[0:00]Bonjour Madame et Monsieur. Hi, everyone. If you believe in religion or divine power, you may have a clear path between life and afterlife. You may have a neat little story that explains life's ultimate meaning and purpose. But what if you don't believe in God? What is your story as an atheist? How do you find meaning? One of the biggest human dilemmas, our deep urge or quest for meaning in life, yet when you ask the universe for meaning, it doesn't answer. It's like you spend your entire life writing letters to someone who never replies. At the core of every human being, there is this desire for meaning, but the world doesn't care. Philosophers have tried to come up with a good answer. One of the most logical answers has been nihilism. There is no meaning or purpose. Then this begs the question, why live if life has no meaning? Yet we all do. 99.9% of us continue on living. So what is going on? Of course, some thinkers like Dostoevsky returned to religion and tradition as a response to nihilism. Other philosophers like Nietzsche offered artistic creativity, philosophical endeavor, but it only applies to a select minority of artists geniuses who are capable of creating values in society that transcend their own lives. What about the rest of us, the other 95% of us? Albert Camus, the French novelist and philosopher, however, offered an alternative to both religion and nihilism that applies to the majority of us. He argued that life is absurd, meaningless and contradictory and it sucks. However, despite its meaninglessness, absurdity and contradiction, we grow to love life. Why? To answer this, Camus, just like his mentor, Nietzsche, returned to pre-Christian ancient Greece for an answer. Nietzsche argued that religions, Christianity in particular, had corrupted the human mind by obsessing over and giving priority to afterlife. As a result, we neglect this life, always thinking the cross is greener in heaven. The ancient Greeks, however, valued this life despite believing in an afterlife. Today, I'll look at Albert Camus's life, summarize his four novels, two of his essays and tell you 10 philosophical ideas and secrets we can learn from his life and writings. I'll also answer why later in life Camus's understanding of art shifted his views away from revolutionary Marxism, an ideology whose deeply drawn to in his youth and his philosophy offering solution to the meaning of life for the ordinary people was highly influenced by Marxism. So sit back and pour some coffee into your French wine, and let's talk absurdism and Albert Camus.
[2:33]Life. Albert Camus was born on 7th of November 1913 in Algeria to a French family. His father died a year later during World War I, leaving Camus's mother to care for him and his brother. They lived in a poor neighborhood of their capital Algiers with his grandma and his disabled uncle. At primary school, he made a teacher who helped him get a scholarship to enter a prestigious school in 1923. Some 30 years later in his Nobel Prize speech, Camus dedicated the prize to that same teacher. Despite his working class background, his European heritage allowed him certain privileges like good education, enrollment in a football club that were not available to most local Arab Algerians. But when it comes to health, there is no privilege. In 1930, Camus, aged 17, contracted tuberculosis, which put an abrupt stop to his education and football career. So he moved out of his family home to avoid infecting others and went to live with his butcher uncle. For Camus, the isolation, but most crucially, the illness itself, as well as seeing animals being killed to feed human, gave him a sharp existential focus about the nature of life. So he became deeply interested in philosophy, specifically the pessimistic philosophy of Schopenhauer and the atheistic philosophy of Nietzsche. And the egalitarian philosophy of Marx. Through Nietzsche, particularly his influential book The Birth of Tragedy, he also discovered ancient Greek philosophers. I should point out that Anton Chekhov, the Russian genius also lived with tuberculosis for a long period of his life. As a result, he also had a very bleak and pessimistic view of life. Both, however, turned that pessimism to optimism, Camus mostly through philosophy and Chekhov through storytelling. Not just that, both Camus and Chekhov were deeply interested and involved in theater. In 1933, Camus entered the University of Algiers and not surprisingly, he studied philosophy and wrote his thesis on Plotinus. The ancient Egyptian born Greco-Roman philosopher who like Plato emphasized ideas over matter, mind over body. Plotinus was influenced by Eastern philosophy as he traveled to Persia and learned about Indian enlightenment to escape the cycle of reincarnation. Plotinus was also the pioneer of Neoplatonism, which gave Plato's philosophy an Eastern flavor by emphasizing unity of mind and body and the idea of one universal being. In his university thesis, Camus juxtaposed Christianity with ancient Greek philosophy, arguing that the Christian premise of afterlife made this life almost meaningless and redundant because you could die at birth and go straight to heaven. Living a long life can only increase your chance of committing more sins, which could take you to hell. It makes sense not to live very long if heaven is guaranteed for babies. So basically, for Camus, most religions didn't value this life, only treat it as a test for afterlife. Camus understood that the Greeks on the other hand, celebrated this life despite their belief in the divine power. And no surprise that Camus, just like Nietzsche, returned to ancient Greece to find a true atheistic meaning for life and one of his most famous work, The Myth of Sisyphus, which I will discuss later. Outside study, Camus had two passions, actually three. First, he played goalkeeper in a professional football or