In Hawaiian, "love" is not emotion but our embrace of coherence, the life-force itself. Visitors wonder at "something special" about the islands, and similarly can't quite grasp it, as it lies outside typical western thinking. Love comes from within, with self-mastery, the essentialness of connection, and comes with respect, humility, vitality. Our term "Aloha 'aina" epitomizes this idea, a recognition that all creatures are related -- the unseen actors in the soil and in the rolling waves, the plant menagerie, creatures at loose, like us, wandering the landscape making life work, together, in coherence. Indigenous people grasp this and have many stories and myths to explain it in terms westerners cannot grasp. It's time we did; the future depends on it. Thank you, Mike, for taking us a bold step forward.
That was a wonderfully insightful and uplifting essay, Mike. I’d not grasped the consistency that you revealed between Camus’s tale of Sisyphus and a top-down holographic cosmology that posits that we - human and all life - have come forth from the universe and to this point. To a biophilic universe. To where we humans are not only anti-entropic complexities in a quantum universe, but are conscious of being in it and of being full participants in it. We participate most fully and profoundly by observing reality as part of it and choosing to be alive each moment we are in it. Alive and in love with the seemingly serendipitous privilege of pushing our fervent desires, hopes, dreams, burdens, pains, and sorrows endlessly up the hill, against the pull of gravity and the relativity of time. Thank you…
Thank you for your kind feedback. I'd suggest that perhaps Carl Sagan, in his observation that we are star stuff that has come to know itself, is actually a direct articulation of this insight as well. So the insight is not novel. But it is profound. I am trying to give it moral architecture.
Breakthrough! Magnificent! Understanding the meaning of myth, and Camus’ completed philosophy: the infinite opportunity to choose, again and again, what it means to be human. This is our legacy from evolution as foragers – responding to reality as it happens, mapping useful paths through it – over and over, improving, correcting, never perfecting, as the landscape changes with the world’s turning.
Having made clear how much I respect and appreciate your beautiful writing, lucidity, frankness, spontaneity and brilliance, I’m taking the liberty of expressing some anger at your remarks about Camus, whose books have nourished me since I was a teenager.
Your thoughts, as always, on The Myth of Sisyphus are very interesting. However, why on earth would you think that you know better what Camus was trying to say than he did? “A profound recognition that he could never quite articulate fully,” “the answer eluded him but not (the royal) us,” “reaching for but could never quite grasp,” etc.
Does it follow - as night follows day - that if he didn’t explain something, he didn’t know what it was? Some authors leave room for the reader to ruminate; it’s not always considered good writing to spell everything out. What you glean from his text is interesting, but to say that you get it, but he didn’t is a little presumptuous, don’t you think?
And you seem to forget the context in which Camus was living. He wrote the Myth in 1942, in France under the Occupation; the following year he joined the Resistance. You say: “But we have an advantage Camus didn't have. We can see what he could only sense: that the forces threatening human meaning aren't cosmic indifference but human systems. Not abstract absurdity but concrete authoritarianism. Not existential meaninglessness but systematic meaning-extraction.”
Camus, living daily under the Nazis, only “sensed the forces threatening human meaning?” He didn’t know “concrete authoritarianism?” His book basically says that life means what we attribute to it, since the universe itself offers no meaning. This gives us freedom from predestiny and we can therefore embrace the absurdity of our human condition. If you’ve gleaned something else, that’s great, but you can’t presume to know what Camus would have written if he had been able to live a longer life. Having read all his works, I would think Camus, like a Zen master, would have wanted the reader to come to his own understanding of why Sisyphus smiled.
Thank you deeply for your thoughtful and challenging feedback. I genuinely wrestled with this before publishing, precisely because I wanted to avoid the impression that I’m attempting a “corrective” of Camus or presuming to speak above him.
My goal was not to diminish Camus or foreclose the personal meaning that each reader finds in his writing. Rather, I’m trying to build upon his foundation, to carry forward his profound insights into our current moment—to suggest how his philosophy might speak vividly to today’s crises and opportunities.
In that sense, I view what I’ve written not as a critique or correction, but as a progression—an evolution in dialogue with Camus. I don’t intend violence upon his work; rather, I see my interpretation as an extension, another verse in the philosophical song that Camus himself started.
You’re entirely right to highlight the historical context he faced, and perhaps my rhetoric obscured the respect and humility I feel towards that. Your point that Camus would encourage us all to come to our own understanding, like a Zen master, resonates deeply with me. I hope my piece honors that spirit by inviting further reflection and exploration rather than shutting it down.
Again, thank you sincerely. Your criticism is received gratefully and thoughtfully.
Sometimes one must take a risk. Especially in this moment of existential crisis. And so I did.
EDIT: I would add that you're absolutely right that Camus faced concrete authoritarianism and understood it intimately. But Camus, writing in 1942, couldn't see the full arc of what was coming—the way technological systems would evolve to create new forms of meaning-extraction that go beyond traditional political oppression. He couldn't anticipate how algorithms would shape consciousness, how surveillance capitalism would harvest human attention, how techno-authoritarianism would promise efficiency while delivering submission.
