Thursday, October 11, 2018

Life Without Social Constructs

Camus’ argument in his essay The Myth of Sisyphus on the quality of Sisyphus’ life seems very inaccurate. He argues Sisyphus is living a happy life while pushing a rock up a mountain just to see it roll to the bottom when he reaches the top. Camus' existentialist beliefs bash social constructs, which is why Sisyphus is able to live a "happy" life. Although social constructs often get the worse of people, they also are necessary for having a structured and meaningful life. If everyone was an existentialist, life would be extremely boring and not worth living.

Imagine a world full of Meursaults. It would be terrible. Or imagine being Sisyphus, and claiming to be happy. There would be very little pleasure or fun in life, and Camus would be lying to say he would be fine living Sisyphus’ life. Just living to live isn’t happy by any means, and Camus doesn’t seem to understand that. It could be argued that feelings are a social construct, but they are also very natural, and life without emotion or feelings is unhealthy. People need motives in their life to be productive, and existentialists lack this, which makes the quality of the world go down, consequently making the quality of life decrease. Based off of Camus’ The Stranger, existentialists seem to be self-centered and mean, which is something this world definitely doesn’t need more of.

1 comment:

  1. Very insightful commentary Thomas I completely agree with you. I think that without meaning of life and without emotion or variation in life, it would be very boring.

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