soccer team in Algeria. As a goalkeeper, you have a clear view of the entire football pitch, which gives you a better perspective in terms of who is who and where they stand, which must have helped him with the power of philosophical and artistic observation. For Camus, football also represented a small tribe that gave him a sense of belonging and togetherness and with a common purpose and goal, pun intended. But unfortunately, his football career was cut short after he was infected with tuberculosis. Such is life. From the midst of football tribalism, he retreated to an isolated corner of a butcher's house like some injured animal. Life is really absurd. His second passion also involved tribalism, the theater and communism. Camus in 1936 joined the French Communist Party and later the Algerian Communist Party, so he organized a workers theater. After he was expelled from the party, he continued his theater involvement because it allowed him that sense of togetherness and teamwork. Camus was drawn to Marxism because it emphasizes a group bond. Later in life, he continued to work with the theater and he famously and quite ironically staged Dostoevsky's demons. A novel that questions the Communist revolution, which I have discussed here. By then, Camus was no longer a communist because he had grown old enough to see the other side of a Communist revolution that began suppressing individual freedom in the USSR. His third passion and perhaps the most important one too, of course, as a Frenchman or any man was sex. He married twice but also had a lot of sex on the side. I guess a man's ultimate purpose in life is to pass on his genes. Camus was blessed with good looks. He was handsome, masculine and had a status as a successful writer, which allowed him access to many women. In 1940, many French were fleeing their French capital from the German occupation. Camus, however, instead of escaping the fire, moved to Paris to work for a newspaper. It paid off, as his writing became more popular, he grew more well known and famous. In Paris, he met the other existentialist giant Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, interesting to point out, Camus and Sartre came from two polar opposites. Sartre from wealthy bourgeoisie family and Camus from a relative poverty, but both found Marxism very appealing. But later they fell out due to their ideological differences. Sartre was keen on a Maoist-style revolution, while Camus wanted a peaceful reform. His 1942 novel The Stranger made him a celebrity, so much so that people paid to attend his lectures. Not just that, he received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1957, aged 44, making him the second youngest writer ever to receive the prize after Rudyard Kipling, who was 41 in 1907. Such is the absurdities of life, when you go up, you always have to come down, just like the Boulder of Sisyphus. At the height of his fame and success in 1960, while returning back from a holiday, the car he was traveling in crashed into a tree killing him instantly. In his pocket, the police found an unused train ticket to Paris. He was supposed to travel by train with his wife and kids, but for some bizarre reason, he had chosen to travel by car, driven by his publisher Gallimard, who also died in the crash. They also found a 144-page manuscript of his novel in progress, The First Man, an autobiographical novel about his life growing up in Algeria. Perhaps a novel similar to Proust's In Search of Lost Time, taking a more artistic approach to fiction and less philosophical. Today, Albert Camus is considered one of the most influential novelist philosophers of the 20th century. Now, I'll discuss four of his most famous novels and two of his philosophical essays before I tell you 10 philosophical lessons we can draw from them.
[9:37]A Happy Death. Albert Camus's first novel, A Happy Death, was written sometime between 1936 and 1938 but was published after his death in 1971. Basically, in this novella, Camus trying to respond to Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. Schopenhauer argued that on a deeper level, humans are driven by a blind will to life. We can't help but continue living despite how miserable it might be. Nietzsche thought this will to live or survival was too passive, so he changed the will to life to will to power to energize it a bit and give it a bit of umph. Albert Camus, however, said life is not about surviving or conquering, but it's about a deep desire to be happy. So, will to happiness is the premise of this novel. First thing, it's a short novella in two parts. Part one, titled Natural Death, is about Patrice Meursault, incidentally, the same name as the protagonist of Camus's most famous novel, The Stranger. He has a boring life, boring job, and a partner he doesn't really love. It's very much an early version of The Stranger. Upon meeting a wealthy yet disabled man, he decides to kill him to take his money. This is like Raskolnikov and Crime and Punishment, except that Raskolnikov never manages to use the money he steals. Part two is titled Conscious Death depicts Meursault's life after his rich. He still fails to find happiness despite seeking it anywhere and everywhere. At the end, he becomes seriously ill and on the verge of death, he's finally happy. It's an ironic tale of a man seeking a happy life who ends up getting happiness when he's close to death. Albert Camus reverses natural death with conscious death. The murder in part one is titled as natural death because in nature, death comes somewhat abruptly. While dying of an illness in part two is a conscious death because we are aware of it. The novel raises some important questions like how much we strive for happiness that we fail to be happy. And in words, we seek happiness, but we don't know how to be happy. It's like a book collector who collects endless books, yet cannot read.
