You’ve been invited to a buffet, a big buffet. Think cruise ship or Las Vegas hotel buffet. Choices and calories beyond your capacity regardless of your appetite or need. And the invitation was unexpected. You just found yourself at the buffet. You lacked the ability to understand your arrival, and you don’t remember your first run past the buffet tables. You were an infant, and the buffet you entered is a universe so diverse in composition and so abundant in consumables that you reason you’ll have to spend your entire life choosing in the knowledge that you’ll never finish and cannot come close to sampling it all. And you don’t know why you have been invited, whether or not you serve some purpose other than simply sampling, how it all appeared, and how the tables always seem stocked.
Overwhelmed by the sheer size that at first dazzled you with colors, shapes, and tastes, you ask, “Is there any meaning in all this?” You have run into an existential and seemingly unanswerable question. You might, like some existentialists or some dramatist in the Theatre of the Absurd, declare that absurdity rules. Like others, you might declare that choosing to work your way through the buffet is what gives it all meaning. If you choose the former, you will join a group of diners who exclaim as they eat, “The buffet has no chef and no purpose.” If you choose the latter, you will join a group that says, “It’s not for us to know; it’s just for us to eat. Buffets don’t stock themselves.”
The first group of diners call the second group fools. They argue that there is no evidence that the buffet has any purpose. They might ask, “Do diners serve a purpose? Or, are the diners just the remnants of an evolutionary line that started unconsciously with mouse-like mammals that ultimately led to the conscious diners now working their way through the buffet, diners whose consciousness can’t answer the question they ask? Could the world go on without diners? If so, then in continuing, doesn’t the world—the universe—indicate that the buffet serves no purpose?”
The second group of diners call the first group fools. They argue from various positions. One might be an argument from the Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. All the diners and the buffet itself belong to a synergistic and self-regulating system. The world, the buffet, is “alive”; it is its own type of organism. Even deep in Earth’s rocks there are bacteria and on the outside of the International Space Station, too. The buffet seems to be spread out everywhere, and the kitchen ovens, the suns, cook everything up for life to use. Two might be an argument that is purely teleological. A main chef makes the buffet, pulls the unsuspecting and unconscious off the street of Nowhere, and forces them to eat until they can eat no more.
In the arguments of both groups a dilemma arises: By acknowledging an underlying meaninglessness, does the first group somehow elevate its recognition of an unprovable absurdity to a profundity? “I profoundly state that nothing has meaning. The buffet just is. Eat.” By acknowledging an underlying meaning, does the second group lower its unprovable profundity to absurdity?
Are we living in an oxymoronic world? Do the groups have anything in common? Are all profundities ultimately absurd? Is there something of the profound in absurdity?
For the first group, despair comes easily. For the second, hope. Is there an alternative beyond just sampling the buffet in the knowledge that no one has ever sampled it all, no one can consume it all, and no one was even present during its setup. Making a profound statement about absurdity makes meaning. But making an absurd statement about profundity also makes meaning.
Thinking matter: As both groups sit with their full plates to enjoy the buffet, they engage in a conversation. “How is it,” asks the second group, “that you claim absurdity? How is it that matter became conscious to make any declarations at all, especially a declaration that that there is no meaning? Doesn’t your position have meaning? Is it possible that you are merely overwhelmed by the choices at this buffet? Would a limited buffet make more sense? If you could meet the chef, would the buffet make more sense?”
In response, the first group says, “What if the chef worked randomly? Couldn’t we acknowledge that without contradicting ourselves? You assume the chef has a plan, but look at all this food and all the choices. And new combinations keep showing up with new diners as old diners say they have had enough, are full, and ready to leave the buffet. Sure, the buffet seems to be endless, but for the individual diner it doesn’t make any sense because he or she eventually must leave the buffet.”
“You’re missing the point. The buffet is here. We don’t know how it got here. We don’t even know why we were invited—even if the invitation came randomly like some advertisement for Publishers’ Clearing House that offers a lifetime giveaway. We don’t even remember filling out any forms. But here we are. And even if we don’t know the answer to our question, we know that our question has meaning, and whatever has meaning can’t ultimately be absurd. Any meaning, even meaning that is deemed ‘absurd,’ isn’t absurd in its being a question posed by matter that is somehow conscious. That, we argue is the Profundity of Absurdity. Excuse us, we’re going for seconds.”
