A2 Absurdism / Camu

Contingent Meaning
Even if there no ultimate meaning, it doesn’t reduce the contingent meaning
generated by trying in the face of failure –we are a humanist investment in reducing
the material suffering of others, not a reinvestment in false hope. Even if life has no
meaning, vote for us, because paradoxically it’s that political act which generates the
most meaning.
M. L. CLARK FEBRUARY 2, 2020 [“What’s the Point of Being a Good Humanist in a Mucked-Up World?”
available online at: https://www.patheos.com/blogs/anotherwhiteatheistincolombia/2020/02/
humanist-mucked-up-world/, accessed 2-20-2020]cdm
Let’s begin with a story. It’s the one where everything’s going wrong: zoonosis has triggered a massive viral outbreak, and associated spike in racism;
Brexit has gone into effect, emboldening further racists; democratic checks-and-balances are being denied in plain view in the U.S. political system; citizen
monitoring and related forms of state control are on the rise in genocide-perpetuating China; the consequences of climate change are being felt the world over in
extreme natural events and increasing refugeeism; populist presidents are still thriving through the implementation of brutal initiatives in a wide range of countries;
indigenous activists are still dying in their on-the-ground attempts to help protect natural resources; our food systems are making us unhealthier; and if obesity or
opioids don’t kill us our loneliness epidemic will. When I talk about humanism–that is, when I talk about the need for spiritual and secular people
to put aside cosmological differences to focus on a shared interest in empowering human beings with empathy and
science–I’m making a pretty darned big leap in presuming that we have any agency at all. Because some days it really doesn’t seem like we do, does it? We cut
out single-use plastics… and then read articles telling us that our substitutes might be making matters worse. We strive to eat less-than-perfect-looking groceries,
then discover that such trend cycles can create different forms of waste, when the food industry already has perfectly good uses for ugly vegetables. We recycle our
hearts out, then find out things about the recycling industry that make us doubt if it’s good enough. We reduce our meat intake, but then take a vacation worse
than many people’s entire annual CO2 footprint, meat and all. And are enough of us going to stop reproducing? Ever? Is it reasonable, is it desirable, is it attainable,
to be a good humanist in such a staunchly mucked-up world? The Absurdist Alternative To be clear, after all: There are alternatives to humanism,
both spiritual secular. If there weren’t, to say one is humanist would be meaningless, on par with saying “I am human.” (Which I’m certain most of you are.) There’s
existential nihilism, of course: the idea that life has no intrinsic meaning and nothing we create has meaning, either. For a spiritual nihilist, this looks like “if you are
not in favour with our god, your life is meaningless and probably forfeit.” For an existential nihilist, this looks like “there’s no intrinsic meaning in the cosmos and no
point to contriving a sense of meaning during my time alive. Do as you will until you die.” Then there’s worldly detachment, Buddhist-flavoured or otherwise, in
which one seeks a state of reduced investment in what the world is and isn’t, aspiring simply to be without striving for any greater insight or value in the time you’ve
spent alive. And then there’s my personal favourite, absurdism. As in Albert Camus’s famous summation of the precept, “il faut imaginer sisyphe heureux”
(One must imagine Sisyphus happy), absurdism tells us to live with full awareness that life is meaningless without either killing
ourselves or falling in with dishonest philosophy, instead being content with the struggle to hold the line between these options. Why? Because there and there
alone, in our choice to be content with an existence we do not control, do we have any agency in the cosmos at all. So, sure, we could be absurdists instead. (I often
long to be one after certain news cycles.) But…
there is a critical difference between absurdism and humanism, and it lies in that notion of
aspiring to contentment. For an absurdist, that’s it. Life’s a grand cosmic joke: revel in it! For a humanist, though, we might ask
