Camus for Dummies

[hcap]

My Summer Reading Journal
George W. Bush reads Camus (as told to Julian Sanchez).
Or notes on existentialism.

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewWeb&articleId=11887

"August 10: I'm having some second thoughts about switching from "stay the course" to this "adapt and win" talking point. See, I was out clearing brush and got to thinking: The brush -- it's just going to keep on growing back. Can't really win the fight; it's futile. Absurd, you might say. Yet isn't there a kind of nobility in facing up to this and persevering, without illusions or false hope? Now I see Baghdad kind of the same. I see a soldier going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. At each of those moments when he leaves the Green Zone and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the insurgents, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than Iraq."


"August 12: I begin to suspect that God is merely a way of coping with our fundamentally absurd condition, an act of bad faith, a desperate attempt to deny our own responsibility for creating meaning in a disenchanted world by locating it outside ourselves, in a fabricated transcendent will we then refuse to recognize as our own creation -- bastard offspring we confusedly call "father". I relate my epiphany to Karl with the excitement of a man beginning life anew. He says the message is unlikely to resonate with the base."

[kenwoodallpromos]

Is not worth wasting time on. Only 55,000 subscribers read these historical novels.

[hcap]

Your buddy bush is reading it, or so it was claimed
The Stranger is based on Camus' theory of the absurd.

"Absurdism is a philosophy stating that the efforts of humanity to find meaning in the universe will ultimately fail because no such meaning exists (at least in relation to humanity).

So whether or not you subscribe to this it is worth noting the absurdity of bush claiming the novel as part of his summer reading to-do

Subscriber to a historical novel?
Huh?

[Secretariat]

Hcap,

I read The Stranger years ago. Isn't it about a crime and the justification for killing the Arab? If so, I can see why GW is having it read to him.

[hcap]

Sec, I suspect just a campaign to rev up bushs' obvious smartness for the faux masses.

But why bushs' handlers thought this is a read is beyond me. Just more PR

From Wikipedia

...Albert Camus, like Meursault, was a pied-noir (literally black foot)—a Frenchman who lived in the Maghreb, the northernmost crescent of Africa along the Mediterranean Sea, the heart of France's colonies.

Usually classed as an existential novel, The Stranger is indeed based on Camus' theory of the absurd. Many readers mistakenly believe that Meursault lives by the ideas of the existentialists. In the first half of the novel, however, Meursault is clearly an unreflecting, unapologetic individual. He is moved only by sensory experiences

..Camus is reinforcing his basic thesis that there is no Truth, only (relative) truths—and, in particular, that truths in science (empiricism/rationality) and religion are ultimately meaningless.


.

[Tom]

..Camus is reinforcing his basic thesis that there is no Truth, only (relative) truths—and, in particular, that truths in science (empiricism/rationality) and religion are ultimately meaningless.

.

My basic thesis is Camus is ultimately meaningless.

[kenwoodallpromos]

My basic thesis is Camus is ultimately meaningless.
quote from "Bush":
_______
"Anyways, I was going to start it in bed last night, but Laura had been going on about how she loved L'Etranger, which got me so worked up I forgot it. Except then she came in just wearing that frumpy cotton nightgown. Go figure. So I'll start tomorrow."
Hcap and Sec appearantely really belive BUSH is the President who tells reporters about getting a hard-on when he and his wife are ready to get into bed!LOL!

[Secretariat]

quote from "Bush":
_______
"Anyways, I was going to start it in bed last night, but Laura had been going on about how she loved L'Etranger, which got me so worked up I forgot it. Except then she came in just wearing that frumpy cotton nightgown. Go figure. So I'll start tomorrow."
Hcap and Sec appearantely really belive BUSH is the President who tells reporters about getting a hard-on when he and his wife are ready to get into bed!LOL!


???...sounds like Camus

[DJofSD]

I had to read the thread title a couple of times before I realized it wasn't "Camus is for dummies."

Time to buy "Godless".

[kenwoodallpromos]

I had to read the thread title a couple of times before I realized it wasn't "Camus is for dummies."

Time to buy "Godless".
_
More libel from HCap!

[boxcar]

..Camus is reinforcing his basic thesis that there is no Truth, only (relative) truths—and, in particular, that truths in science (empiricism/rationality) and religion are ultimately meaningless..

You should do your buddy Camus a favor by putting a bug in his ear that his philosophy or "basic thesis" is self-defeating. How can he make any absolute, credible, meaningful statements about the existence of [absolute] "Truth", when according to his own "basic thesis" there is no absolute truth!? Remember 'cap (if you can) that self-defeating arguments are inherently contradictory. Therefore, Camus' basic thesis is absurd.

Boxcar

[boxcar]

My basic thesis is Camus is ultimately meaningless.

You're a lot closer to the truth of it all than 'Cap is because assuredly Camus' "basic thesis" is meaningles!

Boxcar

[hcap]

boxcar
You should do your buddy Camus a favor by putting a bug in his ear that his philosophy or "basic thesis" is self-defeatingNever said I believe it. Quoted it From Wikipedia. I just thought that bush reading THE STRANGER was a good example of Camus' theory of the absurd. That is why I titled this thread Camus for Dummies :cool:

[hcap]

Speaking of dummies.

Pundits Renounce The President
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/19/AR2006081900568_2.html

...Few have struck a nerve more than Scarborough, who questioned the president's intelligence on his show, "Scarborough Country." He showed a montage of clips of Bush's famously inarticulate verbal miscues and then explored with guests John Fund and Lawrence O'Donnell Jr. whether Bush is smart enough to be president.

While the country does not want a leader wallowing in the weeds, Scarborough concluded on the segment, "we do need a president who, I think, is intellectually curious."

"And that is a big question," Scarborough said, "whether George W. Bush has the intellectual curiousness -- if that's a word -- to continue leading this country over the next couple of years."

In a later telephone interview, Scarborough said he aired the segment because he kept hearing even fellow Republicans questioning Bush's capacity and leadership, particularly in Iraq. Like others, he said, he supported the war but now thinks it is time to find a way to get out. "A lot of conservatives are saying, 'Enough's enough,' " he said. Asked about the reaction to his program, he said, "The White House is not happy about it."

[Tom]

I remind everyone - the alternative was KERRY!
We took the best there was to vote on.
Don't blame Bush if you guys put up a pathetic clown to run against him.

Twice.