No, Sisyphus Doesn’t Smile but, We Do

The philosophical argument regarding morality is extremely tiresome. We’ve all heard the typical cases: “muh evolution” “muh spaghetti-monster”. The arguments have all been heard before and the conclusions too, as far as you are concerned there is no way to prove that morality is anything more than an evolutionary perception, the extent to which and the experience of which we can only debate about. No, this entire line of argument is a complete waste of time as far as I am concerned. The whole thing misses, entirely, the point of philosophy. It makes philosophy about proving things objectively and nothing more, which, in my opinion, is an extremely useless project. If one only wants to debate things which can be proven objectively that person would be more of a scientist than a philosopher.

At the heart of any philosophical debate there is an understanding that the questions being asked are fundamentally unfalsifiable as far as the person asking it can be aware. If you believe in a God and an afterlife, then although your position might be proven true eventually, there's no way for you to prove that right now; so it's a moot point scientifically. We can, somewhat, prove that our biology and, therefore, our instincts are heavily coerced by evolution so, even though we seem to be more conscious and self-aware than any other creature, from a scientific point of view we must believe consciousness is an unsolved problem. As this is the case it can be argued there is no point in using any form of human experience to prove an objective morality. That is as far as the scientifically provable morality case goes and as far as I’m concerned that's a totally useless conversation. All it does is force a circular argument about human free will which is also a pointless conversation in a vacuum. Many people therefore believe the only conclusion to be made completely objectively is nihilism. And from this we come to the crowd this article is made to address:

“Oh but I’m not a nihilist! I’m an absurdist!”

Absurdism is just as objectively unjustifiable as religion and a whole lot less productive to society. Absurdism is to accept nihilism and then say “but I’ll just choose to be happy” which is a sentiment you cannot justify other than to say it avoids nihilistic despair or you “just feel that way”. Both of which are extremely subjective and circular reasons once you examine them. The absurdists can’t deny this, they also cannot argue that their belief actually has any more reason to it than a religious belief of more substance, because fundamentally they’re both leaps of faith; the thing that makes absurdism absurd is that it stops where it does. This is where we come to the actual point of contention and the true meaning of philosophy, what belief can we hold that will be productive for us and for society?

Based on this line of thought I ask in lieu of my audience: why is it that people feel the need to discern between nihilism and absurdism? Why is it that Sisyphus should smile? It's because deep down every absurdist accepts that pure nihilism is a terrible philosophy for society and for individuals. The very name of absurdism gives way to the fact that it can’t be objectively justified but everyone knows being happy is better than being sad, and that, though small, is a moral concession. It doesn’t matter that you can call it an evolutionary trait that smiling makes us happy and being happy feels good, the very fact that the absurdists recognise it as in some way good is enough. And so the next question seems to me to be obvious, if we accept that philosophy is the mechanism to justify good things for the individual and for society then, why stop at absurdism, why not improve it?

I won’t answer that question, it's for the absurdist to figure out. What I will assert as a concluding remark, is you can call it another weird evolutionary trick if you like, but humans need to believe in something; morality is one of those beliefs.