*Trigger warning: mention of suicide in the following article*
The current state of the world is struggling to cope with a global pandemic with huge chunks of the world’s population dying or fighting to survive. Those on the medical front lines and those providing basic necessities such as working in supermarkets or pharmacies are our modern-day, hugely underappreciated and underpaid heroes. Many of us, on the other hand, are locked down at home without a job or attempting to work from home. There exists a strange juxtaposition as some members of society battle for their lives whilst others seemingly battle against the boredom of lockdown. This boredom is often coupled with pangs of lingering guilt at feeling such emotions during a crisis, mixed with anxiety over job security or fear of the virus itself, while a cultural imprint of nihilism is leaving a mark on the year 2020 as quarantined citizens are left to contemplate our individual situations. I don’t normally include myself within my Medium posts, but at this time, I can’t help but notice myself and my peers agonise about our lack of productivity and continually question: what am I doing with my life?
Whilst reading Algerian philosopher Albert Camus’ highly influential work, The Myth of Sisyphus (1955) alongside the contemporary American author, Colson Whitehead’s 2011 novel Zone One, I noticed some thematic parallels which might be helpful to analyse and consider during this time. Camus begins his existential masterpiece with the statement that ‘there is but one truly serious philosophical problem and that is suicide’. I will make clear here that Camus does not deal with mental illness or contemplate the multitude of possible causes for someone to take their own life, he is only interested in philosophically evaluating the point of continuing to exist in an apparently meaningless universe. Camus argues that the only philosophical investigation worth considering is the meaning of life, or rather, the lack of meaning. He recognises the human need ‘for unity, that appetite for the absolute illustrates the essential impulse for the human drama’. He calls our need for reason, explanation and sense-making ‘nostalgia’ that argues that the clash between this need and with the lack of meaning from the world results in the recognition of the Absurd. The Absurd is Camus phrase for the lack of meaning of life, the atheistic recognition that there is no objective meaning or purpose to humanity’s existence, or even a more agnostic approach that even if there is a God, we still can’t access the meaning of life anyway, or perhaps this deity has not created a meaning for us. Regardless, Camus does not wish to investigate the possibility of a God; he concludes it is impossible for us to ever confirm this, so we must recognise we have no given meaning. The Absurd is produced by the ‘confrontation of the irrational and the wild longing for clarity whose call echos in the human heart’. The absurd depends ‘as much on man as on the world’ as he recognises our need for order and clarity is a human need, constructed by human thought alone: ‘the mind that aims to understand reality can consider itself satisfied only by reducing it to terms of thought. If man realized that the universe like him can love and suffer, he would be reconciled’. He recognises that all human thought is ‘anthropocentric’, and our human need cannot and should not be projected upon a universe which exists outside the human mind.
Camus describes the responses humans have when confronted with the Absurd. The first is to commit suicide: ‘killing yourself amounts to confessing. It is confessing that life is too much for you and you do not understand it […]. Dying voluntarily implies that you have recognized, even instinctively, the ridiculous character of [… remaining alive out of] habit, the absence of any profound reason for living, the insane character of that daily agitation and uselessness of suffering’. In a way, we can view this as a ladder. This is the first rung, the recognition that life has no inherent meaning and seems to be filled with constant pointless suffering. The second rung of the ladder is a leap of faith, or, ascribing some purpose to life, specifically religion: ‘at once he is led to blind himself to the absurd which hitherto enlightened him and to deify the only certainty he henceforth possesses, the irrational’. Camus sees this leap as leaping without being ‘certain’ and blinding oneself of the recognition of the Absurd by using God as a way to fill the blanks of existence; ‘he wants to be cured’ of his uncertainty. Camus continually refers to the ‘absurd man’ who, so far, manages not to kill himself, wants to be certain and, therefore, cannot take a leap of faith and reaches the final rung on the ladder which is to ‘revolt’ against the Absurd.
Camus argues that ‘it may be thought that suicide follows revolt — but wrongly. For it does not represent the logical outcome of revolt. It is just the contrary by the consent it presupposes. Suicide, like the leap, is acceptance at its extreme. […] But I know that in order to keep alive, the absurd cannot be settled’. To truly revolt is to create one's own meaning of life, which means not dying and remaining in control of your life choices and beliefs, rather than letting a deity take charge. Camus sees the ‘majesty’ of the ‘solitary effort’ to continue living with one's own sense of purpose: ‘that discipline that the mind imposes on itself, that will conjured up out of nothing […] consciousness and revolt, these rejections are the contrary of renunciation’. Self-affirmation is a beautiful thing to Camus.
