User:Kalki/The Absurd

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I have been telling you, from alpha to omega, what is the one great thing the sigil taught me — that everything in life is miraculous. ~ James Branch Cabell in *The Cream of the Jest*

I intend to gradually expand this page, with commentary on Absurdities and notions of the Absurd generally, as I gradually edit and pare down some sections of the page for Absurdism in coming weeks and months, and perhaps expand the pages for Semiotics and its related disciplines. Very extensive and complex concepts of the Absurd and their simple and complex relations to Awareness, Reality, Perceptions and forms of Appreciation, Reason and Prestige have long seemed very significant considerations to me, and I intend to gradually indicate how and why, through what means are properly available in current and foreseeable situations. ~ ♞☮♌Kalki·†·⚓⊙☳☶⚡ 19:44, 24 January 2012 (UTC) + tweaks

Absurdism is a philosophical stance embracing a wide range of perspectives, which implies that the efforts of humanity to find or absolutely define, limit, express or exclude the inherent meanings of anything, including human existence, are absurd because the qualities of communicable information available to the human mind, and relationships within Reality makes any certainty about such impossible. Philosophical schools of absurdism explore the fundamental nature of the Absurd and how individuals, once they become aware of it, can or should react to it and to circumstances they encounter. A particular form of Existentialism it was strongly evident in some of the works of Søren Kierkegaard, but was more expressly developed by Albert Camus in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus and his works of Absurdist fiction repudiating many assumptions found in athiestic nihilism and theistic existentialism as well as those of authoritarianism. It has far earlier expression in many significant statements of ancient philosophers, including Laozi, Socrates, and Zhuangzi. In many ways it relates to the disciplines of semiotics, stances of extreme skepticism, overtly absurd faith, strong agnosticism, many forms of mysticism, art, magic, magical realism, and works in the genre which Martin Esslin called the "Theatre of the Absurd."

Said Alfred: "Who would see
Signs, must give all things. Verily
Man shall not taste of victory
Till he throws his sword away."
- G. K. Chesterton in The Ballad of the White Horse (1911)

This is meant to be something of a standard "Absurdist Affirmation" such as any Absurdist is free to revise or develop as their own inclinations impel them:

I am an Absurdist. I know such a designation can be very confusing to many, but so can nearly any other people might make, and an absurdist confronts the fundamental reality of such facts, in often extraordinary ways.

I am one of many absurdists at work in this world, but we have no intention of making absurdists out of everyone we possibly can — that would be absurdly STUPID goal contrary to the ideals of genuinely vitalistic absurdism. I am one of those who rather seek to promote an absurdly broad and powerful tolerance and acceptance of many forms of truth and beauty, even those which cannot make much sense out of Absurdism and are hostile to many conceivable forms of it — whether or not they actually exist. As an absurdist I seek to promote profound and splendrous forms of "Peace, Love and Understanding" — but not the forms of vapid calm, extremely selfish lusts or mendacious and moronic monotony which pass for such among the most dreary of the dull, drab and stupid who seek to create even more vapid and vacuous forms of idiocy by enslaving dupes and dolts to the rules they can devise in ignorance and confusion about the actual Laws of Ultimate Reality and Necessity.

Though conceivably some might embrace the name of absurdism to promote many absurdly ugly and evil practices, because even the best forms of absurdism do reluctantly permit some forms of harshness and ambiguity which are often eagerly welcomed and promoted by the most perversely deranged, I assert that I am NOT one of those inclined to let the vilest forms of idiocy go unopposed, no matter what some might call them, and thus speaking for those types of Absurdists I to some extent fairly and honestly can and do represent, I will assert : WE intend to do no one any grievous harm or permanent injury — but we DO mean to do harm to ALL forms of ignorance, confusion, deceitfulness and delusion which provide supports for tyranny, terrorism, error, fraud, or unjust oppression of ANYONE — and we intend to do this in increasingly clear and relentless and inexorable ways, which can and shall spread many forms of a devotion to Justice, Unity, Liberty and Joyous Universal Love of ALL.

I will end this little declaration, with a reminder to abide in Awareness, Life, and Love, and to DO much as the great Saint Augustine of Hippo has advised:

LOVE ALL and DO WHAT YOU WILL.