To Be Anything At a Time Like This

We are plagued by climate nihilism. If one doubts this new philosophy’s existence, look no further than the subreddit r/Collapse. I will caution that it is deeply, deeply, depressing. They do not hope, they do not face the possibilities the future holds. They only point to the mounting examples of climate collapse, bemoaning the present and any person foolish enough to cope through escapism (deemed “high on hopium”). I want to avoid being conflated with this type of response, where in climate nihilism has seeped so deeply into one’s brain it has rooted out any other thought. I instead wish to provide a strategy for confronting and sustaining a long term dance with climate nihilism, the tune of absurdism providing the count.

The world we live in is utterly absurd. This is arguably true in its casual definition, but I am referring more specifically to the “absurd” discussed extensively by Albert Camus in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. The greatest source of absurdity in the 21st century is, in my view, the impending collapse of the world ecosystem. In this case, the absurdity lies not in the randomness of the circumstances we find ourselves in (I think it is fair to say we are, and have been, quite aware of the danger a system intentionally designed for infinite consumption presents), but is instead found in the question of why one would continue living in the face of such an apocalypse. Camus was writing largely in response to Nietzschean nihilism. For the sake of precision I am limiting myself to the framework of Nitzchean nihilism and Camus’ response, and furthermore its through-lines to my own experiences of facing a collapsing climate.¹ If Camus is correct in his assertion that there is motivation to be found not only despite but because of the seemingly insurmountable absurdity of life as we know it, then those same arguments should apply quite well to the absurdity of facing a climate crisis that rivals and reflects the death of God. So the question becomes, how do I fight my own climate nihilism?

Before anything else, Nietzsche’s nihilism in the post-Enlightenment world and the climate nihilism being felt today need to be linked, as were these two things not similar Camus’ absurdism would have no bearing on the present. This should be simple given the passage Nietzsche’s ever quoted “God is dead” springs from. A madman is yelling in the town square, being laughed at by those around him (for they do not believe in God). This madman says:

“God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”²

Replace every mention of God with something along the lines of “our chances at avoiding the apocalyptic effects of climate change” and one begins to understand my own feelings on the matter. God was fundamental to European society and its conception of itself up until the end of the 19th century (and arguably beyond). What is more fundamental to 21st century American society than the belief in the infinite growth of markets, of production power, and of infinite resources to fuel it? We are audience to (and cast members of) the greatest moment of disillusion in recent memory.

Hopefully, the answer to the question of motivation in the face of climate collapse lies in Camus’ absurdism. Camus defines the feeling of absurdity thus: “It happens that the stage sets collapse. Rising, streetcar, four hours in the office or the factory, meal, streetcar, four hours of work, meal, sleep, and Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday and Saturday according to the same rhythm — this path is easily followed most of the time. But one day the ‘why’ arises and everything begins in that weariness tinged with amazement.” Our stage set, that of the infinitely resource hungry machine of global capitalism, is crashing down around us (or perhaps more accurately mutating to conform to the new context, dismissing the lives of the consumers as somehow unnecessary). We are all forcibly being confronted with that “why”. “...in a world suddenly divested of illusions and lights, man feels alien, a stranger. His exile is without remedy since he is deprived of the memory of a lost home or the hope of a promised land. This divorce between man and his life, the actor and the setting, is properly the feeling of absurdity.”³ What memory do we have of a time comparable to what is coming after the climate collapse? What promised land can be assured that few among us wouldn’t scoff at? The absurdity of going to work, of caring, of doing anything in the face of planetary annihilation, is hitting us face first. And most of us don’t know what to do with it.

To be clear, the absurd itself is not inherently bad. It is the conflation of the absurd as the rational, the conflation of climate collapse as an even punishment across all humanity, of the happenstance that is privilege as the boons given to the successful, that leads to hopelessness. “If everyone would only work hard enough at tackling climate change on an individual level, then the world would change!” is a tired and, frankly, insulting line of reasoning. Part of why it is so pervasive (and to me, tiring) is because, for a long time, it worked. It got people out of bed, convinced them to go to work, go to rallies, and even when collective action occurred it was, absurdly, on the backs of individuals. The feeling that there is nothing that could possibly be done now, but that there is something you could have done right (whether it is in regards to climate change or our conception of “success”) is a truly disheartening thought. The importance of absurdism is its ability to reassure me that I didn’t miss a train to the alternate reality where climate change isn’t happening. The train was blown up long ago. Regardless of one’s intentions after recuperating a sense of direction in a directionless world, in order to get to that point, that “after”, there must be a transition from avoidance to confrontation. Camus’ essay didn’t stop after defining the feeling of the absurd, it is once he addresses what to do with that feeling of absurdity that its applicability to my own experience starts to shine. What are the givens of our world? What comprises the equation, the central contradiction, the dialectic (if you will) of 21st century absurdity? It is these two facts: 1. The world as we know it is ending, present tense. And 2. Those with the power to stop it, if anyone actually has such a power, won’t.