He continues the work using the allegory of the myth of Sisyphus, a man who is condemned to roll a boulder up a hill every day, only for it to roll back down the hill, for all eternity in Hell. Camus relates this tale to that of the modern man, as ‘the workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks and this fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious’. When we pause to consider the Absurdity of our existence, this is the moment when we see the futility and meaninglessness of our lives, just as Sisyphus is conscious ‘of his wretched condition; it is what he thinks of during his descent’. However, if we revolt against the Absurd by recognising that ‘happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth’, that by driving out ‘dissatisfaction’, one can make ‘fate a human matter, which must be settled among men’. Sisyphus must recognise that ‘his fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing’ just as our fates and our lives are within our command and control. Camus argues that living well and living happily is possible if one revolts’ against meaninglessness without blindly leaping to faith, but instead, finding our own metaphorical boulders. He ends the chapter by saying ‘the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy’. Camus’s work is a manual to happiness in a modern, nihilistic universe and a compelling argument to keep living even in the apparent bleakness and meaninglessness of the world.
Zone One by Colson Whitehead is the amalgamation of high literature and a zombie apocalypse; ‘literary zombies’ as pegged by reviewers on Amazon.com, and a thing to behold in literary circles: ‘a literary novelist writing a genre novel is like an intellectual dating a porn star’. The story of this zombie apocalypse is told through the eyes of Mark Spitz (a nickname, we never learn his real name) a remarkably unremarkable character. His former life is described as ‘a mediocre life exceptional only in the magnitude of its unexceptionality’, and he finds that he is living within an equally ‘mediocre’ world, ‘where intellect and ingenuity and talent were as equally meaningless as stubbornness, cowardice and stupidity’. He now lives in a survivor camp located in Manhattan, called Zone One, which has mainly been cleared of ‘skels’ (zombies, or skeletons). He is tasked, along with his fellow ‘sweepers’, to go through the zone, building by building, and clear them of any ‘stragglers’ (skels who are more harmless) that have been left behind. The novel is told mainly through flashbacks, continually juxtaposed back onto the present, and the plot is only really carried out over three days. The novel, I am not the first to note, is not really about zombies, action or plot; it takes the genre and turns it on its head: ‘whereas prototypical zombie plague survivors brandish high-powered weaponry in a glory-bound quest for headshots, Zone One’s survivors do not face the imminent threat of death, but rather the tedious business of existence. There is neither danger nor acclaim in bagging a straggler. Only paperwork’. Zone One is run by The American Phoenix, a makeshift government group based in Buffalo, which uses tactics of the old world to attempt rebuilding a new neoliberal society. Mark notes that ‘systems die hard’ and although the world is now ‘muck’, it is a ‘well-organized muck with a hierarchy, accountability, and, increasingly, paperwork’. Sweepers are required to take note of the stragglers they find, including gender, age, and other identity signifiers, in an attempt for Buffalo to create statistics on the number of skels likely to be found in different buildings; thus, a rebirth of algorithms and data. Even during a crisis, when one character has been bitten, the reaction of the Lieutenant in charge is to ‘fill out a special T-12 casualty form’ rather than any immediate practical action. Much like in a neoliberal and capitalist society, human lives have been turned back into data, as Mark equally derides ‘the system’ of the old world, where social security numbers alone signified existence in neoliberalism and comparing this to the ridiculous and meaningless compiling of data in this new world. In Zone One, there is also an attempt to commodify figures in popular consciousness, such as the ‘triplets’, an infamous birth of triplets during the apocalypse who have now become a metaphor of hope, who characters ask after and pray for. People even have favourites, and when the triplets have possibly been killed during the final collapse of established camps, characters pray that at least ‘Cheyenne’ got out. The need for celebrity has been ingrained in this mock neoliberal/capitalist society, which is funded by ‘sponsored’ products and features propaganda like ‘We Make Tomorrow!’ to aid the government in rebuilding a society of productive labourers.
In many ways, Zone One is a critique of modern neoliberalism, using the straggler as a mirror image of the modern everyman. Stragglers are zombies less fierce than the skel, who haunt various locations connected to them in their previous life. The novel opens with Mark’s encounter with stragglers in a Human Resources department in an office building, an obvious parody of pre-apocalypse zombified workers of office life. However, the monotony of pre and post-apocalypse life is alluded to be one and the same, suggesting that ‘the individual under capitalism has always been undead’. Through continual use of words such as ‘mediocre’, ‘muck’ and pointing out that beauty and talent are meaningless, where only the ‘middle-way’ is safe, Mark continually notes that his mediocrity has helped him survive and navigate the past and present mundane worlds.