for a broader range of responses. We might say, that is, “il faut imaginer sisyphe insatiable”: insatiable for new knowledge, insatiable for new
experience, insatiable for self-improvement. Because who says he can’t learn to sing while pushing that rock? Who says he can’t holler at other denizens of Hades
and ask them how the underworld’s treating them? Who says he can’t offer counsel to them in their own suffering, and share his own low spells to receive counsel
and support from them in turn? It’s no surprise that every generation from Sumer on (and probably quite a few before the written word as well) has stories of mass
disaster wiping out most of the world, and prophecies of a more complete end-times soon to come. Promises, promises, am I right? In our species’ sheer exhaustion
with itself through the ages, we’ve routinely sought to regain control over our circumstances by fixating, through our stories, on the hope that all our greatest
missteps will soon be at an end. (And then, in more tragic cases, we’ve sometimes achieved that control by hastening that end along through war or other forms of
mass suicide.) Harder, far harder, is to invest in the struggle itself. This isn’t the same as being hopeful (though you’re welcome
to feel hopeful, too, if you’d like). This isn’t about finding new and better platitudes to replace the old, and clinging to any sense that if we just try a little bit harder,
a little bit longer, everything will work out in the end. Secular humanists: We know it won’t. The end is oblivion. That’s as much as anything ever “works out” in the
cosmos. So, no, this isn’t about optimism, per se. This is more about… recognizing when you are tired, and fed up, and cynical, and
hurt, and wounded, and angry–all conditions in which it seems reasonable just to stop bothering–and then to make a concerted effort to keep
bothering anyway. Not because of some promised better world, spiritual or secular. And not because we truly believe that racism, sexism, xenophobia, and other
forms of social persecution will be “solved” in our lifetimes. But because there is a gravity to saying, “Everything’s mucked-up
and I’m sticking with it anyway.” Say it to yourself. Try it (or more forceful variants) out. There’s a conviction to it, isn’t there? A grounding
assertion of inner will. It’s our ultimate test, my friends. Can we get over ourselves, get over our egos, get over our hurting pasts and our
grinding presents, get over all the people who ever wronged us and all the things we can never fix, long enough to be able to say, “Existence does
not have to be happy or hopeful to be a space where meaning is made”? After all, if there were a great big red button we could
press to terminate everything simultaneously, okay, fine–then we’d be in a situation where it would be worth haggling over how much suffering is too much. But we
don’t, so we aren’t. Instead we
have a world where we’re all linked to one another, and our collective suffering rises and
falls with one another. Much as we might want to live with perfect detachment, then, and much as we might want to affect absurdist
humour through it all, the day-to-day reality of our interactions with other people and their struggles is
always going to pull us back in to the agony of meaning-creation in human society. (I mean, unless you’re already
living in a remote cabin somewhere, disconnected from the entire ecosystem of human struggle? In which case, why the heck are you reading this?) And it is agony,
because meaning-creation is not easy, and it’s not always successful. We despair, we lose, we
fail. Routinely. Daily, even. But even if we’re not
high enough in the chain to make sweeping and sustainable changes to how much other people suffer, we can strive to
alleviate proximate complaints: sometimes through aid; sometimes through presence; but most of all, by learning to
look at our circumstances and remind ourselves that there is as much value in this form of existence as there is in
any other, rich or poor, sea-slug and moutain-lion alike: Namely, as much as we choose to invest in its growth. So invest well, fellow humanists–in new knowledge,
new experiences, new approaches to self- and communal improvement based on the best new intel–all while expecting no greater reward than this: That you
invested in your existence for as long, and as meaningfully, as you could.

