The Suspended Spider*

The Suspended Spider*

By Javaid Zeerak

There is a common thread running throughout Camus’ and Dostoevsky’s writings. Widely accepted as prime examples of literary existentialism along with Sartre’s works, the message that these two authors’ writings deliver is one that emphasizes the utter meaninglessness of life (in its objective sense) and the futility of human beings’ struggle to fill this void of meaning. The solutions that they offer for this situation –though slightly different- share some very basic common elements.

From where these two authors look at man and the universe, they see a sorrowful sight. They see man thrown –or rather abandoned- into this world, without having asked for it. Once here, he finds himself faced with a cold and uncaring universe. Longing for a meaning for his life, he is again faced with the same coldness and indifference. It slaps him in the face wherever he turns it. He feels his life is absurd and meaningless, and as such, objectively valueless.

I believe Camus’ absurd man (and eventually his absurd hero) and Dostoevsky’s underground-man have both experienced the experience of nothingness. This experience is central and essential to an individual’s attaining of the existentialist attitude that ultimately leads him to molding a value for his life out of void. The experience of nothingness –the source of human predicament- is a rather new phenomenon (it is noteworthy that "the experience of nothingness" is not the same thing as "nihilism" but two completely different phenomena- this is explained later.)

The source of the experience of nothingness can be traced back to man himself. "The source of the experience [of nothingness] lies in man’s unstructured, relentless drive to ask questions." It is by means of this "drive to ask questions" that the modern man shatters all the myths surrounding him. He starts asking questions about everything, and very infrequently he finds satisfying answers to these questions. This is how his world of "synthetic values" crumbles. Often he conducts this inquiry with himself alone- thinking. It is to this kind of inquiry that Camus refers as "thinking" when he says: "Beginning to think is beginning to be undermined." Thus modern man while thinking to himself, asking questions, and doubting society’s myths, begins to undermine himself.

Suddenly he finds himself in a dark vacuum. Man’s situation is most interesting at this juncture. I like to think of man at this moment as a spider in an empty and dark dungeon- not falling, yet suspended without support. I think all of us, all the humanity, everyone, has the situation of this spider suspended from nowhere, in that dark dungeon with no bottom and no top. I am tempted to analogize the universe to this dungeon that has no bottom and no top and is void of both light and gravity, and where man (the spider) is suspended helpless and hanging and not supported by anything.

Once man has shattered the myths that were supporting him and giving him a sense of direction and a foothold, he experiences nothingness. When he sees that all his supports were artifices and synthesized by himself he realizes that they too like himself are suspended in the dark: god, law, values, norms, and all the other myths. He realizes that all along he had been putting his trust on things that were as unreliable and as vulnerable as his own situation. He is disheartened when he finds that all along he had been involved in a game of make-believe…

All else in the existentialist thought follow from here and from this moment of truth: man is faced with a tremendous choice- to look up or to look down it is all the same. There is no up and no down, no top and no bottom. But to let oneself remain where one is and as one is, is against man’s nature. It is not comfortable for man to realize everything and choose to do nothing. For his own sake, and to lend value to his life he must imagine the world a cylindrical shape with a top and bottom. He must invent a sense of dimension and direction for himself. And so he makes his universe in the image of a cylinder, with a top and a bottom. He makes it such that from the top a slight stream of light is shining through, and he imagines the bottom scary and never ending and empty. Man thus gives himself the most important choice of his life, to ascend to light, or to let go and fall in a never-ending fall.

The moment that man has imagined the world as a cylinder with a top letting in some light and a bottom without a bottom, he is past the experience of nothingness. The universe once again has a comprehensible shape and he has once again invented a myth; a new and completely different one, but still a myth. He can say where he stands, and he can choose where he goes. The world is not as frightening as it was when he began to ask questions. The spider can cling to life again.
Camus’ absurd hero and Dostoevsky’s underground man are both like the spider in the dungeon. They have experienced the experience of nothingness, and they have seen how utterly meaningless life is. This moment of harsh truth determines the hero. According to Camus, the absurd hero is he who out of this void imagines the world a cylinder and tries to move upwards, in the direction of the light. He does not necessarily get closer –every time Sisyphus rolls the rock back to the top he is not necessarily approaching the end of his unending labor- but he has made his life meaningful.

For the sake of this thought experiment, I imagine the top as the end that is attainable through existentialist attitude, and the bottom a nihilistic end. Man who has experienced nothingness and shattered all his myths finds himself on a four-way crossroad. If he lets go of everything and falls a non-ending fall to the bottom, he has chosen nihilism. If he decides to kill himself and thus ruin the absurd, he has acted cowardly. If he decides to stay where he is –suspended in void- he has committed what Camus calls "philosophical suicide" and is even more cowardly. What Camus and Dostoevsky have both favored in their writing is the way upwards.
This is the way to absurd heroism: to struggle towards the light, and at the same time as realizing that the distance remains the same, never give up: To rebel against one’s fate, and prove oneself superior to it, to endeavor upwards with a constant reasonless passion. This is the only way one can give meaning to a life that has no objective meaning. This is how one can imagine Sisyphus happy: "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart." Everything is in the struggle itself. The struggle of the life itself is its meaning. To not surrender, to choose not to fall, to choose not to stay idle, to choose not to kill oneself, to wickedly defy fate, and to constantly rebel, is the attitude favored by both Camus and Dostoevsky in relation to the absurd. This is how one can find values in void and meaning in absurd.

Ruining the absurd would be senseless; one is given one’s existence in this universe to prove oneself worthy of it. Giving up is not an option. The only way an objectively meaningless and valueless life can be given a meaning and a value is by subjectively living it. One does not find the meaning of life, one lives it out. Meaning of life is not a reachable destination, it is a traversable highway. Meaning of life is not in an end, it is found in the process itself.
Absurd hero lives the meaning of his life.
*
The original title of this article was "Meaning in the Meaningless", but my philosophy professor preferred the lighter title -the suspended spider- that I took out of a metaphore used in the article.

Visit Javaid Zeerk's blog here. He is a blogger from Afghanistan.