[11:42]The Stranger, published 1942, The Stranger is Camus's most famous novel. It tells the story of Meursault, a Frenchman who lives in Algeria. The story has three main plot points or three deaths, the death of Meursault's mother, the murder of an Arab man, and finally his own execution. The awareness of death makes humans unique in the animal kingdom, so each death awakens something in Meursault from his animal state of indifference and gives him clarity of sort. If Sartre said, we are condemned to be free, Camus says, we are condemned to death, but also to be guilty. So at the heart of the novel is this essential question which Camus poses himself, quote, "In our society any man who does not weep at his mother's funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death." Albert Camus In other words, Meursault is not only guilty for killing someone, but also because he didn't cry at his mother's funeral. That's the kind of man he is, emotionally unavailable. A term used by women today to describe some men. Meursault gets the news that his mother has died of old age. He takes time off work to be at a funeral, but contrary to common societal expectation, he doesn't cry or show sadness. He acts as though nothing has happened. He drinks, he smokes, he has sex with his girlfriend. He even helps his neighbor, Raymond, to have a revenge sex with an Arab woman who might have betrayed him. Not only that, when Raymond is arrested for assaulting the girl, Meursault helps his friend, parroting his friend's words to the police that the woman was unfaithful. Meursault doesn't ask question and does not think if his action might hurt someone. He simply does what he feels at the moment. In other words, he feels no guilt of what happened in the past because he always in the present, so to speak. For example, he's shocked to hear that some people negatively judged him when he sent his mother to live in a nursing home. When Meursault's boss asked him if he wants to work in a company's branch in Paris, he says, whatever. When his girlfriend, Marie, asks him if they should get married, his answer is the same, whatever makes you happy. He doesn't care either way. His indifferent attitude to life is a real time bomb, so Camus cranks it up a notch. One day on a beach, Meursault's friend, Raymond, is attacked by the brother of the Arab woman he had assaulted with a knife. Raymond gets his gun to shoot, but Meursault grabs the gun from him to stop the murder. Incidentally, none of the Arab characters are named in the novel. Whether conscious or subconscious Camus's part, it shows the disparity of life between the French and the Arabs in Algeria back then. Later that day, Meursault, while walking on the same beach, encountered the same Arab man with a knife. Meursault still has Raymond's pistol, so he shoots the Arab man not one time, but five times. He's arrested and put in jail. He promptly confesses to the murder, but why did you kill him? His only explanation is that the sun was too hot and bright, so he acted instinctively and somewhat reflexively. That's it. While in prison, days turned to weeks, then months and years as he waits for his trial. In court, the focus is not so much on the murder of an Arab man, but more on Meursault's inability to cry at his mother's funeral. Camus inadvertently shows the disparity of life in Algeria. An actual Arab man is murdered, yet the prosecutor is more focused on him not crying at his European mother's funeral. To be fair to Camus, he perhaps wanted to expose the legal system, not from a racial viewpoint, but from an existential viewpoint, that if someone doesn't know how to cry, he's guilty. If women can cry, why can't men? That's the main question the novel poses. Because he failed to cry, the prosecutor portrays him as a remorseless monster. He's sentenced to death. As he waits for his execution, Meursault refuses to see a priest because he doesn't believe in God and sees no physical way out of certain death. As Dostoevsky said in his novel The Idiot, in nature, when you face death, either a wild beast attacking you or your enemy in wars, there's always some hope of survival because you can battle or struggle to live. But when the state condemns you to death, there is no hope, no chance to escape. Death is the only certainty. Meursault spends days soul searching to understand his faith. Finally, he settles on one incredible conclusion. Meursault tells the priest that we can escape from everything, but nobody can escape death. It doesn't matter how you die, but we all do. This fate is sown in us from the day we're born. This simple yet profound conclusion allows Meursault to accept his fate. Not only that, the mere act of expressing himself or yelling those words at the priest also liberates Meursault in a kind of Freudian talking therapy or church confession. He reflects, perhaps for the very first time in his life. He's finally awakened to the human condition. He was an animal, but now he realizes death as a human experience. Meursault is finally happy. Not only that, he's looking forward to the execution to hear