mumbo jumbo
i can distinctly remember one time, when i was about 10 years old, experiencing a flash of sudden awareness which led to my initial understanding of the absurdity of human existence. the catalyst for said epiphany was watching lipstick, bold bright red, being applied to a woman's lips in no unusual fashion. for whatever reason it struck me as both comical and tragic that one of the two accepted sexes is expected to apply a strange mix of wax and colorants to the openings of the slit near the bottom of their faces. if you over-apply, you look like a clown. if you put a very dark color on, maybe you worship the devil or are trying to appear as if you do. hot pink? you're a slut. none? a hippie or tomboy or some shit like that...anyway, you get the idea.
or. ok. if you see a hat in a refrigerator, you know it doesn't BELONG there, it's not it's proper place nor function. familiar things juxtaposed in unexpected ways = absurdest humor hardy har har, but the deeper sense of total absurdity does not arise from a specific clash we can point out. it is a free-floating, all-engulfing sense of disharmony, not an intelligible problem of something out of place. human existence itself seems to be ‘out of place’, and when we ask for the ultimate meaning of the accidental universe the only answer is silence, or some jesus bs if you're lucky.
absurdity is a permanent dimension of human existence, though we may seldom notice it.
if and when we do recognize the existential absurdity of our lives, we wish we could return to our previous naivetè, when everything was, or at least seemed, meaningful.
solutions:
simply put, there are none and can be none. ballin'! if nothing else i have taken comfort in knowing that the term "existentialsm" exists, so i'm not alone, and people have spent enough time thinking about the subject to write entire books about it, so it clearly was important to them. it's good to know i'm not the only person that's ever struggled with these thoughts.
we can sometimes accept the paradox and attempt to live with it. for instance, it may be absurd to hold a job to support a car to get to that job, but this is an everyday absurdity most of us can tolerate. the ultimate absurdity of existence, however, seems to have no easy way out. once you've realized it, there's no turning back. it's a little like playing "the game," you know, that stupid thing in which the only point of the game is trying to forget it exists and then, inevitably, someone or something reminds you of it and you must proclaim that you've "lost the game," or someone else says the same and then you're stuck thinking about it and what a stupid, stupid game it is to play...except now it's too late because you'll probably randomly be reminded of it for the rest of your life. yeah, work out THAT rambling analogy.
p.s. here's one way i see the apocalypse going down:
we're going to run out of music soon. movies and tv too, i guess, but i'm going to stick with music for this example. more and more it is a repetition of what we've already heard, the similarities between musical artists and specific songs are increasingly noticeable, and if it DOESN'T sound like something you've already heard, then it's a band that's clearly just trying to be as weird and different as possible. pushing the limits. there are people screaming or just tying together streams of obscenities. mash-ups. cross-genre music. all this new and innovative stuff is going to wear off and the question is "what will they think of next!?" personally, i'm inclined to think that the answer is "NOTHING!" at a certain point there's not much else you can do. they can only re-arrange chords so many times before it either a.) sounds like something already created or b.) it clashes and sounds terrible, but HEY, at least it's different, right?
comprendes?
ok, so music (and other stuff) is dying out. eventually people are going to notice. i mean, they already have, it's just a matter of more people noticing and then being vocal about it until everyone realizes the implications of what's happening. we're running out of material, whether it be creativity-wise or natural resources, i'm inclined to believe there is a finite amount of what's actually usable. again, people will EVENTUALLY realize this and proceed to freak the fuck out. then, a fear sets in, because it turns out we're all too stupid from excessive drug use and daytime tv and paris hilton soundbytes to do anything about it. instead, it'll just be a long, slow panic until the inevitable collapse of society. i'm thinking the masses will realize something like this (the music thing) first, or something else media-related, and that first big scare will then be combined with the fear of global warming, and government corruption, and cancer, and genocide, and all the other terrible things that go on in our world all the time that most people do and know nothing about. "how could we have ignored these problems? what were we thinking?" then cut to the questioning of one's own sanity. can you imagine that? do people not born with psychosis have to notice, piece by piece, day by day, that they are going insane? maybe THAT is the human condition, and the true meaning of our existence. just kidding kind of.
