The World Is a Nonsensical Play, and I Am an Improvising Actor
Absurdism, a philosophical stance that took shape in the first half of the 20th century.
Albert Camus is regarded as the core spokesperson for absurdism. He believed there exists a fundamental conflict between human beings and the world: humans are born ceaselessly searching for the meaning of life, yet the world can never provide an answer. The collision of these two forces gives rise to the sense of the absurd.
What should people do when confronted with the absurdity of the world? According to Camus, we can neither escape nor deceive ourselves. Only sober rebellion against absurdity constitutes the only dignified way to live. Just as in Sisyphus, we know full well that rolling the boulder uphill will never bear fruit, yet we can still imagine Sisyphus as happy. Or take Meursault from The Stranger, who pierces through all hypocrisy with radical honesty.
Absurdism is not about abandoning meaning. It is about consciously building a sense of dignity for life within a meaningless world.
This may sound similar to existentialism, yet the two differ significantly. Existentialism holds that humans ought to create meaning in a meaningless world. Absurdism, by contrast, argues that the pursuit of meaning itself is absurd. The absurdity of the world cannot be changed; we can only live with full awareness.
In daily life, some people work hard day in and day out yet see no way forward. Some exhaust themselves preparing for postgraduate and professional exams, only to find their future remains shrouded in uncertainty. Others spend over a decade buried in textbooks and exercises, only to fall into confusion right after the college‑entrance exam. Within just a few days after results come out, they must map out the direction for the next four years, or even decades, of their lives. All of this is absurd. Life feels like an unsolvable riddle brimming with uncertainties.
This is exactly what Camus meant: humanity craves clear answers, but the world offers none.
Absurdism urges us to face this absurdity with clarity. Even when our future is riddled with unknowns, we should do our utmost to make choices that suit us in the present moment.
Absurdism tells us that confronting life’s absurdity head‑on is the way forward. We ought not to be chained by the pursuit of ultimate meaning. If life comes with no pre‑assigned meaning, we gain greater freedom to decide how we want to live. This frees us from the compulsion to “find meaning”, and shifts our focus toward: who do I want to be? How do I experience the present? The world may be meaningless, yet we can respond to it with our own attitude. Precisely because the world carries no inherent meaning, every choice we make and every passion we hold becomes extraordinarily precious.