Albert Camus
Fragile Times Need Camus
FRAGILE TIMES NEED CAMUS’VISION
Amin Zehra Rizvi
aminrizvi@hotmail.com
Albert Camus-
A Leader of Leaders
Introduction.
Albert Camus was born in 1913 in Algiers and brought up amidst the sounds of war horrors and the tortures of its onslaughts. His father died in 1914 during the war 1. He was left with a widowed mother who being deaf could not find a reasonable work to support the family. She shifted to her mother’s house in Belcourt. Camus’ grandmother suffered from cancer and two uncles had impaired limbs. Camus’ childhood was thus nurtured in abject sufferings of poverty its miseries and misfortunes. But Camus did not deter…
To fight the torments of these conditions, he joined athletics and became a leader competitor of sports. This in a disguise instilled his heart and mind with all those qualities of head and heart that made him realize that everything was not ugly in the dark and everything was not bright in the sunlight. He was able to discover anew, the qualities of mankind, and his own abilities to fight the conditions. He recognized his potentials to assimilate his guts to identify with the sufferings of others and integrate all to rebel against the odds of human dignity. This became his vision and mission.
Why Camus today?
Camus’ voice is the voice of a leader. His works have universal principles and themes of righteousness in action. His words are especially important because when people confront hard times they expect their leader to have experienced the same and Camus was a genuine product of all the anxieties that people witness or experience in the worst of times. Leaders guide, encourage so that they can keep alive the spirits of mankind and they are able to pursue a common goal of freedom from the manacles of crafty injustice.
Camus’Objectives
- To install responsibilities on every person who reads him so that they would be the ones who would be worrying and finding ways when confronted with direness of dismay and not seek refuge in others.
- To allow them to think for themselves than be dominated by the thinking of…
- To cut off all unnecessary deals with negativity, discord and despair. These save free thinking and bring more equality in the credibility of mankind in self and in others.
- To identify with others and receive new ideas all the time. Here according to Camus thinking should never stagnate nor stale.
- To create a kind of flexibility which would pressure minds to think hard and create changes for better conditions. According to Camus’ We cannot completely change but definitely we can help improve’
Camus’ works reflect all their logical moral consequence on the levels of freedom, responsibility that he imbibed from the world around him. For Camus the important thing is not to know whether life is worth living or not but how one must live it with contributions of sufferings that it bestows upon man. His interpretation of Sisyphus is that he is happy in the essence of his spirit with the eternal sufferings given to him by the gods.
The World Today.
Today in the twenty first century the conditions have not changed. In fact the ugly form of fascist dictator ship is masked by Democracy which is cradled in the laps of power thirsty bizarre nations It is the worst of time where distinctions have become invisible between honesty and dishonesty; where peace and calm startle and shrivel the unsecured mankind; where the rapid race of technology targets the annihilation of weak; where science is utilized for avenging small nations which refuse to bent to arrogant and ignorant authorities; where reason is shy to face the unreasonable; where nobility means corruption ; where wisdom means manipulation, where innocence fears to tread the swaths troded by the wise; where courage means a clean wipe of the hapless humanity, where deceit garbed with conceit stands in fidelity to the custodians of human destiny; where just is foul and unjust is fair and where inclination is towards destruction of the righteous integrity of man. The ruthless logic that crushes human lives is that the killer knows the boundless joys of killing in isolation and Camus in a warning tone stresses, “Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.” For according to Camus whoever today speaks of human existence in terms of power, efficiency and historical tasks is an actual or “potential assassin”.
Camus’works and their application to the Times
Camus’ literature became thus rational and empirical tradition which originated from the war horrors against humanity with a basic approach through science, politics, unethical concepts wrapped in unlawful theories but the law of nature helplessly looks upon the whole as a silent spectator to let things take their own course. Camus’ philosophical outlook centered on human urge to escape from calculated injustice, escape from selfishly beneficial intolerance, escape from deliberate misunderstanding which mound upon humanity the flakes of tortures and irreparable sufferings without the wind of fair reason and sun of hope.