How does this novel relate to Camus and the Absurd? Through the novel, Mark details how those he encounters react to the apocalypse and there are direct parallels between Mark’s narration and Camus’ analysis of popular reactions to the Absurd. Arguably, there are three ways that characters react to the Absurdity of the apocalypse in Zone One. The first, like in Camus’ analysis, is suicide. Mark notes that ‘the suicides accepted, finally, what the world had become and acted logically’, which is almost identical to Camus’ description of how suicide is a confession that life is too much and cannot be understood. Mark neither insults nor supports those who choose to end their lives in the apocalypse, but he does continually deride the second reaction: the leap of faith. Characters that Mark meet are often dreaming of a return to normalcy, a utopia, a new camp, the American Phoenix or just something better. Mark recounts a flashback of a fleeting romance with a woman named Mim who was on her way to Buffalo. She believed in the possibility of a safe society, whereas Mark sees them as ‘vapor: the big settlement beyond the next rise, the military base two days’ walk, the utopian commune on the other side of the river. The place never existed or was long overrun by the time of your arrival, a stink of corpses and smouldering fires’. Survivours like Mim dream of a return to their atheistic modern God: the neoliberal society. Such characters believe ‘the city could be restored. When they were finished it could be something of what it had been. They could force a resemblance upon it, these new citizens come to fire up the metropolis’. Mark, however, is constantly aware of the fleeting nature of safety and commune. He rejects faith in a God, of others, of ‘making it through’. In a memory where sweepers are killed in a surprise skel attack, Mark darkly and ominously remarks that the blood splattered on the walls ‘look like the future’. He is not surprised when Zone One’s barricades fail, narrating that ‘the last months had been a pause, a breather before the commitment to annihilation’. He has no faith in safety, and he alone embodies the rebellion against the Absurd. He accepts the Absurd of the apocalypse, just as he accepted the Absurd of the old world. As the walls come down, he is asked why he is smiling in the face of such tragedy, at the destruction of their safety net: ‘the black tide had rolled in everywhere, no place was spared this deluge, everyone was drowning. Of course he was smiling. This is where he belonged’. He finds comfort in the void, the uncertainty of the world, and finds happiness in the meaningless of the Absurd, perhaps in a more nihilistic way than Camus intended, but still seeing that the ‘struggle […] is enough to fill a man’s heart’; that happiness and the Absurd are connected.
Camus articulates that it is when Sisyphus pauses to consider his task, only then he sees the meaninglessness of his eternal punishment: ‘that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness’. Similarly, Mark, who during the ‘breather’ of his time in Zone One, recognises the futility of continuing to live in the apocalypse or hope for any kind of future. But both advocate the need to live and reject prescribed meaning. Mark chooses to keep going on his own terms, Whitehead ending the novel with ‘F*ck it, […] You have to learn how to swim sometime. He opened the door and walked into the sea of the dead’. Mark uses his ‘unrivalled mediocrity and the advantages this adaptation conferred in a mediocre world’ and ploughs on, continuing to exist, accepting the nihilistic existence that does not care about him and finding a small sense of joy and freedom in it. So too does Sisyphus, accepting the Absurdity of his eternal punishment, but smiling nonetheless. Read together, both Zone One and The Myth of Sisyphus can be read as nihilistic manifestos to enjoying life, despite its lack of meaning and the universe’s disregard to human life.
Right now, in 2020, we find ourselves trapped in perpetual self-reflection which is causing us to able to see the meaninglessness and Absurdity of our existence. Countless articles are being published constantly, flooding our social media feeds, which are attempting to explain, or at least sympathising with, our lack of productivity, our depressed and anxious states or the general difficulty of this time. An estimated 229,182 people have died worldwide of the disease so far, and this is only an estimation. With several countries’ healthcare systems stretched to the limit, and a projected 1 in 20 people in the UK losing their jobs (a projected 47 million job losses in America), the entire world is feeling the ripple effects of the pandemic whether or not you or your loved ones have gotten sick. What the world will look like once we are “back to normal” is impossible to predict, and all this time in the house may lead one to consider: what am I doing with my life?
Whilst some reflection is healthy, it is also the cause of the confrontation of Absurd. The pause of the nine-to-five and our usual preoccupations is the perfect recipe for the universe’s apparent lack of meaning to make itself known. We are told that we must use this time wisely and productively, but also that it is okay not to be productive right now, even though this is a direct rebellion against our capitalistic virtues which champion productivity, a virtue conditioned into us since birth. What Camus and Mark Spitz might say to us this: accept the Absurd, find joy in the lack of meaning, and just keep going.
Bibliography
I used the electronic publication of The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus, published by Penguin (Modern Classics) on 31st of October, 2013. Translated by Justin O’ Brien and introduced by James Wood.
I used the electronic publication of Zone One by Colson Whitehead, [originally published by Harvill Secker, Random House] this version published by Vintage Digital on 6th of October, 2011.
Articles consulted:
‘A Plague of Urban Undead in Lower Manhattan’ By Glen Duncan for the New York Times
‘REVIEW: Zone One by Colson Whitehead’ by Electric Literature
‘Zone One by Colson Whitehead’ by Allen Zhang for MAKE Literary Magazine
‘Neoliberal Breakdowns: the Biopolitics of the Monstrous’ Katharina Donn for Alluvium
‘The Myth of Sisyphus: ESSAY BY CAMUS’ by The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
‘Summary of Albert Camus’ “The Myth of Sisyphus”’ by Dr John Messerly
‘The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus: Summary & Analysis’ by Study.com
