Almost 80 years ago, Albert Camus gave a talk throughout the United States discussing the crisis of men in France for those living during World War I and World War II. It seems his words fell on deaf ears, as much of what he described remains relevant today. Man remains either the master or the slave; the middle ground has vanished. Right and wrong relent to whatever is right in a moment; truths have vanquished. What is right for one may be wrong for another. This indignity is forced upon each of us. Choosing to speak up against the wrong of another, based on what one believes to be right is tantamount to a kind of societal suicide. Daring to oppose the masses, whether these masses are the loud minority or silent majority, makes one a mouthpiece for hate in the eyes of those being opposed. Failure to conform is a short path to a quick death, societally speaking (or physically speaking, in some circles). Going against the grain of society is anxiogenic for most, anxiolytic for a few. The societal context, clothed by various causes, determines the man who finds revolt anxiolytic. It should not be the goal of a revolutionary to revolt against every ubiquitous cause; much greater leaps are made when one revolutionist faces one cause. Therefore, I cannot speak on each cause, nor do I desire such a feat. Rather, I aim to the loftiest of one goal — return the view of Man to men.
Better to live during an uninteresting time in history than an interesting one. Camus most definitely lived during an interesting time, much more so than the one we currently live through. Though this generation may lack historical interest, it is nonetheless still an interesting time, indeed. Men have long been able to learn from history, adjust the present to remediate issues from such past, and aspire to something greater in the future. Lack of values set forth for men in this generation have inadvertently removed such clear paths from view. Consequently, men are forced to forget the past, focus solely on the present, and feel anxiety for the future. The absurd man, to borrow from Camus, cannot come to fruition. What is left, what Camus left out of his Absurdism, is what henceforth I will refer to as Numbism.
Man is numb to everything surrounding him, left to focus only on present conditions. If Schopenhauer was justified in his analysis of the force driving human survival, the will to live is stronger than ever before in man today. Gone are the days where men take up arms against an evil force. If there exists even a hint of the presence of death, men turn away. Men coward behind false facades, those built up in the name of principle or belief. War, and subsequently death, surround us in a metaphorical sense more now than a physical one. To be dead to society is as terrifying to some as being dead to the world was throughout history. The difference in man now, compared to man then, is men are milksops. Better to be indecisive on an issue than to speak what one knows to be true.
Here, we return to the lack of truth. While Nietzsche was correct in assessing truths exist, but not truth, man today finds this assertion outdated. To say truths exists consequentially admits there are absolute points in time where one thing is true, while the counterpart is false. Such a statement requires one to hold firm to their beliefs, and such rigidity requires strength of mind and heart. However, the numb man cannot call to mind the events of the past and cannot look forward to potentialities of the future; he is forced to resign his contentions and accept whatever truth is forced upon him in the present. These truths are therefore continuously changing, altering their boundaries to better include the events upon each occurrence. Thus, every action requires an alteration to his boundaries of belief and truth, holstering him to the present. For the confrontation of the absurd to be possible, man must become secluded for some time from the everchanging present. The difficulty of attaining such seclusion must not be understated, it is almost impossible in present conditions. As a result, man is chained to the present, slowly numbing.
When the absurd man realizes the inherent disconnection between himself and the world around him, and the lack of predetermined meaning for his life, he is freed to search for a meaning which fills this gap. The numb man never reaches this realization, left to continue his drudging walk up Sisyphus’s hill. He does not imagine Sisyphus smiling, as Camus would believe we should do, because the numb man never realizes the connection between himself and Sisyphus. Rather, he sees himself as Tantalus, the figure who stole food from the divine to share with the mortals. The numb man slaves for the master, even though the master and slave are of the same kind. The slave must see himself as Tantalus, and the master wants the slave to be happy. Just as Tantalus was forced to stand in a pool of water with fruit trees surrounding him, and these nourishment would recede away from him whenever he reached out for them, the slave stands in a world where everything seems in reach. However, as the story of Tantalus shows, each time the numb man reaches for these gifts that surround him, they are pulled away. Furthermore, a rock hangs over his head threatening him at every turn. These gifts promised to the numb man are always out of reach, and punishment awaits he who fights harder than others to reach them.
Jacob Daniel Weaver 