the hatred of the crowd, so he won't be alone while dying. In The Stranger, Albert Camus raises two important issues, our human awareness of death and feeling guilty. The novel has three deaths, one natural, one illegal murder, and one legal murder or execution. The first death, the death of his mother, arouses little in Meursault. He's also indifferent to the second death which he causes. But when it comes to his own execution, he finally wakes up and is completely lucid. Evolutionarily speaking, humans are perhaps the only species aware of its own death, which heightens our sense of consciousness. As Martin Heidegger, the German philosopher said, the awareness of death makes human life authentic and meaningful. Albert Camus echoes that, arguing that death brings clarity to our lives. It makes us more conscious to live a fuller life. The second issue in the novel is guilt. Meursault is on trial for the murder, but the focus is mainly on him not crying at his mother's funeral. Camus, perhaps, just like his later compatriot, Michel Foucault, was pointing out that modernity replaced physical punishment with psychological punishment. Pre-modern world generally punished criminals through physical ordeals, while the modern legal system stopped physical punishment for the most part and instead introduced psychological punishment by making sure one feels guilt. This is perhaps due to the modern man being too rational. Meursault is an honest man who confesses to the murder without going through the Raskolnikov ordeal in Crime and Punishment. But his confession is not enough, so the prosecution tries to break Meursault's indifferent, icy interior by making him feel guilty. So Camus says, to be a modern man is not to be free as his fellow writer, Sartre said, but to be guilty and cry. Modernity on a fundamental level is an attempt to tame nature to benefit humans, but modernity also wants to domesticate men and break their spirit by making them accept guilt, feel vulnerable and cry. So during the trial, all the effort was on making sure Meursault felt guilt, not so much for the murder, but for not crying at his mother's funeral. Today, if men don't cry or show vulnerability or emotions, they are sometimes labeled as toxically masculine. Meursault's indifference or carefree attitude towards others makes him dangerous to society, one has to tame him. By depicting Meursault as a complex character, Camus recognized that making him feel guilty is a process of taming the wild animal, turning a wolf into a domestic dog. While it makes the society safer, it can also break the spirit of others. When a person is on trial, the focus is not on him, but others, making him an example to others. Judicial process is less about punishing the criminal on trial, but more about taming the rest of society through fear of punishment. Meursault is not tamed. Guilt doesn't tame a man, even death doesn't tame him. Death makes you realize you're not a stranger, just like everyone else, just another human being understanding and anticipating death.
[19:53]He understands that he's no different from his mother. Knowing that he's connected to others by experiencing death is liberating and finally brings him happiness. The Plague, published 1947, is also set in Algeria in the town of Oran, where people are confronted with a plague epidemic caused by rats. It's a bit of Kafkaesque novel about how individual humans are at the mercy of their fate and society and how death is cruel and random. The novel starts with scores of dead rats appearing on the streets of Oran. Then the first human death, and soon more deaths follow. There's panic, but the authorities try to downplay the seriousness of the situation. Once the death toll rises, the town gates are closed. Nobody can come in or get out, turning the city into a giant prison. How do people react? When life is good, everyone is good. When things go south, real people come out. Some characters like the doctor genuinely try to help people, while the priest uses the opportunity to spread his religious belief by blaming people's sins for the plague. Criminals get rich by finding underground routes, smuggling people in and out of town. You throw a plague at them and humans use the situation to benefit themselves, except the journalist who is ironically a stranger, a visitor in town, so he tries to escape the city to see his wife. When he gets a chance to escape the fire, he cannot bring himself to see others suffer while he can be free. He is the polar opposite of Meursault. He realized that his own happiness would be tainted if others aren't happy. So by him staying in town, Camus shows a glimpse of humanity, a light at the end of tunnel, a kind of hope. As time passes, things get worse. People who try to flee town are shot dead. People are physically and psychologically exhausted. After almost a year, things improve, but the town has changed forever and those who survive the plague are no longer the same people. In The Plague, Camus looks at the relationship between the individual and the collective. Is society a bunch of individuals or