Not Metaphysical
Camus is not making metaphysical claims about absurdism—rather he is analyzing
responses to the absurd—you should prefer the objective lens of objectivity to solve
___ in favor of their baseless claims analyzing meaning
Lana Starkey is a PhD candidate in the School of Arts and Communication at The University of
Queensland focusing on Camus, PARRHESIA, 2014 [“ALBERT CAMUS AND THE ETHICS OF
MODERATION” accessed 02-21-2020 NUMBER 21, 144-60] bcr/mre
The world, however, is unintelligible and remains silent to this request. Camus here is not making any metaphysical
claim about the nature of reality; the world is not essentially meaningless or absurd in-itself, and
neither is the individual. It is not the case that either is defective in some way, for this would assume
knowledge beyond the realm of experience and would indeed be positing a metaphysic of perfectibility. We can see that
Camus’ emphasis on the collapse of the “every-day routine” is not arbitrary—the absurd does not emerge from some longing
for a “lost paradise.” Simply, it is a feeling which arises from a divorce between the individual and the
world in which she finds herself. If we desire to classify this relationship, we could say that the absurd is addressing an ontological need by
instantiating an epistemological claim. In order to draw attention to how the world is silent to the individual’s desire for human meaning,
Camus argues that rationalist systems like atomic theory ultimately rely on poetry or metaphor. But you tell me of an invisible planetary system
in which electrons gravitate around a nucleus. You explain this world to me with an image. I realise then that you have been reduced to poetry:
I shall never know. Have I the time to become indignant? You have already changed theories. So that science that was to teach me everything
ends up in a hypothesis, that lucidity founders in metaphor, that uncertainty is resolved in a work of art. What need had I of so many efforts?
(23) Thus the universe is not meaningless; it is simply unable to satisfy the individual’s longing for clarity.6
The absurd is the clash between the individual and the world. The former cannot help but insist on familiarity and the
latter cannot respond adequately; it remains unreasonable in this sense. The absurd then is an experience at the limits of
human experience, accompanied by an “ontological exigency”7 to rationalise the irrational world.
We can understand this further by examining the argument Camus makes here, concerning the scientific difference between
objectivity and subjectivity. Science
approaches the world through the lens of objectivity. This is appropriate
for the analysis of natural phenomena. Yet, when such objectivity extends to existence—or the desire for
human meaning—it is radically inappropriate, simply by virtue of the intrinsically subjective nature of
human consciousness. Moreover, if we follow the scientific method to its logical conclusion, the most
objective perspective is one infinitely removed from the world; that is, removed from space and time.
Paradoxically, such an objective perspective claims to inform us clearly about the world, but necessarily
obscures subjective experience—and importantly, human meaning—because it must step outside of the world. However, Camus is less
interested in a rigorous defence of the absurd than an analysis of the consequences of absurdity . If the
absurd is born of the individual’s refusal to be complacent with the world’s irrationality, then this
awareness demands some response. It is at this point that suicide arises, as a possible response to the absurd. In fact, The
Myth is precisely an examination of responses to the absurd, and an argument for why we should not
seek to escape or transcend it in any way. Yet, Camus rejects suicide, metaphysical hope, and despair, and instead carves out a
positive, life-affirming, and creative response to this ontological state. In the next section I shall show how he arrives at this positive response to
the world.

Not k2 quality life

Camus certainly does not think acknowledging the absurd is key to value to life—
absurdism is absolute nonsense and even Camus agrees
Matthew Hamilton Bowker, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Political Science, Department of
Interdisciplinary Studies, Medaille College, Ph.D. Dissertation, 2008 [“ALBERT CAMUS AND THE
POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY OF THE ABSURD” accessed 02-24-2020
https://drum.lib.umd.edu/handle/1903/8255] mre
Before his Nobel, even as early as 1945, Camus had been “France’s leading public intellectual… the moral voice of his era” (Judt 1998, 88).
Germaine Brée refers to Camus’ early notoriety as inspiring “a certain hagiography” by which he had become the conscience of his generation.
Even in 1952, after Hannah Arendt met Camus in Paris, she wrote to her husband that he was “undoubtedly, the best man now in France. He is
head and shoulders above the other intellectuals” (Arendt in Judt 1998, 87). But
this kind of praise had become less common
by the 1950s, when Camus’ works and his public life caused animated controversies that reduced the
public’s estimation of him. Camus’ moralistic tone got him accused of having become a “secular saint”
(Todd 2000, 374), not unlike his character, Tarrou, in The Plague. Sartre’s and Jeanson’s personal rebukes of Camus tried, and succeeded to
some degree, to cut his image down to size. Even well after his death, Patrick McCarthy would introduce Camus to
readers as “a bad philosopher” whose “honesty could be devious and [who] was insufferably self-
righteous” (1982, 6-7). But it is likely that Camus’ lofty style belied a certain philosophical humility. While often indignant about
moral ills, Camus rarely took an absolute stance against anything more morally controversial than
torture or wanton murder. In working out his positions, Camus seems to have been aware of his own limitations,
often attempting to discount his contributions and his worth as a systematic thinker with comments like, “I am not a
philosopher and I never claimed to be one” (Camus in Judt 1998, 90), and “I don’t think I’m worth a red cent as a
philosopher; what really concerns me is knowing how one should act” (Camus in Willhoite 1968, 6). Statements like these, while not
altogether humble, do illustrate that Camus’ primary concern was morality, not logic or theory.

