My grandfather served during the Second World War. He never talked about it; we never asked. I think one got the impression that doing so would provoke memories or feelings that would be too much for any sane person to bear. I doubt many came back the same as when they left. I also doubt […]

The discovery of the absurd will often lead to one of two reflexive responses. The first entails a kind of negative leap into suicide and despair. The second involves a more common and subtle positive leap, where an underlying anxiety about the human dilemma presumably causes one to ‘forget’ the starting point – the place […]

I noted in a previous post how Camus was critical of intellectuals who had discovered the absurd, only to seek refuge or escape by creating some transcendental truth or value. After determining that nothing in the world has purpose or meaning, they go on to find purpose or meaning in it; something is created out […]

Camus was not the first to come to the conclusions thus far described – Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Sartre, and others less known, have also followed lucid reason to arrive at the ‘waterless deserts’ of the absurd… … but how eager they were to get out of them! At that last crossroad where thought hesitates … […]

Few understood the concept of the ‘absurd’ as intimately as Albert Camus, whose thoughts are most clearly outlined in his 1942 essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. For Camus, there is no question more crucial than that of life meaning: “I see many people die because they judge that life is not worth living. I see […]

Our modern times have witnessed a growing dissatisfaction with traditional forms of religion. With greater access to evolutionary education, it becomes increasingly difficult to reconcile our longing for meaningful answers in a faith that crumbles under the scrutiny of science and reason. In recent years, that scrutiny has come by way of the so-called New […]

Logical fallacies frequently committed by experimental and clinical psychologists: Denying the Antecedent: If x, then y. Not x. Therefore, not y. Example 1: “If I am charged by an ethics board, then I did something unethical. I am not charged by an ethics board. Therefore, I did nothing unethical.” This is an illogical conclusion since […]

Psychology’s neglect of Philosophy It is interesting to observe that up until the 19th century, psychology was informally a branch of philosophy. Questions related to the human mind, and even the treatment of mental ailments such as existential angst and despair, were traditionally concerns of philosophy. Of course, they now fall within the domain of […]