There is a strange sense that nothing quite lands the way it used to.

Tragedy feels distant, success feels hollow, and even joy feels muted, as if it has already passed before it has fully arrived.

However apathetic that may sound, I argue this is the result of the widespread unintentional adoption of absurdism. Which no longer presents itself as a philosophical position that needs to be understood, but as a condition that people exist within by default.

Absurdism, most commonly associated with Albert Camus, emerges from a contradiction that is difficult to resolve: humans are structured to search for meaning, patterns, and explanations, yet the world does not reliably provide them, and instead responds with a big fat nothing .…