Absurd is the man who chooses to be free by donning the shackles of slavery...

The absurd is the essential concept and the first truth.

Albert Camus

Are we all Sisyphus? Do we all toil and drive towards that which we will never achieve? That which we can never achieve? Do we push and strain to get the boulder up the mountain, to have the apex at hand, only to have that boulder tumble down to the bottom? And what feelings do we have at that moment? What do we think as the boulder haphazardly plummets to the foot of the mount, erasing all that we had done and hoped to do? What are we to think then? What are we to feel? Are we to become sorrowful and loathsome? Are we to know that this is our fate? To accept? To deny?

It does not matter. Either choice leads to the same outcome. Whether we choose to accept reality as it stands; as a wretched and futile occupation that ultimately leads to death or to give birth to meaning as the precursor of existence. Every stance, from total nihilism to humanistic utopianism, presents each individual with infinite options, infinite choice. Whether existence be finite or everlasting, whether the soul has substance or consciousness be a product of biological processes beyond control, whether we be children of god or the emergent property of evolution; there is no path that is closed.

And it is in those moments, those brief and fleeting periods of lucidity, when the universe is laid out before each person, its infinity made tangible and visible, that we find fear. When we stare into the abyss we find trepidation. We may study the abyss, but it also studies us. It probes our depths and veiled recesses. It reveals our secrets and our denials, lays them bare before us and forces each to confront his own demons. And yet we are deceived. This abyss exists only to deny and negate existence. The abyss is defined, is made up of, is substantiated by the lack of definition, the lack of being, the lack of substance. It is not a denial of existence, but a privation of substantive existence. A being composed of non-being. A dasein which is complete and total in its lacking. An existence that is brought into being through consciousness, and must, as a necessary paradox, be continuously confronted with its own placement, or displacement, in the world. The abyss is nothingness. But this nothingness can only be brought about through a certain kind of being. It, the abyss, can only exist when being confronts itself, when being becomes aware of its place within the world and the possibility of total displacement.

The abyss is an illusion. Its paradoxical nature precludes its existence. It is rendered impossible. But its non-existence is an illusion as well. The abyss exists only when confronted. A battle is waged within the mind, or consciousness, or subject, when consciousness is turned upon itself. Being must realize non-being. Being is affirmed by a collision with itself. For non-being clarifies being in the conflagration and immolation of itself. Through this confrontation it, the abyss, comes forth, terrible and unholy, bringing darkness from the light.

But why is this existence of non-existence, this lack of being, this pit of darkness, this abyss, an illusion?

It is only when the abyss stares back and probes the depths of consciousness that it becomes clear: the abyss exists within us. It is a part of us. For being to be, for consciousness to create and sustain, for each person to be, the idea of non-existence is a prerequisite.

Existence is finite and limited. Consciousness is shackled. Only in existence do we find the line between possible and impossible, the line that separates the finite from the infinite. And consciousness, as it resides and exists within each person, (perhaps within all beings that are alive) finds only one thing incomprehensible: its non-being. We can seek and study and name and grasp, or at the very least contemplate in the abstract, anything except our own non-existence, our total displacement within and from reality; existence unbounded by time and space. This privation of consciousness, of self, is elusive to the self; one cannot experience one's non-being, because being is necessary for experiencing. To be is to be, is to be named, is to be placed. But to not be, to never have been, to lack all substance, is a concept beyond abstraction. It is the shadow cast by the moon, the silent whisper, the echo of taciturn screams, something tangible in its intangibility.

But still, how are we deceived? What is the illusion?

The illusion lies in the very existence of the abyss. It does not exist. Rather, to clarify, it does not have an existence separated from the human consciousness. It is a product of consciousness. The abyss penetrates our innermost sanctum, exposes our hidden selves and forces confrontation with the self because it exists within us. To confront the abyss is to confront the self as a subject and object without limits, a self that is unified with infinity. Here, humbled and infantilized before infinity, we find the ultimate measure of self. Existence appears to the conscious mind to be limited; that is to say, it is nameable, able to be organized and categorized, containing inherent boundaries. But this is simply consciousness imposing its own limits upon the world around it.