Double turn
Their affirmative double turns itself with Camus’s explanation of existentialism— their
desire to solve ___ is what he describes as an inconsistent, escapist effort
Ronald Aronson, philosophy professor @ Wayne State University, Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy, 2011 [“Albert Camus” accessed 02-21-2020 https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/camus/]
cdm/mre
According to Camus, each existentialist writer betrayed his initial insight by seeking to appeal to
something beyond the limits of the human condition, by turning to the transcendent. And yet even if we avoid what
Camus describes as such escapist efforts and continue to live without irrational appeals, the desire to do so is built into our
consciousness and thus our humanity. We are unable to free ourselves from “this desire for unity, this longing to
solve, this need for clarity and cohesion” (MS, 51). But it is urgent to not succumb to these impulses and to instead accept
absurdity. In contrast with existentialism, “The absurd is lucid reason noting its limits” (MS, 49). Camus clearly
believes that the existentialist philosophers are mistaken but does not argue against them, because he believes
that “there is no truth but merely truths” (MS, 43). His disagreement rather takes the subtler and less assertive form of an
immanent critique, pointing out that each thinker’s existentialist
philosophy ends up being inconsistent with its own
starting point: “starting from a philosophy of the world’s lack of meaning, it ends up by finding a
meaning and depth in it” (MS, 42). These philosophers, he insists, refuse to accept the conclusions that follow from their own
premises. Kierkegaard, for example, strongly senses the absurd. But rather than respecting it as the inevitable human ailment, he seeks to be
cured of it by making it an attribute of a God who he then embraces.

Ignorant
Camus’s philosophy calls for ignorance and the deliberate misinterpretation of reality
—he argues that violence is a form of absurdism which delegitimizes the experience of
the victim and makes loss meaningless
Dr. Matthew H. Bowker, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Political Science, Department of
Interdisciplinary Studies, Medaille College, Routledge Publisher, 2014 [“Rethinking the Politics of
Absurdity: Albert Camus, Postmodernity, and the Survival of Innocence, accessed 02-13-2020 ISBN: 978-
0-415-71761-8 (hbk)] mre
In his discussion of G.W.F. Hegel and the Russian anarchist Mikhail Bakunin, Albert
Camus summarizes an idea of singular
importance in the late modern and postmodern eras: “He who has understood reality does not rebel
against it, but rejoices in it; in other words, he becomes a conformist” (1956b, 156). If having “understood
reality” is enough to make one a conformist, a collaborationist, perhaps even a reveler in injustice, then
the only way to retain one’s goodness would seem to be to mis understand reality, to be mystifi ed. By
this logic, the only experiences of life that assure one’s innocence are absurd experiences, experiences
in which understanding is resisted, experiences in which the world and the self appear more, not less,
absurd. One of the most remarkable qualities of the absurd posture this book explores is that, in it,
comprehension and meaning are often rendered indistinguishable from rationalization and ideology. It
is as if it were impossible, for absurdists and postmoderns alike, to comprehend something without
risking its endorsement. This confusion, created partly by a fear of the destructiveness inherent to the Western subject, is apparent in
many contemporary discussions of historical atrocities, particularly the Nazi Holocaust, where theorizing the behavior of victimizers generates
tremendous anxiety that understanding will lead to acceptance, justifi cation, forgiveness, or perhaps repetition. We may wonder why it has
become so diffi cult to imagine a comprehensible and meaningful world in which we nevertheless retain the ability to resist rationalizing the
bad. The contemporary anxiety that rules out the possibility that we may understand reality without being overtaken by pernicious ideology, by
innate destructiveness, or by nihilistic indifference suggests several subjective and intersubjective dilemmas, not the least of which is the
dilemma of revolutionary violence that formed the subject of much of Camus’s political thought. One of Camus’s central
arguments in The Rebel (and elsewhere) is that those who suffer or witness violence are faced with a dilemma involving moral judgment. If
we conclude that such violence is bad and the perpetrators of such violence are bad, then we are
tempted to justify restitutive violence against them. If, on the other hand, we refuse destructive
counterviolence outright, our inaction may be thought to imply that the victims of violence are
deserving of bad treatment, or that their victimization is at least acceptable—a conclusion with several
interesting and problematic implications (see e.g., Lerner 1980). If we assert that all parties are good, all are bad, or none is