I brought up privilege earlier and do not intend to ignore it. Privilege is key in analyzing responses to the climate collapse. My own newfound security in climate absurdism (so to speak) is in large part due to the many privileges I am fortunate enough to have. The enlightenment too was a side effect of privilege, of the rapidly expanding industrial capabilities of those countries with enough capital and empire to do so. The climate collapse can be traced back to the same phenomenon. The kings and parliaments and presidents of the late 19th century laid the infrastructure necessary for humanity to have reached the point of outpacing our planet; both national infrastructure in the form of factories, trains, etc, and international infrastructure in the form of increased ease of travel, imperial expansion, and access to raw materials. These imperial powers were the source of the enlightenment, Nietzsche, Camus, and myself. But not everyone lost faith in God. A century and a half later and the factories are closer to the raw materials, the colonies are trade partners, and whole countries have become consumers while others are producers. The expansion of scale at play here is impressive, but not everyone has lost faith in the infallibility of our position. I need not go through the long and tragic history of European and American colonialism, but I do want to draw a clear line between colonialism, industrialization, neocolonialism, and the climate crisis. For not only are climate nihilism and Nietzschean nihilism similar in terms of symptoms, they are born of the same source. As such, my own optimism regarding my absurdist response to climate nihilism must be tempered with the knowledge that it is in large part due to my position as bunkerless-but-not-impoverished.

Privilege is also key to recognizing the fallacy of arguing that humanity as a whole deserves to suffer through climate change. “We have made our bed, and now we lie in it.” goes the saying. But I did not make this bed humanity now lays in. In fact, the ones least responsible for climate change will be the worst hit. This is due in large part to the nature of global capitalism, where there are producer countries and consumer countries, and the producers (the global south, as it has come to be known) have the least infrastructure in place to mitigate the damages associated with climate change. The ones who made the bed are, to extend the metaphor, building other much more comfortable beds in bunkers with near infinite supplies of fresh water. One who is in the position to start hiring private militias and/or privatizing water supplies is responding to the impending climate collapse in a very different context than one who is already facing water shortages and the first wave of disasters caused by climate change (put shortly, profiting off it versus surviving it). A dismissal of the fundamental inequity of privilege is a dismissal of one of the central tenets of Camus’ conception of the absurd: that the absurd is unfair. Privilege, being a product of the random chance of when and where and into what family one is born, is absurd. To be clear, absurdity is not only found in effects of privilege, i.e. unearned claims to merit or access to safety in a collapsing ecosystem, it is privilege itself that is absurd. Furthermore, the absurdity of such a position makes it impossible to determine one’s “importance”, or, to get the point, how deserving one is of surviving climate change. No one will be able to survive, let alone thrive, with their preconceived notions of worth intact.

So, what is to be done? On a personal, philosophical level,⁴ absurdism has allowed me to avoid the paralyzing despair so easy to slip into. Camus describes the “absurd man” (excuse the gendered language) as one who gains three things in relation to the absurd. “My revolt, my freedom, and my passion.” Camus’ “Revolt” is one of constant confrontation: I can never ignore the fact that the climate is in crisis and that those with the power to most successfully mitigate the damage are refusing to do so. His “freedom”: my emancipation from the depressive episodes so commonly felt after remembering the world is ending (something I am still working on). And his “passion”: my newfound feeling of a realizable future in spite of (or because of) the same climate collapse. As I was reading The Myth of Sisiphus I was surprised to see my experience articulated so well: “I must admit that that struggle implies a total absence of hope (which has nothing to do with despair), a continual rejection (which must not be confused with renunciation), and a conscious dissatisfaction (which must not be compared to immature unrest). Everything which destroys, conjures away, or exorcises these requirements… ruins the absurd… The absurd only has meaning only in so far as it is not agreed to.”⁵ I have been struck by the difficulty of keeping this balance in my own thoughts regarding the climate.

The absence of hope is easy, one may think, but in fact it is an important part of avoiding despair. That feeling of utter sadness at the thought of a once-beleived-in future is the product of unfounded hope being crushed. And if one uses a delirious hope to climb out of that hole (read: belief in a utopian future, or even a future where climate change never comes to bear) they are just as detached from reality. In this way the depressive and hopeful responses are ruining the absurd, and in their own ways fail to address the core issue of climate nihilism. Instead, they lead to a repetitive (and, in my experience, deeply frustrating) cycle of total destitution leading to hopeful resurgence leading to a crushing of whatever hope was driving that resurgence, etc etc etc. Clearly, a more sustainable source of fuel is necessary for one to go on living. Camus goes into an extended discussion of what is valuable in a life, and I think living a good life is quite a powerful motivator. He compares the quality of experiences with the quantity of experience, and decides that a good life is one where, regardless of the time spent on this earth, it has been spent present and aware of one’s surroundings. How could one acquire either a quantity or quality of experiences without first being present enough to experience things? Thus reality is vitally important to avoiding the essentially escapist despair or hope. The key here is refusing to escape from reality. I agree that either hope for a future that looks exactly like the present or hope for a future with no grounding in reality would be denialism of the highest degree. The future I envision for myself, while perhaps closer to a delirious hope than a paralyzing despair, is not detached from reality in so dangerous a way as Camus speaks of. I have found myself “longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in [me] ought to reject it. That revolt of flesh is the absurd.” Life in this world is absurd, it is random, it is uncaring, and it is so beautiful. I hope to be present for as much of it as I can before I go, whenever and wherever that may be.

1. I certainly do not want to imply European white men are the only thinkers that have written about nihilism in general. If one would like to read up on non-Eurocentric nihilism and its responses, I highly suggest the Buddha’s "Doctrine of Nihilism" in the Apannaka Sutta, but that is not the focus of this paper.

2. The Gay Science, Friedrich Nietzsche, Section 108 (italics my own)

3. The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, pg 5

4. This is an important distinction. I feel it would be irresponsible of me to advise anyone to use absurdism as a way to rationalize complete disconnect from the world of politics. Harm reduction is still a viable way to change the world. (I do not think harm reduction in and of itself is a motivating enough rallying cry, but that is for a different essay).

5. The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus, pg. 23-24