But if we take this to be true then there is only one possible conclusion. That the abyss, the infinite, the unbounded, is the true nature of reality. The abyss is created within the conscious mind. It is an illusion that is more real than what we call reality. Through our substantive being we mold reality into a limited and fragmented thing for us to experience. And thus we then must create the illusion of an infinite and unified existence so that we might briefly know reality as it is; nameless and unbounded, infinite and unified, devoid of substance and flush with possibility. In essence we present ourselves with a comprehensible view of what it is to be, so that we might delude ourselves into the notion that we possess knowledge, while the true nature of existence remains to us an apparition that whispers silently in the recesses of the mind.

Things are (unless they are not)...

It has come to my attention that there are many things in this world that are. Rather, as the last sentence leaves room for confusion, there are many things that exist. And these many things take different shapes and all that. Each thing that exists is a thing that exists uniquely. In the, very loosely applied, structure of quantum physics one could say that each thing that exists, even if it is completely and totally similiar to some other thing or set of things, maintains an existence that is distinct from all other things and that this existence is observable. Each thing inhabits space and time that cannot be shared by other things, thus identical twins are individuals even though the DNA structure of each matches the DNA structure of the other. This, very simply, means that "everything is what it is and is not another thing." But this only holds true when the state of these things can be ascertained or observed.

Take the example of the problem of Schroedinger's Cat. (I am taking liberties with the actual problem laid out by Schroedinger as we are not scholars of quantum physics, nor need we be.) You put a cat in a box that is completely sealed so that you cannot in anyway observe the state of the cat inside the box. You know that the cat is alive before you put him in the box, and assume that the cat is still alive at the moment you seal him in the box. Then, as cruel as it maybe, you introduce a lethal agent of some sort into the box; be it a lethal gas or explosive device or whatever could kill the cat. Now preferably, and because this is merely a thought exercise, you should use something that should more than likely prove lethal to the cat. Now you have a conundrum. Is the cat alive or dead? You cannot observe the cat in anyway, so you have no definitive way of knowing if the poor creature survived the assassination attempt. Thus it's continued existence becomes suspect. The cat can no longer be categorized as alive (=1) or dead (=0). It has become a strange being caught between the two worlds of being and non-being.

Its existence may be described as a sine wave, which at any given point in time oscillates between 1 and 0. Some may quibble with me and say that the sine wave should have an upper limit of 1 and a lower limit of -1; as life and death, existence and non-existence, are complete polar opposites, but this semantic argument doesn't really help us. More to the point, it does little to help our poor feline friend.

So what are we to make of this cat, or former cat? Can we actually assign to him a category of existence or qualities of a thing that exists? Once we open the box and are able to observe the cat we can assign it a state, 1 or 0. But not until then. So we find that our observation of the cat will fundamentally alter the cat's state; this is also known as the Observer Effect. And this is all fine and good, for things that can be measured and observed; in other words, things that have a tangible existence.

But what about things that do not have a tangible existence? It does not take a large leap of logic or faith to understand that the unobserved cat exists and does not exist at the same time. Simply, without observation the cat is alive and dead at the same time. But what about the intangible? What about those things that exist only in the mind and heart; love, hate, friendship, lonliness? How does one come to know such a thing as love? Is it proper for one to take such things on faith or trust?

Some might say that these things can be proven. One can prove love or friendship through kind acts and words and companionship. One can know that another person loves them and be certain. But can we? Or do we find ourselves in uncharted territory, where there are no sine waves to collapse into finite calculations? Can one ever know such things? Or must one trust in oneself to judge these things, these intangible objects, these ethereal existences as real?

And if, in fact, there are no facts to be held or certainty to be gained in analysis, can we even say that they exist? Or do they exist as things that do not exist? Can we say that they defy existence by their very existence? That they hold a special place amongst the things of the world?

Then it might be this status, this state that defies observation and measurement, that grants the intangible such great power over the tangible.

Sartre once wrote, "Hell is other people." And his words ring true, at least to me. They ring true because it is only in other people that we see a reflection of our own psyche. It is through other people that we experience the angst of being. We may each be a mirror unto ourselves, a reflection of all the reflections that are cast upon us. We are become a hall of mirrors that face each other and create the infinite set of reflections that composes each finite human.

"He who makes a beast of himself rids himself of the pain of being a man," HST.