In my very first Substack post, I wrote about Albert Camus’ absurdism. We, as humans, are rational creatures living in an irrational universe; we are compelled to seek meaning where there is none. Camus called this condition “the absurd”, and he believed that living in this situation is inescapable and agonising, “the confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world”.
Camus suggests there are three possible responses and dismisses two of them. He rejects suicide as an answer, then goes on to note that many people will overcome the absurd by what he terms “philosophical suicide” or a “leap of faith”. This is the human tendency to get rid of the questioning part of ourselves by embracing some compelling narrative which provides all the answers, which could be religion, or political activism, or just blind acceptance of anything which alleviates existential anxiety by removing the need to think more deeply.
To Camus, the solution to the absurd is neither of the above. Instead, he says we must rebel. That we must accept that there is no reason, that the cosmos doesn’t care about us, and we must then embrace life anyway. All our efforts and exertions fundamentally don’t matter, except for the fact that we enjoy them. We must acknowledge the absurdity of our situation and embrace that we alone have control of our fate.
Camus gives the example of Sisyphus, forever condemned to push a rock up a hill, only for it to roll back down again. He asks whether Sisyphus is any different to modern life spent carrying out futile jobs in offices; we eat, we sleep, we work, and it is only when we look up from our routine and seek a greater meaning that we become conscious of our condition.
We must imagine Sisyphus happy, Camus concludes, as he realises he is the master of his days, and his acceptance of his fate means he can live a contented life. Camus says that we don’t need to search for an over-arching meaning of life, that we instead should remember life is worth living, and choose to do what will bring us pleasure regardless of its inherent meaninglessness.
It is a philosophy I have found attractive for some time, but in recent months I’ve come to feel it is missing something. This credo is a highly individualistic one, lacking any notion of the common good, to responsibilities we may have to one another. It presents us all as pre-social individuals divorced from any wider context. It’s an ethos which sits very comfortably next to the logic of free market consumerism; don’t worry about the future, what will make you happy is buying this product or spending money on this experience. But what happens to society if we all simply imagine ourselves as self-contained enjoyment-maximising units?
An individualistic outlook is certainly not always bad. A focus on how all individuals deserve dignity, respect and freedom has helped drive a huge improvement in how minority groups are treated in society over my lifetime, for example. But there will always be points where individualism and social solidarity come into conflict; for instance when homeowners object to new developments near them because they wish to preserve their nice view and their peaceful neighbourhood. The social cost of blocking developments is often less immediately visible, though the cost is there nonetheless.
Despite the fact that British politics so often seems to be conducted in the language of the individual, we all have a deep-seated desire for community and belonging. As Rabbi Jonathan Sacks put it, when summing up the insight of the communitarians:
We are not mere individuals. We are social animals, embedded in a network of relationships—families, friends, colleagues, neighbours, co-workers, and co-worshippers—and some of these are constitutive of our sense of self. The “I,” in and of itself, has no identity. We are who we are because of the groups to which we belong.
It feels as though whilst our politics may have forgotten how to speak to the common good, the British people have not given up on community. Lockdowns brought home to us the importance of having friends and neighbours around us, to drop off shopping when we were sick, or chat to us remotely when we couldn’t go outside. Clapping for the NHS in many places became a way of checking in on those around us during the pandemic, and an opportunity to see people - albeit from a distance - whilst we were all housebound. A lot of us found lockdown tough simply because we missed being with other people.
In The Communitarian Critique of Liberalism, Michael Walzer argues that liberalism periodically requires a communitarian correction, because it has a tendency to chip away at social bonds and weaken solidarity. He cautions against throwing out liberalism altogether, as the alternative is an undesirable illiberalism, and communitarianism is not something one can force in any case; governments should certainly not look to impose such a correction by curtailing liberties. But perhaps we can think about ways to positively encourage, foster and develop community sentiment.
In our ever-more atomised age, when research tells us that a lack of social connections is linked to increased risk of serious health problems, when Britain is said to be the loneliness capital of Europe, finding ways to boost communal spirit is something that social democrats should embrace.
We are told we must imagine Sisyphus happy. But if he is to spend eternity pushing that same rock up that same hill all on his own, with no prospect of human contact, might we at least worry that Sisyphus is lonely?