![]() ![]() If we are, indeed, Sisyphus in modern, online form, it’s perhaps as what Camus imagines: “The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. Even if we are not wholly accepting of the online life, it doesn’t mean we are in despair. We can choose the phone number, the purpose of the phone call, the conversation, and what we might hope to get out of it. We may be the one acting out the absurdity in the phone booth, but at least we have access to the phone call. The modern online condition is absurd, and yet, like the prevailing human condition, we “connect” to achieve some kind of significance. “There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night.” I could say the same about our modern condition. ![]() To eliminate hope lets the individual experience fully, without reservation and restriction, the life at hand. Camus uses the inevitability of death as cause and reason to eliminate hope. Inevitably, our relevancy or level of activity will falter, and eventually change. It’s in the acceptance of the futility of our actions online, even though they may provide both cause (validation, recognition) and value (enriching life via apps, etc.) there will be no change. Camus believes that in rejecting hope, rather than despair, the individual becomes that much closer to being free. As made quite clear in “The Myth of Sisyphus,” it depends on the individual. It blurs the lines, numbs the senses, shelters us from loneliness. Perhaps the connectivity of being online provides a temporary solution. Maybe it borders on a kind of apathy, but it is freedom nonetheless. It is easy for the digital self to become codeless, to be free. So we remain, posting, scrolling the newsfeed, curating the timeline-our “freedom” inheres in the Internet’s absence of moral proscription, it’s rejection of codes. Our revolt is to reject the call to simplify, our activity of consciousness occurs online. Now, to refuse social media is accept that invitation to death. By the mere activity of consciousness I transform into a rule of life what was an invitation to death, and I refuse suicide.” “Thus I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion. That is how we search for a self, through branding it into something tangible, routinely possessive. If Camus were to exist online now, he might see our individual search for meaning expressed through the precise ways in which we curate our digital identities. The individual creates meaning from the search for meaning. We have all become Sisyphus, pushing our rocks up a hill littered with hyperlinks and tweets, perpetually, futilely, refreshing the page of existence.įor Camus’s absurdism, the individual is the most important component of existence. The now-typical and ubiquitous technological innovations of the 21 st century have simultaneously transformed and amplified the most basic principles of the absurd. I wonder what has really changed? We walk around in invisible, digital booths of our own making, hidden to others in plain sight, performing our communications with the rest of the world: standing at the streetcorner, staring down at a phone walking down the street, staring down at a phone talking to someone nearby while fumbling, staring down at a phone. Camus goes on to explain “this incalculable tumble before the image of what we are, this ‘nausea’”-a vision of the inherently absurd. We are on the outside looking in, watching the man speak, but we cannot hear him. The man in the phone booth-it’s a familiar and memorable image from Camus’ philosophical text, one that you might recall: Camus presents the reader with the image of a man in a phone booth. It is likely he would explore and exploit social media as a leading example of the duality of the human condition: on its surface, the pursuit of happiness and meaningful connection underneath, a void without meaning, lurking behind the mirror of self-perception. Like anything else, it’s harmless until it isn’t, until we wake and realize we can no longer live without its conditions, its effects, its functionalities. ![]() If Albert Camus were alive today, he’d write “The Myth of Sisyphus” about our massive, shared, ubiquitous digital brain-social media rendered as yet another component of the absurd. ![]() No matter how exhaustively we post, tweet, comment, and curate our feeds, it isn’t until we reach a plateau, a full-stop, that we realize how bound we are to the routine maintenance of our online identities. ![]()
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