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Rote515 t1_j22uxoj wrote

Reply to comment by who519 in Life is a game we play without ever knowing the rules: Camus, absurdist fiction, and the paradoxes of existence. by IAI_Admin

Sure, but who cares? You're missing the point of basically all nihilist based philosophy. Why is Greed bad, what is "bad" why do we care if we do something "bad". There is no "good" or "evil" is the fundamental argument of nihilists, sure it hurts someone, who cares? If that someone doesn't matter why do we care that it hurt someone. Why is causing pain "evil" why do we even care if it is "evil" you're 1 step to high on the ethics chain.

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who519 t1_j24qr42 wrote

Again I am just thinking of a "Sin" as something that negatively impacts our society, not as good or evil. Greed is very interesting in this regard. Greed started civilization. After all the first farmer was tired of gathering, and wanted a reliable source of food that would actually be end up being more than he needed. This success just reinforced the behavior and led the hypothetical farmer to seek power over others with his wealth and make them farm for him...and on and on and on, until we ended up where we are now. Was it wrong for the farmer to seek a reliable source of food? No, but it lead us to where we are now and if we continue on this trend, we will literally destroy our ecosystem completely.

So while not "wrong" ethically, greed inevitably leads to negative consequences for humanity. If our culture or biology had some brake on greed (some cultures have...see the Hawaiian tradition of Kapu (Taboo) as an example, maybe we would have slowed our technological advance, but prospered none the less. Instead we went with "quick and dirty" and it is now costing us dearly.

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Rote515 t1_j253ra2 wrote

That’s still missing the point of existentialist thought(which Camus falls under), Camus’s most important work on absurdism posits a singular question, “Should I kill myself” and argues that’s the most important philosophical question. Ethics in the face of this question are completely meaningless, as it’s a question that comes prior to questions of ethics.

Prospering, societal harm, destroying the ecosystem, none of that matters if we can’t answer the fundamental question of whether life is meaningless. That’s why greed doesn’t matter here and is irrelevant to absurdism. Negative consequences don’t matter if fundamentally life is meaningless. Absurdism is the seeking of meaning in a meaningless universe.

I have a feeling you’ve never read Camus? Or any Absurdist authors? Your making arguments, or observations that come after, which are essentially meaningless in the face of the Absurd condition.

Did you even read the article?

Edit: used a term incorrectly

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