Latest news with #AlbertCamus
The Age
3 days ago
- Politics
- The Age
This is fine: An existential guide to Australian politics
Albert Camus would have been a lousy goalkeeper. Think about it. The French-Algerian standing between the posts, his head in the clouds. Reports say the writer excelled for Algiers Racing Uni's First XI, but I have my doubts. Imagine relying on Albert as your last line of defence, the bloke spouting stuff like, 'The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone'. Or: 'An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself'. Wake up, Albie! The ball is coming! Tuberculosis intervened, sadly, the goalie trading gloves for philosophy, plus those olive-green novels – The Stranger, The Fall – that ask the big questions. Each title has been a staple of high school and Existentialism 101. Not that Camus used the term. Indeed he rejected the e-word, preferring instead to forge fables around the incomprehensibility of existence. As that's the central plank, that irksome query about why we're here, and what we should do about it. 'Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is,' as Camus said. Which makes you wonder what we're meant to be. Precisely the conundrum heard in Canberra this month. Is it any wonder? How can a power bloc of two parties implode into a rabble, losing seats like musical chairs, going from Coalition to Noalition? Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox depicted a bisected couch, one parent per half, both insisting 'Mummy and Daddy still love you very much'. Question being, are Mama Ley and Papa Littleproud going through a break-up, or merely a break? Either way, whether this new reunion lasts, the existentialism burns deep, fanned by those pesky Camus questions. 'I can't go on, I'll go on,' as Samuel Beckett said, a handy left-hand opener for Trinity College, and another writer besotted by existentialism. Macquarie Dictionary defines the ideology as 'a group of doctrines – some theistic, some atheistic – deriving from Kierkegaard, which stress the importance of existence, and of the freedom and responsibility of the finite mind.' Existential first emerged about 1693 as an adjective for existence. A century on, Soren Kierkegaard co-opted the ism to refute the divine logic that Georg Hegel fancied, where the rational is actual, and vice versa. Lort, thought Soren: Danish for bullshit. In his milestone work Either/Or, the philosopher writes, 'There are two possible situations – one can either do this or do that. My honest opinion, and my friendly advice is this: do it, or do not do it. You will regret both.' Loading Remind you of anyone – federally, I mean? Hence the e-word's rise. Existential now applies to politics, the arts, deconstruction cuisine, eco-anxiety, and anywhere you look. Last year Flinders University revealed how doomscrolling – surfing online between Gaza and La Nina – breeds existentialism. Reza Shebahang, the study's lead, claimed the custom has 'dire consequences on our mental health, leaving us feeling stress, anxiety, despair and questioning the meaning of life'. Smart machines and AI inroads only deepen the abyss. Pushed to existential extremes, we feel like adjuncts to this thing called life. Avatars. Daydreamers in the goalmouth. Or characters living life forwards so that we might understand what we're doing in hindsight, to paraphrase Kierkegaard. If it's any comfort to party leaders, doomscrollers and general AI alarmists, remember that 'the key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead'. Camus? Beckett? Try Mr Peanutbutter, the easygoing labrador from BoJack Horseman.