either good or bad, then we risk amoral pragmatism, conformism, complacency, or nihilism, which might be thought to legitimize violence to
some or all. Put another way, Camus was particularly concerned with the way that violence seems to implicate even victims and witnesses in a
moral dilemma in which the prospect of justifying violence either to victims ( victimes ) or executioners ( bourreaux ) is ever-present (see Camus
1980). In such situations, holding on to innocent self-appraisals may be diffi cult, if not impossible, because all parties to the confl ict seem to be
drawn into a cycle of real, contemplated, and potentially legitimized violence, catalyzed by the effort to comprehend violence, to settle the
accounts, to make defi nitive moral judgments, and to make violence morally meaningful. If,
however, loss and violence may be
deemed absurd, then we may imagine a way out of the dilemma of excusing violence done to victims or
legitimizing revolutionary violence done to victimizers. It is possible to read both Auden’s and Job’s laments, both Camus’s
and others’ absurd ethics, in this sense, as endeavors to make loss and violence meaningless for the sake of
delegitimizing loss and violence. Such efforts express the desire not to be drawn into, and not to be
corrupted by, a cycle of both fantasized and real destruction, not only to protest loss and violence, but
to preserve a sort of innocence. In this book, I hope to show that such efforts, however well intended, ultimately require the un-
doing of the subject, the unraveling of the self’s capacities to make loss meaningful, and the incapacitation of our ability to heal from
(experienced, witnessed, or perpetrated) violence. The absurd posture announces an ethic that appears less guilt-ridden than
its alternatives but that is, in complex and concealed ways, more violent, more destructive to selves and others.

A2 Rebel
Not all rebellion is good, mass rebellion often accompanies terrorism
Virginia Page Fortna, is associate professor of political science at Columbia University, International
Organization, 2015 [“Do Terrorists Win? Rebels' Use of Terrorism and Civil War Outcomes” accessed 02-
24-2020 DOI: 10.1017/S0020818315000089] mre
Before turning to tests of the hypotheses, I take a brief detour to address the issue of spuriousness, examining
the effects of
potentially confounding variables on the use of terrorism. Of the rebel groups examined in this study, fewer than
a quarter used terrorism as a tactic in their fight against the government, whereas the rest did not. What accounts
for this variation?Table1showstheresultsoflogisticanalysis with terrorist rebel group as the dependent variable.92 This analysis of terrorism as
the dependent variable, rather than the independent variable as it is in the rest of the article, suggests that terrorism
is most likely in
civil wars in democracies, where rebels face governments representing a different religion,93 and is seldom seen in Africa (indeed in
the data used in this study, there are no cases of high-casualty terrorism by African rebel groups).94 Given how deeply entrenched
it is, the conventional wisdom that terrorism is more
likelytobeusedbyweakergroupsreceivessurprisinglyweaksupport .Therelationship between relative strength and
terrorism is negative, but it is never statisticallysignificant.95 I also find that the apparent link between a group’s war
aims and its use of terrorism seen in Figure2 disappears once other variables are controlled for. Those fighting for secession are, if
anything, less likely to use terrorism, whereas those aiming to transform society appear more likely to do so , but
neither effect is significant. Together,thesefindingsindicatethattheextremityofagroup’saimsarenotnecessarilyassociatedwiththe extremity of its
tactics. I find no relationship between rough terrain and terrorism, nor between the number of groups involved in the conflict (outbidding) and
terrorism. Although these findings shed some light on questions about when and where terrorism arises, fuller theoretical and empirical
analysis of why some rebels resort to terrorism whereas others refrain from targeting civilians in this way is beyond the scope of this study.96
However, now that we have some sense of which rebel groups are most likely to use terrorism, we can return to the question that motivates
this article—is terrorism an effective tactic for rebels in civil war? Do Terrorist Rebels Win? The Effects of Terrorism on War Outcomes Figure 4
shows the percentage of terrorist and nonterrorist rebellions ending in each outcome. Although these bivariate relationships obviously do not
yet take into account potentially confounding variables, the figures do suggest preliminary support for H1 to H3. Most tellingly, of the groups
examined here none of those that deliberately killed large numbers of civilians through terrorist attacks won its fight outright.97 Peace
agreements, which I argue represent significant concessions to the rebel cause, are also much less frequent when rebels use terrorism.