this all sounds more depressing than intended. whoops. i just started typing and couldn't stop....it happens.
or. ok. if you see a hat in a refrigerator, you know it doesn't BELONG there, it's not it's proper place nor function. familiar things juxtaposed in unexpected ways = absurdest humor hardy har har, but the deeper sense of total absurdity does not arise from a specific clash we can point out. it is a free-floating, all-engulfing sense of disharmony, not an intelligible problem of something out of place. human existence itself seems to be ‘out of place’, and when we ask for the ultimate meaning of the accidental universe the only answer is silence, or some jesus bs if you're lucky.
absurdity is a permanent dimension of human existence, though we may seldom notice it.
if and when we do recognize the existential absurdity of our lives, we wish we could return to our previous naivetè, when everything was, or at least seemed, meaningful.
solutions:
simply put, there are none and can be none. ballin'! if nothing else i have taken comfort in knowing that the term "existentialsm" exists, so i'm not alone, and people have spent enough time thinking about the subject to write entire books about it, so it clearly was important to them. it's good to know i'm not the only person that's ever struggled with these thoughts.
we can sometimes accept the paradox and attempt to live with it. for instance, it may be absurd to hold a job to support a car to get to that job, but this is an everyday absurdity most of us can tolerate. the ultimate absurdity of existence, however, seems to have no easy way out. once you've realized it, there's no turning back. it's a little like playing "the game," you know, that stupid thing in which the only point of the game is trying to forget it exists and then, inevitably, someone or something reminds you of it and you must proclaim that you've "lost the game," or someone else says the same and then you're stuck thinking about it and what a stupid, stupid game it is to play...except now it's too late because you'll probably randomly be reminded of it for the rest of your life. yeah, work out THAT rambling analogy.
p.s. here's one way i see the apocalypse going down:
we're going to run out of music soon. movies and tv too, i guess, but i'm going to stick with music for this example. more and more it is a repetition of what we've already heard, the similarities between musical artists and specific songs are increasingly noticeable, and if it DOESN'T sound like something you've already heard, then it's a band that's clearly just trying to be as weird and different as possible. pushing the limits. there are people screaming or just tying together streams of obscenities. mash-ups. cross-genre music. all this new and innovative stuff is going to wear off and the question is "what will they think of next!?" personally, i'm inclined to think that the answer is "NOTHING!" at a certain point there's not much else you can do. they can only re-arrange chords so many times before it either a.) sounds like something already created or b.) it clashes and sounds terrible, but HEY, at least it's different, right?
comprendes?
ok, so music (and other stuff) is dying out. eventually people are going to notice. i mean, they already have, it's just a matter of more people noticing and then being vocal about it until everyone realizes the implications of what's happening. we're running out of material, whether it be creativity-wise or natural resources, i'm inclined to believe there is a finite amount of what's actually usable. again, people will EVENTUALLY realize this and proceed to freak the fuck out. then, a fear sets in, because it turns out we're all too stupid from excessive drug use and daytime tv and paris hilton soundbytes to do anything about it. instead, it'll just be a long, slow panic until the inevitable collapse of society. i'm thinking the masses will realize something like this (the music thing) first, or something else media-related, and that first big scare will then be combined with the fear of global warming, and government corruption, and cancer, and genocide, and all the other terrible things that go on in our world all the time that most people do and know nothing about. "how could we have ignored these problems? what were we thinking?" then cut to the questioning of one's own sanity. can you imagine that? do people not born with psychosis have to notice, piece by piece, day by day, that they are going insane? maybe THAT is the human condition, and the true meaning of our existence. just kidding kind of.
this all sounds more depressing than intended. whoops. i just started typing and couldn't stop....it happens.