are we connected on a deeper level? Can we be individually happy when we see others suffer? The novel is an allegory of the German occupation of France in 1940s. Just like the danger of Nazism when the town gets the news of the plague, first they ignore, but by the time they realize, it's too late. Germany has occupied France and the plague has taken over the town of Oran. Individual French people could lead a happy life if they fled France or accepted or collaborated with the Germans. However, Camus says that individual happiness is somewhat shameful because of profoundly deeper connection between humans. Self-sacrifice is deeply embedded in nature. Parents sacrifice for their children, soldiers for their country. When life is peaceful, we forget this, but when we face a real trial, we rise up to the challenge and find that there is greater purpose than saving our own hearts. At the beginning, the plague turned saints into sinners and sinners into saints, but as time passed, the cream rose to the top. Camus shows that we are not static human beings, but human becoming, as Nietzsche said. Our circumstance dictates a lot of what we are, but at the core, we cannot be happy when we see others bleed. This only comes at the time of crisis, when peacetime, we bicker over petty things, but when there is a genuine social crisis, some rise up to become greater than themselves. The Fall, published 1956, The Fall is the last complete novel by Albert Camus. The story is a confession of a fallen judge, set not in warm Algeria, but in the cold of Paris and Amsterdam. Clamence is a lawyer in Paris, he's at the top of his game, he has got money, fame and power. But one night, he witnesses a woman commit a suicide by jumping into the river. He does nothing to stop or intervene. He goes home and forgets it. Days go by, then weeks, then months and years, but the incident has left a dent in him, a hole in his soul or being. Despite his best effort to forget it, he feels something inside. Every time there's a negative incident happening to him, he goes back to that night. A kind of superstition like a cancer cell grows inside him that all the negative things that happened to him can be attributed to his failure to do the right thing that night, helping the woman. It gets to the point that he questions himself. His whole life has been nothing but selfish. Every good deed he has done has been for his own selfishness. Not only that, he also wanted to inflict terrible things onto others. At least he thought about inflicting pain onto others. His shiny surface life hides his sinister, dark hidden side where he's nothing but a terrible person, just like in Oscar Wilde's novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. Upon realization, his whole shiny castle of himself crumbles inside him. He stops working, soon he can no longer keep it. Tolstoy said, dissolution men join wars. He considers joining the French resistance against the Germans, but sees no point in that. He decides to flee Paris for London but takes a bizarre Salenius route through North Africa, where the issue of religion and God come into focus. But despite him concluding that God is truly dead and life is truly meaningless, he comes to a deeper realization that to be human in modern time is to be, you guessed it, guilty. Yes, a modern man is always condemned to be guilty. It's nothing to do with religion or God, it comes from within. That's where the novel ends. On the outside, he lived a successful life, but it was his own deeper psyche that turned against him, just like in Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment, Raskolnikov's own inner torment forced him to confess that sealed his fate. The guilt of not saving the woman, our hero is forever condemned to feel guilty. You only get one chance in life. Such is the cruelty of existence. One mistake will fall you for the rest of your life, like some dark shadow at night. I think the novel shows Camus's own struggle with women. He was married, but also had affairs, which must have made him feel guilty. Nietzsche has dealt men a bad, but extremely horny card. Two sexes, producing millions of sperms daily, who want to get out and once they're out, you have to deal with the consequences, the guilt that comes after. He's a quote, "I simply took refuge among women. As you know, they don't really condemn any weakness; they would be more inclined to try to humiliate or disarm our strength. This is why woman is the reward, not of the warrior, but of the criminal. She is his harbor, his haven; it is in a woman's bed that he is generally arrested. Is she not all that remains to us of earthly paradise?" The Fall by Albert Camus. In The Stranger, Camus's protagonist, Meursault, was guilty of killing someone, but also not for crying at his mother's funeral. But in The Fall, the protagonist is guilty not for his action, but for his inaction. So, to be or not to be, or to do or not to do, either way, you're doomed. So not only are guilty for what we do, we are also guilty for what we do not do. Now, I'll discuss two of his most famous essays.
