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456 sats \ 2 replies \ @Fiatrevelation 23 Dec 2024 \ on: The Riddle of Luigi Mangione mostly_harmless
Not to romanticize, but I am reminded of L'etranger by Albert Camus, when I read this article. The writer paints the assassin as being somewhat blasé, intellectually curious and having an obsession with the absurdity of a life without "agency."
In Camu's novel, the main character murders and stands on trial unable to account for what he has done. He neither denys nor shows any remorse for his actions. We see in him a character who is devoid of the usual emotive responses we'd expect. Finally, he comes to accept the hand that fate had delt to him, finding comfort in the thought that the universe is quite as indifferent to him as he is to it.
I think the blog locates the pulse of an absurdity similar to what Camus was trying to express in this character study novel.
The difficult to swallow part of this is that I think there is a certain amount of absurdity that each of us accepts, as part of a survival mechanism, when we face the world. If we didn't, and instead let all of the world's injustices penetrate the fibres of our beings, then how could we ever get on with life?
The difficult to swallow part of this is that I think there is a certain amount of absurdity that each of us accepts, as part of a survival mechanism, when we face the world. If we didn't, and instead let all of the world's injustices penetrate the fibres of our beings, then how could we ever get on with life?
I love this point. Indeed. To take it a step further, the more time that passes, the more I realize that what we consider to be the absurdity is itself a very deep question. The enculturation of certain absurdities runs so deep that we never consider them as grist for reflection at all -- most things are probably like this, the unexamined strata of our cultural legacies, whatever those are. But then every so often something pokes its nose out of the hole, and people ask, en-masse: does that actually make sense?
I don't like to bring everything back to btc, but the parallels are un-missable. You start digging into money, and you wind up in weird corners where most of your friends and family have no idea wtf you're talking about, or why you're obsessed with those things. The popular success of btc has somehow made this worse and not better, at least in my own small neighborhood.
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You start digging into money, and you wind up in weird corners where most of your friends and family have no idea wtf you're talking about, or why you're obsessed with those things.
People get emotional, which I guess is warranted because it's their 'livelihood,' when these discussions arise. They will criticise bitcoin because with the, "it's value is arbitrary" argument for the absurd reason that we cannot touch or hold bitcoin. But because you can stun somebody by bonking them on the head with a roll of 100 dollar bills, then that's what makes it 'real.'
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