no excuses: thoughts on camus' the plague

Life often confronts us with grim realities– situations or events that don’t make sense to us and that shake us out of the everyday habits, routines, and concerns we so often mistake for life. A teenager stresses out studying all week for an exam only to choke to death on a chocolate chip cookie the night before the test. One day you walk into work only to hear that a happy go luck co-worker, a guy everyone envied, pulled over on the way home the night before, took off all of his clothes, folded them neatly onto the driver’s seat and jumped off of a bridge to his death. You drive home from dinner with the family only to find a crowd of your neighbors standing in the street watching firefighters try to keep your home of ten years from burning to the ground. Or maybe it’s as simple as eating your breakfast one morning and realizing that you’re not where you thought you’d be in life right now, you’re not entirely sure you’re happy, but you know with absolute certainty that you can no more hit the reset button and start over than you can unscramble the eggs in your plate.

These events and realizations force us to question how and even why we live. They tear away the curtain of our so called lives and expose us– if not to the world, then to ourselves. These events intrude into the dream that we mistake for our lives. Think about it. Every day you wake up. You wonder what you’ll have for breakfast. Should I just stop at Dunkin Donuts? No, I’m trying to lose some weight for the beach season. Maybe you’ll think about what’s awaiting you at work or a fight you had with your significant other the night before. Some of us might spend some time wondering what to wear to work. Does this belt match my shoes? Should I even have bought this tie? Is it really "me?" All of these things cease to matter ten minutes later when a car comes crashing across three lanes, skidding 360 degrees on a rainy parkway just twenty feet in front of you on the way to work.

Life, it appears, has a funny way of reminding us just how irrelevant our everyday lives are.

So why do we waltz through our lives as if these things matter? Why do we fill our heads with such meaningless worries and concerns and act as if they bear the utmost importance when, in reality, they have nothing to do with life? How ought we to respond to a world where our lives and expectations truly dangle on such a perilously delicate string? More importantly, what does it matter? When faced with life’s indifference to all the things and people we hold near and dear, how, then, should we live?

This question hits me right between the eyes, and as I read The Plague by Albert Camus it dawned on me that I never really considered the existential and ethical implications of living in a world where god does not exist. Fyodor Dostoyevsky once wrote"If God does not exist, then everything is permitted," and I have always felt that this is one of the toughest challenges for any atheist world view. How do we decide right and wrong? Even if we can decide, what moral authority could such a standard have when it has no other source but humanity? True, I still "know" right from wrong, but how can I convince someone otherwise intent on breaking "the rules" from going ahead and doing whatever they please? Why "should" anyone follow such rules? Haven’t we left ourselves in charge of the asylum?

Perhaps considerations of right and wrong have as little import as what color tie I wear to work. Maybe neither one matters in the end, because neither choice changes our fate or serves any purpose other than to distract us from the absurdity of life. Throughout his novel, Camus portrays how different characters respond to the cruel indifference of the plague– itself nothing more than an unconscious microbe that blindly goes about exterminating human lives. Whether the townsfolk find their solace in a church, in debauchery, or just plain burying their heads in the sand, the plague methodically continues its work. Nothing stops the plague. In fact, Camus makes it clear that the plague rested under the earth before the novel began and even lies in wait after the novel ends.

In one of the more revealing passages, Camus shows us Rambert ultimately abandoning his attempt at escape and deciding to join the corp of volunteers treating victims of the plague. Rambert and Rieux argue over his reasons for joining the corps, and Rambert gets frustrated by Rieux’s refusal to acknowledge his own rationale for staying. Rieux actually tells Rambert that he doesn’t care why he stays, and that he should simply do what he wants. As I read through their argument, it occurred to me that neither Rieux nor Tarrou ever give any reasons for doing what they do relative to the plague. Earlier in the story, Rieux asked Tarrou something about the basis for his morality and Tarrou enigmatically answers "comprehension." I remember asking myself "Comprehension of what?" When I think about that answer in the context of the argument between Rambert and Rieux, I consider that maybe Tarrou comprehends that, once we accept that life has no meaning, we have only a few choices: (1) self delusion, or (2) to simply carry on in the face of it.

You either remain caught up in your own reasons, living like your everyday habits and worries actually mean something, or admit to yourself that you have no reasons. If you do that and choose to go on living, then you accept the consequences. You have no excuses for yourself, but you are free. Everything is permitted, and you bear the burden of your own decisions without anything or anyone to hide behind. In many ways this is a very bleak and lonely way to look at the world. Part of me shrinks away from it, but part of me knows that my reaction to it doesn’t make it any less true. Whether we choose to face it or not, it’s there.

Jean Paul Sartre, a contemporary of Camus', said "Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you." Regardless of our circumstances we each have to choose the way we want to live, and with that choice comes a tremendous responsibility. Whether we like it or not, whether we accept that responsibility consciously, or simply abdicate it altogether, we bear the burden of our actions or inaction and the responsibility for whatever consequences arise.

Swim safely,
The Lifeguard