[27:16]The Myth of Sisyphus. The Myth of Sisyphus is a philosophical essay by Albert Camus published 1942 in which he introduces his philosophy of absurdism. Sisyphus was a Greek titan who was condemned to push a boulder up a mountain. The boulder would fall down and he would have to go back down and push it up the mountain. A process he repeats forever without any hope of change or stop, showing the futility and absurdity of life. Absurdism simply means we humans seek meaning or purpose in life, but the universe has no answer for it. Since there is no meaning to be found outside, ending one's life is the only logical conclusion. If life has no meaning, then why live? But being human, the kind of creature we are, we are not satisfied with the absurd. So according to Camus, we have three options. One, to find freedom by manufacturing hope like Dostoevsky or Franz Kafka's novels. But this manufactured hope goes against the absurd, which is an essence negates future hope. The second option is to revolt and conquer power, wealth or territory, but unfortunately, they don't last very long. Just as you gain them, they can also be taken away. The third option is passion to live a full life, but it too is temporary and fleeting. Camus's ultimate answer is to understand and accept the absurdity of life like Sisyphus. Every time he goes down to get the boulder, he understand the futility of his life, but he accepts it. He doesn't stop, but he pushes the boulder forever. Life in essence is absurd, contradictory and futile. But for that absurdity, contradiction and futility to exist, human life is necessary. In other words, because life is absurd, it gives us the impetus to continue living. The alternative would be a religious view of the afterlife and heaven, which negates this life as meaningless. As I said earlier, if babies go straight to heaven, then this life is not worth living. So Camus argues that the absurdity of this life makes it even more worth living. For Camus, life's happiness is not its meaning or purpose, but in the struggle of life itself. In other words, we find joy, not in life being easy or straight path, instead, our truest joy comes from life being a struggle, contradiction and absurd. Camus concludes, quote, The struggle itself is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. Why? Because he accepts the absurdity of life.
[29:50]The Rebel. The Rebel is another philosophical essay by Albert Camus published 1951. Here too Camus tries to answer the inherent injustice of the world. Despite being an atheist, Camus inherits a deep Christian value of universal justice from Marxism. I've said this before, Marxism is a materialist reinterpretation of Christianity as they both emphasize a future utopia with universal equality and justice. So in this essay, Camus tries to bridge the huge gap between Marx and Nietzsche. Marx argued that material inequality is the root cause of all social evils. So we must rebel to correct this by creating a just and equal society where everyone has equal share of the material resources. Nietzsche, however, argued, forget about injustice, inequality. We need a hierarchical society that allows geniuses to flourish and be creative. For Nietzsche, an egalitarian society punishes geniuses and it stifles creativity. For Nietzsche, because nature is highly unjust, it allows creativity to flourish. Marx wanted to tame nature and society, and Nietzsche, however, wanted to celebrate wild creativity, nature and individual freedom. Towards the end of his life, Camus moved closer to Nietzsche as he was disillusioned with the Marxist revolution that suppressed freedom. But at the same time, he was deeply concerned about social injustice and inequality. He says, the true rebel is not the person who conforms to the orthodoxy of some revolutionary ideology, but a person who could say no to injustice. So Camus finally settled on reform as the best way of rebellion. In other words, Camus wants evolution, not revolution. Marxists, for the most part, failed to fully grasp human evolutionary biology, so to make a revolution successful, brute force was used to bend the human will with some disastrous consequences, killing and imprisoning millions. In other words, a Marxist revolution cannot succeed without a giant prison next door to send those who disagree. So Camus understood that human nature is more geared for evolution and reform, not so much for a bloody revolution. Next, I'll discuss 10 lessons we can learn from Albert Camus from his life and his philosophy conveyed through his fiction as well as non-fiction.
