The Struggle

“The battles that must be fought may never be won in our lifetime. And there will always be new battles to define our struggle. Resistance to tyranny and evil is never ending. It is a way, rather, of defining our brief sojourn on the planet. Revolt, is the only acceptable definition of the moral life. Revolt, is “a constant confrontation between man and his obscurity. …It is not aspiration, for it is devoid of hope. That revolt is the certainty of a crushing fate, without the resignation that ought to accompany it.” A living man can be enslaved and reduced to the historic condition of an object, But if he dies in refusing to be enslaved, he reaffirms the existence of another kind of human nature which refuses to be classified as an object.” ~ Albert Camus.

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i had an appointment yesterday afternoon. i drove there using an old familiar road. During the trip however i saw something not quite familiar. In the middle of the road there is a row of purple flowers with long, thin stalks stretching for quite a distance. It must have been planted there by the local authorities.

It must have been so ordinary that no one would have noticed them. i was thnking of something when they caught my sight. The rows of flowers were being blown by the wind. They were swaying back and forth at the same time and in the same pattern like so many delicate hands waving at all the passersby. It was such a mesmerizing sight to behold that should i be walking by i would have stopped everything and watch them. A child would have surely sees this, i thought.

In this ordinariness is the struggle of a plant against nature. If they were to struggle the wind would have break their bodies easily. Their struggle consists therefore to not struggle. Of course they don't have the consciousness to know this. For them, it is a mechanical, in-built mechanism of survival.

i'd read the above passage by Camus many times over and finally there is a glimmer of understanding. Therein lies the essence of his philosophical idea of 'Absurdism'.

On the surface of it, this short passage give the idea it is about a call to arms, to take action against tyranny and evil.

Only in reflection and a little thought does one sees the truth behind it. No, this is not a call for action, at least not action in the physical sense. It is a call to understand the human condition. To take a look around and try to understand the world as it is, objectively. To look into the self with no delusion and belief of any kind. Only then will one see the world today for what it is - a cruel place to lived for so many people. But it is only what it is today because we make it what it is.

The world has exists this way for as long as humans has been on this planet. A study of history will easily validates this. Part of the meaning of life, or more precisely according to Camus, the only 'constant' of life is the struggle against tyranny for it can be observed almost everywhere if one cares to look.

What is sad in this, is that good, "moral" people have no certainty of winning this struggle. The old adage "good always triumphs over evil" is just a saying to make us not give up hope. Hope is the only thing makes us keep up the fight.

But when we understand the struggle against tyranny is part of what it means to live, a different kind of hope is to be found. Perhaps then we will realize that even though we may not win in the end we will find that only by living in this way will we really have lived this life. We may not like to hear this but to live in any other way would be to live as a slave, in the full sense of the word.

Being free is the condition we are in before we chose to come here. A person who realized this will always struggle against tyranny. And some say with the coming age of enlightenment, more people will come to this realization. Still, everyone is subject to certain laws which we will have to learn before we can progress. So it must remain that humanity will not progress without learning its lessons. And it is not technological progress that is meant.

~ This post is dedicated to Paula, an admirer of Camus' work, mentor-friend, and who has more wisdom than this writer.