Sydney Morning Herald
3 days ago
- Politics
- Sydney Morning Herald
This is fine: An existential guide to Australian politics
Albert Camus would have been a lousy goalkeeper. Think about it. The French-Algerian standing between the posts, his head in the clouds. Reports say the writer excelled for Algiers Racing Uni's First XI, but I have my doubts. Imagine relying on Albert as your last line of defence, the bloke spouting stuff like, 'The only real progress lies in learning to be wrong all alone'. Or: 'An intellectual is someone whose mind watches itself'. Wake up, Albie! The ball is coming! Tuberculosis intervened, sadly, the goalie trading gloves for philosophy, plus those olive-green novels – The Stranger, The Fall – that ask the big questions. Each title has been a staple of high school and Existentialism 101. Not that Camus used the term. Indeed he rejected the e-word, preferring instead to forge fables around the incomprehensibility of existence. As that's the central plank, that irksome query about why we're here, and what we should do about it. 'Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is,' as Camus said. Which makes you wonder what we're meant to be. Precisely the conundrum heard in Canberra this month. Is it any wonder? How can a power bloc of two parties implode into a rabble, losing seats like musical chairs, going from Coalition to Noalition? Cartoonist Cathy Wilcox depicted a bisected couch, one parent per half, both insisting 'Mummy and Daddy still love you very much'. Question being, are Mama Ley and Papa Littleproud going through a break-up, or merely a break? Either way, whether this new reunion lasts, the existentialism burns deep, fanned by those pesky Camus questions. 'I can't go on, I'll go on,' as Samuel Beckett said, a handy left-hand opener for Trinity College, and another writer besotted by existentialism. Macquarie Dictionary defines the ideology as 'a group of doctrines – some theistic, some atheistic – deriving from Kierkegaard, which stress the importance of existence, and of the freedom and responsibility of the finite mind.' Existential first emerged about 1693 as an adjective for existence. A century on, Soren Kierkegaard co-opted the ism to refute the divine logic that Georg Hegel fancied, where the rational is actual, and vice versa. Lort, thought Soren: Danish for bullshit. In his milestone work Either/Or, the philosopher writes, 'There are two possible situations – one can either do this or do that. My honest opinion, and my friendly advice is this: do it, or do not do it. You will regret both.' Loading Remind you of anyone – federally, I mean? Hence the e-word's rise. Existential now applies to politics, the arts, deconstruction cuisine, eco-anxiety, and anywhere you look. Last year Flinders University revealed how doomscrolling – surfing online between Gaza and La Nina – breeds existentialism. Reza Shebahang, the study's lead, claimed the custom has 'dire consequences on our mental health, leaving us feeling stress, anxiety, despair and questioning the meaning of life'. Smart machines and AI inroads only deepen the abyss. Pushed to existential extremes, we feel like adjuncts to this thing called life. Avatars. Daydreamers in the goalmouth. Or characters living life forwards so that we might understand what we're doing in hindsight, to paraphrase Kierkegaard. If it's any comfort to party leaders, doomscrollers and general AI alarmists, remember that 'the key to being happy isn't a search for meaning. It's to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you'll be dead'. Camus? Beckett? Try Mr Peanutbutter, the easygoing labrador from BoJack Horseman.
The Sun
19-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The Sun
People are just realising Man Utd legend Eric Cantona is COUSINS with new Pope Leo XIV
ERIC CANTONA was worshipped by Manchester United fans - and they might have been on to something. French genealogy experts have discovered the football icon is related to Pope Leo XIV. 3 3 Cantona, 58, took English football by storm in the early 1990s. After a short stint at Leeds, he joined United in 1992 and spent five eventful years at Old Trafford. Geneanet have taken a deep dive into Pope Leo's ancestry after he took on the role earlier this month. Born in Chicago, Pope Leo's real name is Robert Francis Prevost. The study traced the Pope's roots back to France after discovering his paternal grandfather was born in Italy and emigrated to the US. The study managed to map out Leo's lineage all the way back to 1415. And it turns out the Pope is a relative of Cantona - with the pair distant cousins. The United icon and the family of Leo XIV are linked from the 12th to the 15th generation. They are joined by the marriage of Bertrand Negrel and Louise Jean, who wed in 1566 in Roquevaire, Southern France. Cantona, who was born in Marseille in 1966, is also a cousin of famous author Albert Camus, according to the study. Looking for Manchester The 58-year-old was recently back in Manchester on a fan crusade. He signed his whole family up as shareholders in rebel club FC United. Cantona took aim at United co-owner Sir Jim Ratcliffe for his decision-making since taking over the club. He claims the Ineos owner is trying to "destroy everything" and blasted the decision to move away from Old Trafford. The Frenchman said: 'I support United because I really love United. "But now if I was a fan and I had to choose a club I don't think I would choose United. 3 'For me, that is very important to respect these people like you respect your manager and your team-mates. 'I think since Ratcliffe arrived it's the complete opposite and this team of directors they try to destroy everything and they don't respect anybody. 'They even want to change the stadium. 'The soul of the team and the club is not in the players. All the people around is like a big family. 'I don't feel close to these kind of decisions. They have another strategy, another project. Do you feel close to this project? I don't think so."
