Absurdity was popularized by Albert Camus. He believed there was a conflict between the meaningless experience of the universe and a human beings' desire to create meaning out of nothing. For Camus and many other philosopher's who explored the topic, absurdity became a problem to solve. But there was one key factor that affected how they all saw this - none of them questioned whether human constructs like judgment, morality, and ethics were true. They all accepted those things as correct and that put the meaningless, existential experience at odds with their own human judgment and perception.

For the experience to be truly neutral it cannot be subject to human logical constructs like morality, judgment and ethics. It has to remain completely neutral. But then how do you explain it when something happens that is not wanted or liked?

To try to make meaning out of chaos in this way we run into a problem. Camus didn't believe in a higher power so humans were, in his view, left to their own devices. There was no reason for experience to exist, much less an explanation for the things he saw around him that he didn't like. 

What if the meaning of existence is simply existence?  What if it doesn't need to be justified or explained? What if the human need to justify or explain is just a human need to justify or explain?  What if that need, while completely valid, creates a conundrum for human beings that isn't really true?

Humans naturally look for explanations for things. Even as I sit here writing this, I'm try to create an explanation for things. I'm trying to make meaning out of the chaos. But what if the chaos is the meaning? Then there is no explanation needed.

We can come back to a neutral point where experience is just a thing that happens and it doesn't require explanation or justification. Just allow it to be there because we can't change it. The attempt to justify it or explain it is often painful because humans naturally create painful meanings out of experiences they don't like, particularly when they view experience through lenses like blame, shame, guilt, and victimization.

Human judgment is a story we tell about experience that isn't true and, frankly, it often causes pain. The experience just is, it remains neutral whether humans judge it or not. The idea that we need to explain the pain in order to heal it creates a new problem to solve, which is equally as absurd as the problem that Camus was wrestling with. Why do we need to explain or justify the pain?

Humans try to justify and explain pain because they ask a common question, "why me?". The question assumes an inherent meaning that doesn't exist. Pain, like experience, just is. It's a thing that happens. Pain in itself is a human judgment or perception of experience based on human preferences.  The experience is neutral. The idea of pain is a human thing. It's not part of the experience.

As human beings, it's totally okay to prefer one thing over another. I don't care if you prefer cauliflower over broccoli, but that preference doesn't make broccoli wrong. It doesn't mean that broccoli shouldn't exist. It just means you have a preference. This construct is true in all experience. We are going to prefer one type of experience over the other, but it doesn't make the one that's not preferred wrong. It just means that if you had a choice, you'd rather not experience it. There's nothing wrong with that idea. It leaves the experience to just be what it is and allows you to simply make the choice of what you like and don't like.

Absurdity, as an argument, is gone when we see experience in this way. 

1. Morality, judgment, and ethics are simply human constructs that aren't true and can be questioned. 
2. The experience is neutral, regardless of human constructed logic or attempts at explanation.
3. Pain indicates human preferences. It is not a determination or an indicator of right and wrong.
4. One does not need to justify their preference for one experience over the other.
5. Pain does not need to be justified or explained because it is simply a human indicator of preference. The experience remains neutral regardless of human preferences.

Humans create their own pain by trying to justify and make meaning from experience, particularly ones they don't like. If we're going to spend time making meaning from experience, then we have to find a way to make that meaning helpful. Find the proverbial silver lining in the experience so that it gives you tools to help you manage the next experience a little better. Even the most painful of human experience will have a silver lining. There will be a helpful meaning in the experience. The only reason human beings don't see that is because they focus on the pain and spend time trying to understand, justify, and explain it. If they simply shifted their focus to looking for the silver lining, they would find something helpful in every experience.

The tug of war between the neutral experience and the accepted human logic or explanation of that experience does not exist when we question ourselves first. It is our judgment of the experience that is the problem, not the experience itself. When we understand that, we can point our focus in the right direction, leave the experience alone, and create helpful meanings from all experiences. Nothing is absurd. It is only humans that make it that way.

Love to all.

Della