[32:27]One, we are all strangers on this planet. Albert Camus was born in Algeria into a French family. You could say he was born in the wrong country. Not just that, his father was French and his mom had a Spanish heritage. He later moved to Paris when it was occupied by the Germans. In some way, he was a stranger in all these places. We humans cannot choose our family, country, language, culture, we're born into. For Camus, being a stranger also gave him the opportunity to question his existence. Not just his own, but the entire human existence. What it means to be human and what it means to seek meaning in life. His unique cultural background gave him a unique perspective on life. It's no surprise that the title of one of his novels, The Stranger. In essence, we're all strangers on this little rock of a planet. We often get bogged down in cultural differences or dividing people into nationalities, gender or something else. But fundamentally, we're all strangers trying to come to terms with our existence. We are the true aliens in this world. We have no idea where we have come from, how life started and how it will end. Yet, we don't lose sleep over it. It is what it is. So nobody's at home here, everyone is a stranger. Two, be part of a team. The French Revolution had three messages: liberty, equality, and fraternity. While freedom and equality have become buzzwords in politics of socialism versus liberalism, but it's a fraternity that is perhaps less understood. It's more psychological. Albert Camus played football as a teenager, but aged 17, illness meant he had to live in isolation. This solitude taught him an important lesson. He was happiest when he was part of something bigger than himself, a team, a tribe, or a group with a single aim working together to achieve something big. Be it a football game or even winning a war. Quote, Everything I know about morality and the obligations of men, I owe it to football. The desire to belong is incredibly strong amongst us. Despite trying to have a more free and solitary life in today's world, we seek comfort when we are part of a team. We want to be picked by others. To compensate for the fact that Camus couldn't play football after his illness, he joined the Communist Party, which is a tribe in itself. Even after he became a famous writer, he continued to work in the theater to stage works by other writers like Dostoevsky and Faulkner. So for Camus, being part of something bigger than yourself, with a unified goal gave him fulfillment. Nietzsche's philosophy set forth in Thus Spoke Zarathustra is that of a lone wolf in a mountain cave. But Camus's philosophy is communitarian. Throughout history, men physically and psychologically survived in tribal settings and the sense of camaraderie brought them together. But in today's world, it is lost as families and communities have fallen apart. In the workplace, loyalty and allegiance have become more transactional and less spiritual, which has created loneliness resulting in an increase in alcoholism, addiction and consumerism. So being part of something bigger than yourself teaches you loyalty, responsibility and respect. In return, you feel fulfilled.
[35:44]Three, create art. Albert Camus study philosophy to become a teacher, but soon found writing to be his vocation. Just like for Franz Kafka, writing allowed him to cope better with the absurdities of life and the absence of meaning, one has to create something. He created four major novels and many works of non-fiction. Of course, there's debate whether he was a better philosopher than a novelist, but there's no doubt that through writing fiction, he made a dent in the literary universe, which won him the Nobel Prize in literature. His novels are not meant to be artistic like Proust or thrilling like Dostoevsky, but they make up with philosophical depth. I think Camus also understood storytelling and art are as powerful as food. And I think this shift his attitude towards Marxism and socialism. Marxists have a more utilitarian view of work as a means to an end, so there is no value in the work itself, but what it produces. The artist Camus saw profound meaning in the work, in the creation, in the craft, as well as the final product. Material success can feed your stomach, but the process of art creation can nourish your soul. Since the universe doesn't care, it is incumbent upon us to care and create something meaningful for ourselves. An artist perhaps the best way to give life meaning. By art, I don't mean painting, but it can be any craft. The root of the word art is a skilled work or craft, so we can find meaning in our work and craft. Camus even said that living is an art form, quote, It takes time to live. Like any work of art, life needs to be thought about. A Happy Death by Albert Camus. Four, life's miseries are random. Albert Camus supposedly said that dying in a car accident is the most absurd death. Yet that's precisely how he died. This is not unique in this case. A lot of famous novelists have died in ironic ways. Two of the most famous Russian writers, Alexander Pushkin and Mikhail Lermontov, died in a duel, which they had fictionalized in their own novels. Nikolai Gogol went mad, which he had written about in his short story, A Madman's Diary. But what's interesting in Camus's case is that he understood that life is, for the most part, pretty random. As a result, pain and suffering are also pretty random. Nobody signs up to be sick, yet at 17, he fell ill. As I said before, he had a train ticket in his pocket when he died, yet he decided to go by car. When we face hardships, illnesses, tragedies or accidents, we often question the unfairness of it. Yet that's what life is. It is, for the most part, unfair. Camus died at the height of his fame, only three years after winning the Nobel Prize. He was 46 years old. Yet it could have been worse. He could have died aged 17 with tuberculosis. His attitude was to embrace life with his randomness and absurdities, because the value of life is not in its happiness, but the life itself. Quote, "Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee? But in the end, one needs more courage to live than to kill himself." A Happy Death by Albert Camus. Camus's philosophy was that one must accept the absurdities of life, but also its miseries, not by closing your eyes, but...