Overwhelmed by the sheer size that at first dazzled you with colors, shapes, and tastes, you ask, “Is there any meaning in all this?” You have run into an existential and seemingly unanswerable question. You might, like some existentialists or some dramatist in the Theatre of the Absurd, declare that absurdity rules. Like others, you might declare that choosing to work your way through the buffet is what gives it all meaning. If you choose the former, you will join a group of diners who exclaim as they eat, “The buffet has no chef and no purpose.” If you choose the latter, you will join a group that says, “It’s not for us to know; it’s just for us to eat. Buffets don’t stock themselves.”
The first group of diners call the second group fools. They argue that there is no evidence that the buffet has any purpose. They might ask, “Do diners serve a purpose? Or, are the diners just the remnants of an evolutionary line that started unconsciously with mouse-like mammals that ultimately led to the conscious diners now working their way through the buffet, diners whose consciousness can’t answer the question they ask? Could the world go on without diners? If so, then in continuing, doesn’t the world—the universe—indicate that the buffet serves no purpose?”
The second group of diners call the first group fools. They argue from various positions. One might be an argument from the Gaia hypothesis proposed by James Lovelock and Lynn Margulis. All the diners and the buffet itself belong to a synergistic and self-regulating system. The world, the buffet, is “alive”; it is its own type of organism. Even deep in Earth’s rocks there are bacteria and on the outside of the International Space Station, too. The buffet seems to be spread out everywhere, and the kitchen ovens, the suns, cook everything up for life to use. Two might be an argument that is purely teleological. A main chef makes the buffet, pulls the unsuspecting and unconscious off the street of Nowhere, and forces them to eat until they can eat no more.
In the arguments of both groups a dilemma arises: By acknowledging an underlying meaninglessness, does the first group somehow elevate its recognition of an unprovable absurdity to a profundity? “I profoundly state that nothing has meaning. The buffet just is. Eat.” By acknowledging an underlying meaning, does the second group lower its unprovable profundity to absurdity?
Are we living in an oxymoronic world? Do the groups have anything in common? Are all profundities ultimately absurd? Is there something of the profound in absurdity?
For the first group, despair comes easily. For the second, hope. Is there an alternative beyond just sampling the buffet in the knowledge that no one has ever sampled it all, no one can consume it all, and no one was even present during its setup. Making a profound statement about absurdity makes meaning. But making an absurd statement about profundity also makes meaning.
Thinking matter: As both groups sit with their full plates to enjoy the buffet, they engage in a conversation. “How is it,” asks the second group, “that you claim absurdity? How is it that matter became conscious to make any declarations at all, especially a declaration that that there is no meaning? Doesn’t your position have meaning? Is it possible that you are merely overwhelmed by the choices at this buffet? Would a limited buffet make more sense? If you could meet the chef, would the buffet make more sense?”
In response, the first group says, “What if the chef worked randomly? Couldn’t we acknowledge that without contradicting ourselves? You assume the chef has a plan, but look at all this food and all the choices. And new combinations keep showing up with new diners as old diners say they have had enough, are full, and ready to leave the buffet. Sure, the buffet seems to be endless, but for the individual diner it doesn’t make any sense because he or she eventually must leave the buffet.”
“You’re missing the point. The buffet is here. We don’t know how it got here. We don’t even know why we were invited—even if the invitation came randomly like some advertisement for Publishers’ Clearing House that offers a lifetime giveaway. We don’t even remember filling out any forms. But here we are. And even if we don’t know the answer to our question, we know that our question has meaning, and whatever has meaning can’t ultimately be absurd. Any meaning, even meaning that is deemed ‘absurd,’ isn’t absurd in its being a question posed by matter that is somehow conscious. That, we argue is the Profundity of Absurdity. Excuse us, we’re going for seconds.”
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