Living with absurdity

We live in an absurd world. Yet much of the time we want to control our experiences. Freedom means accepting the paradoxical nature of being.

Life is full of paradoxes. When we accept complexity, we must also accept the paradoxical nature of our being, as well as the ambiguity which belies everyday experience and the pure absurdity of much of life itself. We have been trained to consider ourselves logical human beings, and we do, in fact, spend a lot of time rationalizing our behavior in order to play down our emotional vagaries, so as to appear sensible and capable, rather than irrational and erratic.

Complexity creates uncertainty. And we dislike uncertainty for the main part. In our fearful world, we want to be sure and to control, even if certainty and control are both illusory. We prefer to delude ourselves, rather than facing up to the fact that the more we know, the more we realize how little we know.

And then there's freedom. Freedom is a rogue concept, because what is free about the sheepish behavior of consumers who flock to the same stores for the same goods and really all want to look the same, want to drive in the same big flashy cars and watch the same programmes on TV? I would argue that the constraints of old, like social class, educational background and economic resources haven’t really changed that much. The underprivileged are still underprivileged and the privileged are still privileged. Of course social mobility is possible; I am an example of that. However, access to cheap consumer goods and buying on credit can create an illusory sense of attainment whilst simultaneously highlighting differences in wealth even more starkly. All the while individuals profess their own individualism. In the secular age we are deemed masters of our own fate. And positive psychology teaches us that we can achieve whatever we like if we repeat affirmations of hope and happiness. There’s little room for failure in a world where sorry is a dirty word, and where self-inquiry is useless because the other is always to blame anyway.

How free are you?