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Courage in the face of adversity
Albert Camus. (Photo Creative Commons from DietrichLiao on Flickr.) These are tough times. But they're not the first and the past, as always, can be instructive. Recently, I picked up Albert Camus' 1948 classic 'The Plague' and I'm very happy I did. I hadn't read it since college and my memory was beyond hazy. I did remember that its main character was a doctor (Bernard Rieux) and that it was about his struggle against an epidemic of bubonic plague in the French Algerian city of Oran; how he carried on, exhausted but determined, in the face of odds that grew more impossible by the hour. You'd think it would have occurred to me to read this a few years ago when we had a deadly, global plague of our own. But I've always been a little slow on the uptake and this was no exception. Besides, a lot of the smartest people I know are feeling overwhelmed and fighting despair right now. As I remembered 'The Plague,' it was about the philosophy/morality/ethics of staying in the fight when the odds against you seem most daunting. Rereading the book, this seemed to be the main point. Behind the story, of course, is an author, a French Algerian one who just five years before had gone to Nazi-occupied Paris, started the book, and became editor-in-chief of Combat, an underground newspaper of the French resistance. 'Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night,' Camus wrote in it, according to a bunch of websites. 'Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom's barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men's blood.' He was writing to capture a moment. But he was also trying to inspire by describing the stakes: blood sacrifice to secure freedom's barricades. When they're that high, it's hard to justify not doing what you can, I think he's saying. In the mid-90s, I got an idea just how important a newspaper can be to an imperiled community. Just after the four-year Siege of Sarajevo, I was at a journalism convention in D.C. A grizzled reporter described how Bosnian Serbs laying siege to the hurled artillery shells into the newspaper building, leveling it floor by floor until he and his colleagues were literally working underground, laboring by candlelight to type and mimeograph what few copies of the paper they could muster. Then he and the others would brave sniper fire to drop and post them around the city. The name of the paper? Oslobodjenje, or 'Liberation' in English. According to its reporter, the community saw it as liberation and more — a way of knowing what was happening to their neighbors and of knowing they weren't alone in their suffering. That despite or because of it all, they were proud, resilient. They had an identity. The reporter said the hunger for their work was so great that copies would pass from reader to reader until they fell apart. Those details are indelible to me. Something so important that it's worth risking your life to produce and disseminate or to obtain and read. To read until it crumbles. Certainly in Camus' occupied Paris, nothing very good was going to come if Nazi thugs found you even in possession of Combat, much less writing and printing the thing. But print it they did, to obvious effect. It seems to me that that's what Camus was really getting at in 'The Plague.' It's a study of how people react when they're confronted with calamities so big they can't be ignored. There's Cottard, the man who's committed an unnamed crime. Alone in the city, he's pleased by the pestilence, thinking the cops will be too preoccupied to go looking for him. Concerned chiefly with himself, he's a character who resonates in our current situation. But then there's a bit of justice. When the pestilence ends, Cottard goes mad. There's the Parisian journalist Rambert. Just happening to be in Oran at the outbreak, he at first schemes obsessively to get back to his new wife. He tries to justify his selfish pursuit of personal happiness in the face of the calamity, and Dr. Rieux doesn't argue with him. But then the journalist has an epiphany and passes up a chance at escape to work tirelessly at Rieux's side. And there's Father Paneloux, who first reacts to the outbreak by exhorting that it's God's rightful judgement on a sinful people. As he cares for its victims, he softens toward them, but not toward his faith or himself. Declaring all or nothing, he invests all in his faith, refuses treatment when he gets sick, and dies. Most important is Dr. Rieux. He sees nothing heroic in what he's doing. He's trained as a healer. He's in a place full of people who need healing. So in his mind, his duty is clear. The other characters take their cues from him. It would be hazardous for a layman such as myself to over-interpret one of the great novels of the 20th century. So I'll confine myself to this: Camus was writing during and just after a time when democracy and any real notion of freedom were under grave threat. He was on the front lines of that fight at a time and in a place that must have, more than once, caused him to despair of his cause. He fought on by putting out his vital newspaper and then he wrote this book. Others in and around the resistance did the things they could — big and little — to sustain a community that existed beyond cruelty and madness. For many, that surely consisted of just being decent to those around them. Seems to me that we moderns might learn something here. Instead of just moaning in despair, we all need to do our bit, no matter how humble, to do good, be good, talk to people with whom we might not think we agree, make things better. One of those little things is writing, reading, and doing our best to share the truth. For now, anyway, in the United States, no great physical dangers confront publishers and readers of independent journalism. But one wonders whether good information can be heard over the sinister din raised by our current crop of tech-mogul Cottards. We all have to keep at it. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX SUPPORT: YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE
