But first, let us define the absurdity of absurd. According to Camus, absurdity is not the unknowing nature of the world, but rather the human tendency to beg something out of it. The world does not owe you a response. It is absurd to expect it to do so. Absurd could also be a feeling. The feeling one gets when disappointed from the responses we create. However, his interpretation is that: We shouldn’t be angry at the world for the responses it didn’t generate. We should be loathed at ourselves. Oh, wait. That is nihilism. Am I reading this right?

Camus criticizes, supports and even neglects Nietzsche. Yet, he quotes him in one of his most dishonest paragraphs, “Art and nothing but art, we have art in order to not die of the truth” I find the use of this quote in his argument extremely contradictory. I do not think art is directly responsible of our tendencies to commit suicide, and neither do I think that is what Nietzche meant. What I find even more unbearable, is Camus using this quote, unbeknownst of the fact that art is probable to the nature of religion, and most beautiful art has historically generated from religious belief.

Now, I am not anywhere near a religious person. And so far, I agree with Camus when he exclaims about the absurd creation, problem of evil and the nature of the disingenuous systematic God structure. Yet that is not enough for Camus. He moves a step further, and keeps on confusing the reader (me), and unsurprisingly also confusing himself. Once, he exclaims himself to be a free man, then he notes himself to be tied as an unfree being in an unfree world.

He also claims we can achieve “true freedom,” proposed, however, what even is “true freedom” in this case, if not a philosophical mumbo-jumbo oxymoron? I stand corrected, it doesn’t matter if Camus comes from a poor background, if his philosophy speaks of classist remarks. I am sure he didn’t intend to make it so, but his way of dealing with life is—if not classist, then surely insensitive.

To prove this further, I want to highlight his understanding of suicide. Which, he hooks on, the moment the book starts. He exclaims how people commit suicide “because they judge life is not worth living” which I find grotesque, people do not judge life as not worth living, they find life unbearable to live. Neither of those things have the same meaning. In this case, I suppose Camus was right about one thing, words are indeed perverted.

He views suicide in a theory, in a way no one else does. He exclaims to people to end their lives as an act of surrender. No, not a surrender with the vulnerability one faces due to socio-economic pressures, but due to philosophical vulnerability of the world. I find this explanation of suicide extremely scrutinising. It isn’t that I disagree with Camus all together, rather I find his notion of suicide and the absurd to be extremely out of touch.

I think the “nothingness” of Camus’s ‘Absurd’ speaks to a larger audience that we should address. I think Myth of Sisyphus is a great allegory for a working class consumer. However, does that negate what it connects with? No! I mean, fine. Let’s be fair here, I highly doubt Camus wrote the book having a philosophical audience in mind, however, I will not be shying behind while critiquing his essay, I am no more than a teenager with an immense interest in philosophy, and reading Camus’s novel, does nothing but mock me as a reader. Okay, fine. I am being too rude. Actually. No. You must hear me out.

Now, I truly believe in the notion of ‘separating the art from the artist’ but when the artist questionably writes, “a mother or an uxorious wife necessarily had ‘an enclosed heart’ because it is ‘turned away from the world’” Yet, he has no issues with sleeping around with multiple women, and finding it liberating. (Might I add, his affairs led to his wife try to commit suicide multiple times.) You know what would’ve been “liberating”? Having a chance to breathe after her notoriously defamed husband passed away. Is that what he meant by an ‘enclosed heart’?

That is not it. In the book, when he supports and—in a way portrays himself to be like Don Juan, who, as a character, murders a father to seduce his daughter… Oh… well…

He writes, “It is because he (Don Juan) loves them with the same passion and each time with his whole self that he must repeat his gift and his profound quest,” Because yes, a man loving multiple women is oh-so-sharing-the-love-i-have, but a woman in a marriage has an enclosed heart.

He asks, “Why should it be essential to love rarely in order to love much?” Which is a good question in hindsight, if it wasn’t in the context it is in right now.

“What Don Juan realises in action is an ethic of quantity, whereas the saint, on the contrary, tends towards quality.” He finished. Is this the absurd that is preached? This male dominance of the “Absurd Man” is nothing but another way to reinforce masculinity. Camus explores the legendary seducer as a paradigm of living passionately in the present. However, this framework is inherently unequal. Women in Don Juan’s world are reduced to an endless series of conquests, valued for their “quantity” rather than individual humanity. They are treated as passive recipients of the male gaze and physical desire.

Women are nothing in Camus’s absurd world. Because that is true and real. Women do not have the privilege to experience the same way Camus could. Women in Camus’ essays do not achieve the philosophical depth of the male protagonists; rather, they serve as fleeting stepping stones for men to achieve lucidity and defiance. The woman’s perspective in relation to the absurd is never seriously explored.

And we haven’t even reached Sisyphus yet. You know why? Because it doesn’t mean anything. As the title says: It’s a literary nothingburger.

This isn’t to say that Camus’s essay is meaningless. It isn’t trying to find meaning. However, I do find Camus to be dishonest. A question in my mind arises. “What is so wrong about creating your own meaning?” Truthfully, what is so wrong in accepting the absurd, yet creating meaning regardless. Or not accepting the absurd, yet creating your own meaning regardless. So what, you believe God exists? You think you have free will? I think the love Camus is trying to preach, the extensive ‘womanising’ is his way of the escapism he critiques.

It is hope. It’s to be latched on. Optimism. To be wanted, to be known, to be loved. Absurdism and meaninglessness is a rich man’s cup of tea. Others can’t afford to drink. That is where Camus lacks applicability. This is where he truly fails. He fails to regard the human nature of hope.

A little side note, I do not think that absurdism doesn’t help. It does. It has helped me immensely to become the person I am today. But it doesn’t do much. It’s sort of stagnant. I learnt a lot from absurdism, it is sitting with it that is hard. That is the bread crumbs Camus feeds himself on, in my opinion. It’s beautiful in theory. That’s all about it.

In the end, I think if Camus was alive in this day and age, he would’ve a hundred percent been a reddit moderator.

And he would have banned me on r/askphilosophy.

Dear Lord, I love you so, 
before I stood unbeknownst to love, 
your child asks you a question, and I cry
why there exist such suffering? 
mustn’t you know? 

I wear your cross, your pain, your suffering, on my seamless neck ; 
I don’t question, I don’t ask, I only can beg.

I pray, I digress; my knees on the ground, 
the ground built for your glory
, my lord, when will suffering be over? 
If your pain, your death, and your revolution could bring about a change for love, 
why couldn’t it be done for us underdogs? The curse of humans and the curse of conscience, the curse of death and the curse of meaning, why must us be the one? 

How tolerant could we be, my lord? 
We suffer, we grieve, we ache, but how much sorrow could we take? 
The love we give and the love we recurve, no longer matters when I sit here, begging you to listen. 

The world is crying out for love, 
but not the love you give your children, 
It is the kind of love that exists that doesn’t need begging, 
the kind which doesn’t reward worship, it believes it.

How can we even call your love, love,
When it isn’t sufficient? It prides itself on languish! 
Therefore, I beg, I beg, I beg again and again, 
no longer for your glory, no longer for the end of suffering.
Just for love, you cannot provide.

There are undoubtedly some things that I still like to question related to my Anti-Natalist beliefs. I am fully aware of the fact that Anti-Natalism is ridiculed for its ‘impracticalness’ and I am also, fully aware of the biological need of reproduction. Even so, I also fully agree with the bodily autonomy of a being. Which is why, I feel like some feminists may disagree with Anti-Natalism.

However, my reasoning is not based on those terms. It is purely based on ethics. I will answer all of the points raised against anti-natalism. It is somehow similar to the trolley-problem. It might sound insane, or crazy, but it is fully justiciable. Here’s how.

Ever since I was a young girl, I had always been repulsed by the idea of child-birth. Especially natural child-birth. I am a C-Section baby, however the societal idea of C-Section is still looked down upon. Natural birth is a horrifyingly painful process. The fact that you have to carry a being for nine months as your body suffers, just to “enjoy” the feeling of having a child. This is absolutely mental to me.

First, yes, of course the child will suffer in the world. It might become a horrible person or even succumb to addiction. Suffering is inevitable. Every single person in this world has experienced mental or physical pain. I mean, you cry the moment you are born.

Benetar explains this in his asymmetry argument as:

1. The presence of pain is bad yet the presence of pleasure is good.

However,

2. The absence of pain is good even if that good is not “enjoyed” by anyone. yet, the absence of pleasure is not bad unless there is somebody for whom this absence is a deprivation.

Pain dominates pleasure in every sense. Same goes with the question:

Would you endure 5 minutes of the worst pain, if after that you could enjoy 5 minutes of the greatest pleasure?

Somehow the 5 minutes of the worst pain seems worse, doesn’t it? Because it is!

You could argue bodily autonomy for anti-natalism. How DARE you decide it is immoral for EVERYONE to have kids? But the thing is! When you are born, you are not deciding that for yourself.

When you want to have kids, you think “Oh, I like the pleasure, so that means they would be alright with life-long suffering!”. Bringing a child into this world is like force-feeding someone drugs because you think they’d have a fun time.

Why is it that the person giving birth’s bodily autonomy is more important than that of the child born? Sure, because they have no body. But, since they ARE born, they WILL have a body. And, no this is not a anti-abortion argument, in fact, I am practically saying that no child should be born in terms of consent. Not the other way around.

Both movements, in different ways, are concerned with control over one’s body. Modern feminism emphasizes reproductive freedom and choice, while anti-natalism aligns with a desire to avoid the physical and social consequences of pregnancy and childbirth. It should not exist in the first place. Here’s where feminism peaks in.

A Daunting Pro-Natalist Force On Women

It’s the subtle taunts on women regarding marriage and motherhood, whether at the workplace or in a casual setting. Women have been toys for patriarchy to puppet around. Indian women are choosing to be child-free now, more than ever. This is a straight reasoning from societal pressure. When you take a woman and oppress her.

She repulses.

Now, surely there is a difference between staying child free due to societal reasons and staying child free due to anti-natalism. But, yet again. There is a co-relation, not a causation.

Not every child-free woman thinks that her choice is superior because of ethicality. She does it out of her own autonomy. Which makes sense. A woman surely could want kids, but they have way more autonomy if they remain child free.

And in the biological sense, humans are designed to stay sad. Instead, we are designed primarily to survive and reproduce, like every other creature in the natural world. A state of contentment is discouraged by nature because it would lower our guard against possible threats to our survival.

and since that is true, if we are aware that humans are designed to stay sad, then why should we reproduce and create more pain for the child?

And as a feminist, it is certain to ask. Who’s bodily autonomy is needed when both of the beings will suffer through the process, and afterwards?

Rather than breeding ever more humans into dilapidated broken systems, we should be aiming to fix those systems. Rather than aspiring for the family way of life, we should be aiming to eliminate homelessness. Hence why, I started and end with the quote:

“Overpopulation is by far the worst kind of pollution.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

She asks, “Who is consuming this content? Take content as content”

Then she says something that made me run to write this essay.

“You were always okay with women being sexualised. As long as it was free. Now that women are profiting off of it, it’s not okay?”

Now, let us make this clear. I do understand and agree with this sentence.

Nevermind… not really.

You see, there is a difference in sexualisation and sex work. Which I think Rida is not understanding. Yes, women being sexualised is wrong, and always will be. But sex work is not just ‘profiting off of sexualisation’. Sex work is profitting off of sex. Or, also profiting off of incel men. Even pornography or Only Fans.

Sex work is not empowering for women. It is extremely exploitative and demeaning. It is yet another form of “work” under capitalism that exploits women.

And I agree with Rida, this is not about culture. Clearly, prostitution has been historically prevalent and has existed as a profession for a long time. This is about how the economy can feel like we have a grasp on control, when we don’t. And why do we need control? Surely it isn’t because we are living in a patriarchal society where women have no real authority. Does having money mean we are free from the patriarchal system? Sure we have financial freedom, and sex work might even be good for that,

But why is it empowering?

It’s easy to say sex work has nothing to do with empowerment, and all about financial gain. The empowering part is a facade.

The term “empowering” is something we should rather discuss. A comment on reddit said: ‘Other professions use their bodies in different ways, athletes for example, would you feel that their job is empowering? or do you view their bodies as objectified?’

The difference is, a random commenter on reddit, Athletes are exercising their talent, not selling sex. (Sure John, sex is def a talent and your dick is magical.) To add, In no way are women to blame for this reaction, when you oppress a group, the next generation comes back with force.

With the uprising of pornography and Only Fans, we are slowly forgetting that treating your body as an industrial object should not be normalised, for certain reasons.

Normalisation creates a reaction. Why I say this, is that: By normalising sex work, pornography, Only Fans, you’re not dismantling patriarchy. You’re living it.

In Gangubai Kathiawadi the main lead: Gangubai, who plays the role of a woman who was exploited into turning to sex work, says this:

“Just imagine, if there was no Kamathipura, this city would turn into a jungle, women will be raped, families will fall apart, relationships will end, and our glorious Indian culture will turn to dust. And you will be responsible for this!”

But… rape still exists. Is it due to the lack of sex workers? No! It is because rapists care about control, not just sex.

Now that I have explained my opinion on sex work, I also want to add, that there is not much we can do about sex work. Sure, we educate, dismantle, explain, but that is limited. Sex work will continue centuries, just like how it has existed long before.

One more thing I want to talk about,

We certainly won’t be able to do anything by mocking sex workers. Sex is a beautiful art, surely, it’s just the system we live under that makes sex work exploitative. Which is why, if we were under a non-patriarchal system, feminists would have been absolutely in support of it.

One thing that some feminists do not understand, is that mocking other women for living their lives in a non-feminist way or even in a ‘not-good-enough-feminist’ way will NEVER work in the favour of feminism. Hence, the title.

Yes, some women are brainwashed into believing a religion that oppresses them, yes some women think ‘trad-wife’ is empowering, yes some women are not ‘good feminists’. But feminism is not a game of pick and choose. You cannot decide which women you want to fight for. We fight for every type of woman, because we are all oppressed, just in different ways.

Feminism is not that every woman should live their lives in a certain way. Feminism is also about choice. If we were under a full feminist world, then sex work as a choice would have been viable.

