tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23330122.post-1157928235624707382006-09-10T15:43:00.000-07:002006-09-10T15:43:55.640-07:00The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves<br />Two age old questions continue to haunt me:<br /><br />1. Free Will/Choice vs. Fate/Destiny<br />2. Objective vs. Subjective Reality<br /><br />My only conclusion is that all are going on all of the time, and the whole damn thing is absurd anyway. Absurdism is defined as a philosophy based on the belief that the universe is irrational and meaningless and that the search for order brings the individual into conflict with the universe. And yet, I continue to do this. No wonder I like Kafka so much. Fuck, the very idea that someone is reading this because I typed it into a computer makes my point. The existentialists believe that every man must decide for himself the way he should act and should not be bound by other rules. Hey, I believe that too….<br /><br />Through his writing, Albert Camus said that to be a true existentialist you had to remove yourself from society as much as possible since a belief in the foundation of government was to conform. Since conforming to society norms is considered sometimes good and sometimes bad, it doesn’t allow the individual to progress and reach his own decisions. Camus realized that restricting himself from all social conformity was impossible. In his book, “The Stranger”, Camus depicts a man with very little emotion. In society, the common idea is that light is good and evil grows in the darkest of places, but in the book evil is good and the light is bad. I liked it a lot.<br /><br />I’ve been reading quite a bit lately. And, I have noticed that most of the writers I like grew up poor. These writers suffered the loss of a parent and sometimes sickness. They were not strangers to heartache. I just can’t relate to rich kids like Fitzgerald and the countless other Ivy League types. I hate old poetmen. One thing I do know for sure. I have to bring the meaning to life, life won’t bring the meaning to me. Leave it to the old chiasmus to help me justify and rationlize (every time I write or say that word I can’t help but think about Covey’s “Rational Lies”). Yep, it is all pretty fucking absurd……Battlenoreply@blogger.com