The Absurd II

A while back I talked about a book by Albert Camus, The Outsider or The Stranger, in which the main character lives and dies by the arbitrariness (?) of the universe.

This morning I was reading about the book Bear is now asleep, which is written by the father of the girl who died when she was hit by a goal-post. Remember that? Bear is now asleep is the final line of the song she was singing just before she died.

It's a terribly sad story. I really feel for this couple.

I haven't read this book. It may well be insightful and touching and worth reading. What struck me about it was (at least the editor's idea of) the point of the book.

The first section is about the random-ness of life and death. If only she'd been walking on her mum's left side, if only they'd been a couple of seconds later, or earlier etc. The final point seems to be something like life and death are random and unpredictable, but love lives forever.

This is such a sad annihilationist view of the world. It's not his little girl's love that lives on, but their memory of her. It's her legacy. It gets her nowhere, but is some sort of solace for the parents.

I just can't buy into this sort of perspective. It's one thing to think "remember how lovely she was and how much we loved her", which is great. It's another to attach some sort of existential or even meaningful weight to this. It has none.

Maybe I'm too concerned with the girl, and too little concerned with the parents, because I can't help but think you can't take love with you. Just as people say about money or clothes or other possessions, you can't take these feelings with you, and so essentially, at the end of the day (your life), feelings, like money, are meaningless (on their own).

It's sad that when someone dies one must try to attach meaning to the waste and the sadness. But there is none. Within an annihilationistic (?) worldview, the world is random and unfeeling, and I have to agree with Camus, not this poor guy.

Really sad stuff...