebellion. The revolt which this will center is that of the passions, though Camus discussed more in the aforementioned work. We need to rebel.

Work hard and become passionate in what endeavor you take. You cannot change this world by constantly claiming it terrible. Only through sheer force of will and dedication can you change your personal climate. This is the way to a happy life in a world that seems to desire you to be unhappy.  Become so absorbed in whatever little piece of life you are happy to attach yourself to and show The Powers That Be that you won’t be so easily conquered.

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Article Credits: Austin Wiggins

Millionaire’s Digest Team, Contributor

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