I am certainly no authority on the works of Camus, but I have read his journals and most of his writings, with more attention to "The Stranger" and "The Plague". Although these were written over 50 years ago, I wonder if these are still relevant, and if so, are they worth commenting on especially in these current times of unrest and insecurity the world over. In "The Stranger", Camus' lead character, Meursault, appears to lack empathy for those he comes into contact with. He sees life as "godless", "absurd", and without meaning, and thus finds justification for his self serving actions. His character is one of the most well known literary characters of the past 75 years, and I must ask why? Could it be that Camus was even, "before his time", and was using his lead character not only as a foil for certain general human traits, but as a metaphor for the larger weapons or voices of state power in his time? For surely, we all are familiar with the notion of a unit/team/nation only being as strong as its' weakest link, and therefore, I pose the idea that perhaps in presenting Mersault to the world, Camus was using him to comment on the apathy and general lack of interest or power that the weakest links in his society may have had. And if this may be posited as perhaps true, then could it not be said that we may draw a parallel between the character Mersault and the rank and file of so many of us who currently feel relatively helpless and therefore apathetic to the national and world economic mess, political dissillusionments, and enigmatic nature of the two primary countries we now devote so much of our war effort towards? And therefore, if any of this is even remotely possibly true, does not it stand that the works of Camus are just as relevant today as they were over 50 years ago? And if this is so, and we are simultaneously watching the closing of bookstores across the nation (Borders being the latest, themselves having killed off countless mom and pop bookshops)and the general decline of the reading of the written word, then is not it now as important as ever that works like Camus' "the Stranger" be not forgotten in this daily deluge of internet tech magic that seems to overide so quickly so much of past history as we have known it? What I mean is that we, as a culture are now seemingly so obsessed with the "magic" of the iPhone, the iPad, the immediate gratification that our technology brings us, that we neglect to heed the important voices of the past that, in fact, are desperately relevant to the current times we are living in? And therefore, should we not be more wary of the "bells and whistles" of some of our modern technology, which may simply be acting as a smoke and mirror show to simply keep us apathetic towards some of the more "humanistic" attentions that need paying attention to in the here and now?
On the point of recent technological obsessions keeping us distracted from more valuable voices and keeping us further alienated from a whole array of values themselves, I could not agree more. On the point of Mersault's significance in relation to the connection between man and the events of his day -- my thoughts differ. I think Mersault's apathy is compelling because it helps to strip away the "assumptions" of caring. Why do we care? Why should we care? Often the answer to this is automatic and not thought-out, and so the image of an individual as by-nature engaged, interested, and empathetic is itself a kind of smokescreen sold to the public -- the public's complimentary image of itself, frequently repeated in popular rhetoric. "As a society we are good people. We care about humanity as a category, and thus are invested in the questions that impact human conditions." Mersault flies in the face of this cliche. His example allows us to contemplate the possibility of not caring, compare and contrast it with our own inclinations, and (perhaps) come up with a persuasive argument for caring at all. So that our caring is not just some platitude we embrace because it sounds like an image of ourselves that we fancy, but rather a choice whose rationale (whether intellectual, emotional, spiritual, or likely all of these things) we've come to understand -- if we do.
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