My political science teacher once quoted Voltaire, “I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

So, in my greatest opinion, the meme: “look at our feminist dawg, we are not making out of patriarchy” is incredibly stupid. Because some feminists do not speak for all, and most certainly one person’s opinion cannot influence one of the biggest movements to fail.

Otherwise, Ayn Rand would have succeeded long ago.

On that point, I really do not understand the blame towards Sabrina Carpenter for her album cover. I thought we are all aware of how their label owns these celebrities. Sure… it can be considered demeaning. (Or, surprise surprise: sexual.)

And we can all agree that this is a twenty six year old woman who knew exactly what she was doing. And in all fairness, the entire album bashes the existence of men. So, either I am horrible at pop-culture, or it is really not that big of a deal. She is not selling sex, (kind of) she is selling her brand and her music. Her brand can be sex, but it’s inter-changing. Currently it is man-hating, tomorrow it might be man-loving.

Who cares?

Anyways, that’s all related to pop-culture one can get from me.

Feminists, I understand what you’re trying to do by recognising patterns of abuse and oppression, but there is not much you can do when the woman herself does not recognise it, well, except fight for all of them, together.

“If a ship is replaced part by part up to a point where not a single original part remains in it, is it still the same ship?”

Anand Gandhi’s Ship of Theseus is the closest we have gotten to ‘oscar-worthy’ in a while. The concept of this movie is almost entirely philosophical, questioning the integrity of the same thought again and again — “If something in me changes, am I still the same?”

First, the spotlight is on Aliya, a photographer that took “make memories with your eyes” as literally as possible and rebuked it. She revealed how she lost her eye-sight in an interview and her anger for accidental photographs shows the control she wishes for in her art. Isn’t this highly relatable? Maybe connected to the director himself—her art is the one thing she can control, even if the photograph was intrinsically good, she feels as if it’s not “her’s”. That begs the question, is her art only good because she’s blind? Once she is lucky enough to get an eye donation, she feels as though her art is not good enough. Was she only her because of her blindness? If so—

Is she the same ship?

“We are all blind men trying to perceive the elephant.”

Says the Maitreiya, an atheist, vegan monk who spends time in court hearings regarding animal cruelty in medicinal ways. Is this the director’s way of challenging the perceiving of his art? or any art in that matter. I found this segment of the movie rather interesting, now this could be due to my previous vegan beliefs, but because of the way this movie sheds it’s light on—where exactly can you draw the line in ethical belief systems? The character of the young lawyer with a rather hedonistic and nihilistic name, Charvaka. His name might be self given, but the way he interacts with the Monk is what interests me the most.

Charvaka followed a more rational yet redox way of thinking, not in the opposing sense in comparison to the Monk, but even if they came to a consensus, the lingering doubt of indivisual change stays. He questioned Maitreiya’s justification by asking if there’s anything we could do that has an impact on the larger scheme of things, which is quickly shut down by the sick monk — “Every molecule in the universe is affected by our actions.”

My two cents on this is rather on the side for the sick monk. As we see his humane nature of selfishness—or rather him using the same animal abusing medications to save his life. I am not too sure if you could call that selfishness. If he does not hold onto his own values and morals,

Is he the same ship?

“What is the point of such compassion? The society should benefit from your existence!”

Although the third segment of the movie does not appeal to me, it does resonate my anger of apolitical persons. This section, talks about an apolitical guy who previously has gotten a kidney transplant—finds out a poor man got scammed into losing his kidney. His behaviour would rather be comforting to others, but to me, his activist grandmother stood out the most. How she built her family around politics and showcasing them the importance of such.

Once the apolitical man is stuck in a political act, he is bound to make the poor man’s life better. But the poor man does not mind his kidney being stolen, as long as he gets the money in return. This class consciousness shown by the director is something unique to bollywood. The money is enough for his future, but there will not be such ‘future’ if he does not have his organs!

The question is then—after his transplant,

Is he the same ship?

Yet, this question could be asked to all three of our protagonists for tonight. Considering each one of them have had organ surgeries, either an eye, a liver or a kidney. Everyone is always indeed connected and was shown beautifully by the director at the end, when they all get invited to watch videos shot by a cave explorer who got a heart transplant.

Are they all the same human beings if parts of their body are different to the one before?

If yes, they are the same human beings, we are putting weight on memory as well as physical attributes, which would make more sense. But there are exceptions to this, what about a person with Amnesia? Are they the same person?

For some interesting reason, suddenly the concept of physical nature sounds more appealing.

Maybe we are not meant to decipher between the two, maybe it is a paradox and meant to be one. The take aways from this movie for me, is not just ethics, or veganism, it is also hypocrisy. The notion of selfishness that we forget is in our nature and that it is okay to be selfish.

At the end, the quote that would suphise this all—