Meanwhile, government victories and wars ending through low or no activity are slightly more common in civil wars involving terrorism. Wars
in which rebels used terror were much more likely to be ongoing as of 2009 than were wars with
nonterrorist rebels, suggesting that terrorism makes wars particularly difficult to terminate.

High risk of a terrorist nuclear attack – the impact is millions dead, global lockdown,
and suspension of rights
John F. Harris is Politico’s editor-in-chief and author of The Survivor: Bill Clinton in the White House &
Bryan Bender is Politico’s national security editor and author of You Are Not Forgotten., POLITICO
Magazine, 1/6/2017, ["Bill Perry Is Terrified. Why Aren’t You?",
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/01/william-perry-nuclear-weapons-proliferation-
214604] bcr 7-18-2017
Perry’s hypothesis for the disconnect is that much
of the population, especially that rising portion with no clear memories of
the first Cold War, is suffering from a deficit of comprehension. Even a single nuclear explosion in a
major city would represent an abrupt and possibly irreversible turn in modern life, upending the global
economy, forcing every open society to suspend traditional liberties and remake itself into a security state. “The
political, economic and social consequences are beyond what people understand,” Perry says. And yet many people place this
scenario in roughly the same category as the meteor strike that supposedly wiped out the dinosaurs—
frightening, to be sure, but something of an abstraction. So Perry regards his last great contribution of a 65-year career as a crusade to
stimulate the public imagination—to share the vivid details of his own nightmares. He is doing so in a recent memoir, in a busy public speaking
schedule, in half-empty hearing rooms on Capitol Hill, and increasingly with an online presence aimed especially at young people. He has
enlisted the help of his 28-year-old granddaughter to figure out how to engage a new generation, including through a series of virtual lectures
known as a MOOC, or massive open online course. He is eagerly signing up for “Ask Me Anything” chats on Reddit, in which some people still
confuse him with William “The Refrigerator” Perry of NFL fame. He posts his ruminations on YouTube, where they give Katy Perry no run for her
money, even as the most popular are closing in on 100,000 views. One of the nightmare scenarios Perry invokes most often is designed to roust
policymakers who live and work in the nation’s capital. The terrorists would need enriched uranium. Due to the elaborate and highly industrial
nature of production, hard to conceal from surveillance, fissile
material is still hard to come by—but, alas, far from
impossible. Once it is procured, with help from conspirators in a poorly secured overseas commercial power centrifuge
facility, the rest of the plot as Perry imagines it is no great technological or logistical feat. The mechanics of
building a crude nuclear device are easily within the reach of well-educated and well-funded militants. The crate would
arrive at Dulles International Airport, disguised as agricultural freight. The truck bomb that detonates on Pennsylvania Avenue between the
White House and Capitol instantly kills the president, vice president, House speaker, and 80,000 others. Where exactly is your office? Your
house? And then, as Perry spins it forward, how
credible would you find the warnings, soon delivered to news
networks, that five more bombs are set to explode in unnamed U.S. cities, once a week for the next
month, unless all U.S. military personnel overseas are withdrawn immediately?
ß