Each of his writings, spell out a definition of man’s candor of devising and controlling his own destiny. None of his works is a resting station of man’s defeat or helplessness. His words through his characters live an immortal live action before his readers. In The Outsider for example Meursault develops like a single man against the odds of society after following innumerous absurd events he rises from a tranquil passivity into a positive clarity of mind to start all anew to wait at dawn for a new day to arise. Camus does not show him dead. Camus’ conviction was that, “You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life.”|
In The Plague Dr Rieux and his assistant fight a challenging battle tirelessly against the symbolic plague that has invaded a sleeping town. The narrative is convincingly realistic portrays the brutality of the event to take a blind toll of mankind. Camus extols the revolt which the plague arouses in the heart of crushed, disillusioned and dismayed man saying “If you fail it does not mean you should cease working”
The Fall ( a story monologue) a French lawyer Paneloux hides in Amsterdam as a self proclaimed ‘judge penitent ‘to examine his own conscience to reveal his own portrait, a mirror in which all his contemporaries can recognize themselves. An artful
deceit of the classical French a good example of foul in disguise of fair. Camus’ rigid obsession with truth ironically portrays the hypocrisy of universal type which today is not a bygone creed. In the words of Confucius, “A man should practice what he preaches, but a man should also preach what he practices.”. .
Camus’ play Caligula. Here Caligula becomes a victim of his misjudgment and misinterpretation. Caligula is not a maniac, a product of his own frenzy but a positive true reflection of the state of human mind existing in a world where there is no direction, no aim. He exhibits life in a very realistic way. He yearns for the moon. Through Caligula Camus explains the meaning of life exists in human experience. People know that life has meaning that is why they interact with each other while holding the reigns of destiny in their own hands, using their own minds and reasons.
For Camus it was hard to understand suicide. In the Myth of Sisyphus he writes, “Suicide is a sign that one lacks to confront the ‘nothing’” Life is an adventure without final meaning but still worth experiencing. Since there is nothing life should be lived to its full. In fact for Camus people were one that gave life meaning. If the world is condemned even then it is a familiar world. On the contrary a world bereft of illusion and light becomes a strange world and the man in it becomes a stranger.
The Rebel is the most comprehensive exploration of Camus’ beliefs. It is a commentary on revolt. In it he tries to explain that a revolt is different from revolution. In fact it is a process of evolution of mans condition which he experiences and works through to make the environment better, society improved. This is indeed a process which requires leadership which is intelligent, peaceful and determined with consistency. Revolt does not profess violence. This becomes the best sanctified guide of human forbearance and determination.
Quoting Camus
“Revolution is not revolt. It was revolt which bolstered the Resistance alive and fruitful even after years. It was complete, obstinate refusal almost blind, at the beginning of an order which wanted men to fall on their knees. Revolt stems first from the heart but a time comes when it passes to the sprit where feelings become ideas where spontaneous fervor leads to direct action. This is the moment of revolution”
Conclusion
For Camus’ revolt begins with a single, isolated person who refuses to bent to an immoral choice, rules and laws unless they are amended for the betterment of society. The best example is that of Martin Luther King. His was a revolt against a system of injustice and betrayal and not revolution.
Camus wrote to Jean Grenier “ I have such a strong desire to help reduce the sum of unhappiness and of bitterness which empoisons mankind.” This desire could have not been sorted out by anyone but a totalitarian humanist at the time especially when the world was jeopardized by a system of anarchy where human souls were rutted with gnashes of humiliations and where hope became meaningless These hopes were dissuaded and disabled further by the empowerment of fascists’ manacles. It was the time which did not seek explanations of human conditions but it ardently looked for a soothing remedy from the tortures and an escape into the freedom of justice, tolerance and human understanding. That is why Camus said, “In every guilty man there is some innocence. This makes every absolute condemnation revolting.”
Today the best example can be understood by the symbolic reference to engineered flowers. They have long life, beautiful colors, they are much healthier and sturdy but their fundamental character of intoxicating fragrance has been annihilated. You are frightened to have them with you because they emit repulsive odor.
Amin Zehra Rizvi
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Dubai Knowledge Village
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About the Author
Albert Camus – The Absurd
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