How to think about the struggle against absurdity

Starting points:
-think about the rant concerning Existentialism in the film "waking life"
-think about the search for meaning and if you put any stock in it
-think about an experience where fairness reigned, such as a job or team

We all want the world to make sense to us, foremost, and to future generations, abstractly. A good though-experiment perspective is to imagine yourself, as a child at a moment, having our society explained to you for the first time. This combines that future abstract with looking out for number one.

Let's take a step back. Existential struggles are the oft-ignored realities of the human condition. the illusion that we share our existential struggles is comforting but incorrect. What we share is a desire to have our existential struggles reflected in other people, and in the future.

Let's take the example of punishment for crime. Let's narrow it to crimes against individual autonomy such as robbery, assault, etc. Imagine explaining the punishment system we have to a child (you). The child says, "so it's wrong to forcefully take things from people?"

From here we imagine a teacher that understands 1. that existential struggles are the fabric of humanity and 2. that absurdity is best avoided by sound thought. He says, "Yes. Imagine having someone forcefully intrude upon your life, making you feel as if you had no control, and then imagine that experience depriving you of something that you assumed you would have in the future. It would likely make you feel that the world was less about your wished and desires, and more of a Gothic comedy."

The child might respond, "Sure it would be frightening and unfair, I can understand that, but why punish the thief?"

"We punish the thief out of compassion for the thief and the victim. For the victim, we are saying, 'do not read into this experience too much, it is not about you (from our perspective). What the thief did was wrong and so he needs to be punished, so as to understand his act. This experience has given him a great opportunity for growth, growth that he clearly needs. We are all grateful for your sacrifice and will try to reimburse you for your loss. We, as society, wish you the best of luck in figuring out whether there is any meaning behind your involvement with this experience. We, however, will deal primarily with the criminal, as he has availed himself to our laws and attention.' In this was society gives the victim a way out of his existential crisis, tying the event to the illusion that our individual consciousnesses can truly be connected in a meaningful way. The out is not logically sound though."

The child follows, "Well, that makes sense. The victim is a victim and there is little that can be officially done about that I suppose. If he is reimbursed and the criminal punished, he cannot ask more. Not everything can be addressed by society."

"Exactly. now on to the criminal. The criminal needs to be punished 1. because he was caught and there are laws and the only way for those laws to not be meaningless is for them to be applied and 2. because the criminal must be made to understand that his crime threatened to destroy the central illusion upon which society is built, that of shared existence and the possibility for shared future goals for society. Society says to the criminal, 'we truly wish for you to come to understand that inflicting you will upon another is a depraved act, depraved in that it shows that you have deprived yourself of our glorious illusion. If you do not adhere to this illusion, you will be a danger to society and will invariably face expulsion (in some form) or further punishment in the future. We do this out of compassion because we believe that this illusion is good and gives the kind of meaning to our lives that we can share and enjoy together. We would like to include you in our game, please take this opportunity to convince yourself of this illusion.' In this way society is offering a truce, an opportunity for 'growth' in the direction which they accept as good. And so you see that proper punishment is not malicious at all."

The child replies, "I see what you mean. It is complicated and circular and yet makes sense. What about this proper punishment business?"

"Proper punishment is that which a society can truly hang it's hat on and say, 'we ARE truly trying to save your societal soul. We do not wish to make you fear us but only to make you understand the position that you put us in and perhaps to fear your own actions. In this way we are not punishing you but allowing for your actions to cause punishment for yourself.' Or society strives for this type of punishment, or should, and this is what preserves the dignity of our justice system so that children like you can learn about it and choose to partake in our society without guilt."

I hold that if these were the underlying values and we aspired toward them, then absurdity would be lessened in the criminal punishment realm.



P.S.- In a state of nature, existential individualism would rule and punishment would occur without a society to impose it. This piece is not meant to be a proponent of society but merely an explanation of how we might look at our justice system without shame.