Worth Talking About
What gives meaning to life?
Love?
Money?
Happiness?
Nihilism is a school of thought that posits,
none of these is the answer.
That life has no meaning.
A 1974 film by Georges Perec
follows a young man who discovers this,
and It's Worth Talking About.
"A Man Who Sleeps"
The entire film follows a young man who wanders through Paris,
all the while someone narrating his thoughts in second person.
It is quickly established that he is depressed.
Take for example this first piece of narration
You make, as you do everyday, a bowl of nescafé;
you add, as you do everyday, a few drops of sweetened condensed milk.
You don't wash.
You hardly bother to dress.
The first time I watched this film, it was here I made assumptions.
Because this man is depressed,
and he doesn't make any effort or get any joy
I had an idea
He's already dead and in purgatory.
I ended up finding out
No,
This isn't the case.
To talk about this further I want to talk about steak
I know, this seems bizarre
to bring up steak while talking about nihilism, but bear with me
Indifference to the world is neither ignorance nor hostility.
You do not propose to rediscover the joys of illiteracy,
but rather not grant a privileged status to any one thing you read.
You ingest once or twice a day, rarely more
a calculable compound of proteins and glucosides
in the form of a piece of grilled beef
strips of potato, quick fried in boiling oil,
and a glass of red wine.
In other words, it's a steak
but it's certainly not a tournados.
and chips that no one would dignify with the name "French Fries."
and the glass of red wine of uncertain, not to say dubious, origin.
Did you catch that?
It was very subtle.
It was just a comment.
In the first clip the narration says how indifferent the central character is,
but in the second, he is very opinionated about the quality of his meal.
Let's watch again quickly
Indifference to the world is neither ignorance nor hostility.
chips that no one would dignify with the name "French Fries."
and the glass of red wine of uncertain, not to say dubious, origin.
It is clear that he is not really indifferent, he just thinks he is.
He has become a victim of pessimistic narcissism.
He looks down at the world.
Because he sees this "truth"
he is now better than the world and everyone in it.
he has become a narcissist.
But how can we avoid this?
How can we accept meaninglessness,
and still have a  positive outlook?
Albert Camus and Absurdity
Huh?
Why do I do theatre?
Well, I have often wondered.
And the only answer I have been able to come up with will seem discouragingly banal to you.
Simply put; it's because a theatre stage is one of the places in the world where I am happy.
Albert Camus was a prolific French philosopher of the twentieth century,
although he would have liked to deny the title.
Camus is very remarkable today for his idea of ​​absurdity.
He observed an apparent natural phenomenon.
Men strive all their lives to find meaning in life,
and there doesn't seem to be any.
This is the Absurdity
It is not relevant but he is also very pretty.
So what did he think of our world and how does it relate to nihilism?
Okay, where was I?
Ah, yes, happiness. Well,
for happiness today, it is like for the crime of common law.
Never confess it.
Do not say, without thinking of evil, to a cat, "I am happy",
because immediately, you would see around you, on upturned lips, your condemnation.
"Ah, you are happy, my boy."
"And what do you do with the orphans in Kashmir?"
"Or the lepers in New Zealand who are not happy, as you say?"
Yes, what to do with lepers?
How do we solve this, as our friend Ionesco says?
And immediately we are sad like toothpicks
What all of this is to say is simple.
Do not invest your emotions too much.
You should know that nothing really matters,
after all, think on the scale of the world,
of the universe,
your problems become rather small.
If you can accept the nonsense of life and ignore certain problems,
you will live more stress-free and happy.
So let's think back to our friend, The Man Who Sleeps.
To cut out a lot of narration and scenes of him walking,
he accepts the idea of ​​Camus.
The film is very symbolic in using images
of a collapsing society to show his worldview collapsing.
but the core idea is there.
The lesson these two men have to offer is simple:
Keep things in perspective.
You go back to your room and collapse onto your too-narrow bed.
You count and organize the cracks in the ceiling.
You often play cards by yourself.
You deal out four columns of thirteen cards on your bed.
You remove the aces.