In Hawaiian, "love" is not emotion but our embrace of coherence, the life-force itself. Visitors wonder at "something special" about the islands, and similarly can't quite grasp it, as it lies outside typical western thinking. Love comes from within, with self-mastery, the essentialness of connection, and comes with respect, humility, vitality. Our term "Aloha 'aina" epitomizes this idea, a recognition that all creatures are related -- the unseen actors in the soil and in the rolling waves, the plant menagerie, creatures at loose, like us, wandering the landscape making life work, together, in coherence. Indigenous people grasp this and have many stories and myths to explain it in terms westerners cannot grasp. It's time we did; the future depends on it. Thank you, Mike, for taking us a bold step forward.
I'm so glad you shared this! Thank you.
Mike, this is one of the most profound and moving columns you’ve written for Notes. Thank you so much!
That was a wonderfully insightful and uplifting essay, Mike. I’d not grasped the consistency that you revealed between Camus’s tale of Sisyphus and a top-down holographic cosmology that posits that we - human and all life - have come forth from the universe and to this point. To a biophilic universe. To where we humans are not only anti-entropic complexities in a quantum universe, but are conscious of being in it and of being full participants in it. We participate most fully and profoundly by observing reality as part of it and choosing to be alive each moment we are in it. Alive and in love with the seemingly serendipitous privilege of pushing our fervent desires, hopes, dreams, burdens, pains, and sorrows endlessly up the hill, against the pull of gravity and the relativity of time. Thank you…
Thank you for your kind feedback. I'd suggest that perhaps Carl Sagan, in his observation that we are star stuff that has come to know itself, is actually a direct articulation of this insight as well. So the insight is not novel. But it is profound. I am trying to give it moral architecture.
This is why humanistic governing works! Progress and protection. The capacity to give while working hard and not resenting being wanted or needed.
Breakthrough! Magnificent! Understanding the meaning of myth, and Camus’ completed philosophy: the infinite opportunity to choose, again and again, what it means to be human. This is our legacy from evolution as foragers – responding to reality as it happens, mapping useful paths through it – over and over, improving, correcting, never perfecting, as the landscape changes with the world’s turning.
This!
Sisyphus = Bill Murray in Groundhog Day.
Having made clear how much I respect and appreciate your beautiful writing, lucidity, frankness, spontaneity and brilliance, I’m taking the liberty of expressing some anger at your remarks about Camus, whose books have nourished me since I was a teenager.
Your thoughts, as always, on The Myth of Sisyphus are very interesting. However, why on earth would you think that you know better what Camus was trying to say than he did? “A profound recognition that he could never quite articulate fully,” “the answer eluded him but not (the royal) us,” “reaching for but could never quite grasp,” etc.
Does it follow - as night follows day - that if he didn’t explain something, he didn’t know what it was? Some authors leave room for the reader to ruminate; it’s not always considered good writing to spell everything out. What you glean from his text is interesting, but to say that you get it, but he didn’t is a little presumptuous, don’t you think?
And you seem to forget the context in which Camus was living. He wrote the Myth in 1942, in France under the Occupation; the following year he joined the Resistance. You say: “But we have an advantage Camus didn't have. We can see what he could only sense: that the forces threatening human meaning aren't cosmic indifference but human systems. Not abstract absurdity but concrete authoritarianism. Not existential meaninglessness but systematic meaning-extraction.”
Camus, living daily under the Nazis, only “sensed the forces threatening human meaning?” He didn’t know “concrete authoritarianism?” His book basically says that life means what we attribute to it, since the universe itself offers no meaning. This gives us freedom from predestiny and we can therefore embrace the absurdity of our human condition. If you’ve gleaned something else, that’s great, but you can’t presume to know what Camus would have written if he had been able to live a longer life. Having read all his works, I would think Camus, like a Zen master, would have wanted the reader to come to his own understanding of why Sisyphus smiled.
Thank you deeply for your thoughtful and challenging feedback. I genuinely wrestled with this before publishing, precisely because I wanted to avoid the impression that I’m attempting a “corrective” of Camus or presuming to speak above him.
My goal was not to diminish Camus or foreclose the personal meaning that each reader finds in his writing. Rather, I’m trying to build upon his foundation, to carry forward his profound insights into our current moment—to suggest how his philosophy might speak vividly to today’s crises and opportunities.
In that sense, I view what I’ve written not as a critique or correction, but as a progression—an evolution in dialogue with Camus. I don’t intend violence upon his work; rather, I see my interpretation as an extension, another verse in the philosophical song that Camus himself started.
You’re entirely right to highlight the historical context he faced, and perhaps my rhetoric obscured the respect and humility I feel towards that. Your point that Camus would encourage us all to come to our own understanding, like a Zen master, resonates deeply with me. I hope my piece honors that spirit by inviting further reflection and exploration rather than shutting it down.
Again, thank you sincerely. Your criticism is received gratefully and thoughtfully.
Sometimes one must take a risk. Especially in this moment of existential crisis. And so I did.
EDIT: I would add that you're absolutely right that Camus faced concrete authoritarianism and understood it intimately. But Camus, writing in 1942, couldn't see the full arc of what was coming—the way technological systems would evolve to create new forms of meaning-extraction that go beyond traditional political oppression. He couldn't anticipate how algorithms would shape consciousness, how surveillance capitalism would harvest human attention, how techno-authoritarianism would promise efficiency while delivering submission.