The Stranger

[hint_of_jasmine]

(Also posted on my personal blog)

The following are my notes from reading The Stranger by Camus. Some are universal; some are very personal. As with the work itself, these distinctions will be left to the reader.

He lives his life devoid of context. No past or future, no emotions, no involvement. He has very little theory of mind, little introspection, a poor understanding of social cues. Some similarities to autism, some similarities to trauma (which are the same). He refuses to lie and does not understand why he would lie, or how humans play at language. His death is devoid of meaning, as is his life. He is taken advantage of by everyone he meets. I see similarities, and a warning, and thank goodness for NAC to get me out of this rut. I don’t want to end up like him. His people are terrible. He’s terrible, by association. He puts his own whims ahead of the defence of others and I find it absolutely detestable.

People with a bad reputation are reviled because of the danger they bring or unpleasantness associated; it does tar, and it tars for good reason. I am tarred; perhaps, it will untar soon. The modern world is more volatile.

We need to take stock, we need connection to the past. We must know that we have inertia — an emotional bearing that takes time to change. “Mercurial” is seldom a positive descriptor — it can be a synonym to dishonest. We need to be kind to ourselves when this happens.

Our culture and our context provide grounding. They provide what we want to do. I did not know he should not have offered a cigarette or accepted a coffee during his vigil; but he did know, or he should have known. He stood apart, isolated from the norms. The prosecutor remarked he should not be part of society, but he was already removed! Removed by his actions, removed by his ignorance or apathy, removed by everything he did or failed to do! You need to get roots. You must go native. “Nomad” is a disparaging term; a wanderer without a home, without comfort, without backing, without a tribe

I’m starting to realize Montreal is my home. That I need to acquire French. That the culture IS how I act; it was foreign in Portland. Nice, but foreign. Not too much, it was similar to the land of my youth, but I needed a guide and likely made continuous minor missteps. I make fewer where I’ve made my home. I’ve learned the system. I know the others from friends; but in New Zealand I would likely be lost. “Come From Away” is a strong sentiment for a reason.

We need an individual value system. It need not be exclusionary, or rude, but when asked if there are things you would not do, the answer should be yes. He was an unscrupulous individual with no ambition. A drop-out, a failure, with pearls cast before this swine.

We need to be in each other’s lives. We need to be part of a society. And this means having shared morals, and enforcing the moral code. Our main character strayed outside morality; but he never enforced a code on anyone. His community was full of individuals with mixed morality, which means mostly negative morality. He had no values. He stood for nothing; indeed, he fell for “anything”. A patsy for a pimp. And he saw nothing wrong with it even through his execution. The sort of social disparagement and encouragement that is so maligned in small towns is important. I disagree strongly with the particular values enforced, but you NEED values shared by your community. Else, we have nothing, all alone, we’re all strangers.

[watermoon]

ah, that takes me back… i remember having to read the stranger for an existentialism class in college, and then one period of reflection and an hour staring at a ficus later, i got it. or, at least i got it to the extent that anyone in college gets anything, which is probably no more or less accurate than one's moments of enlightenment anywhere else in life – it's just easier to disparage one's college cringe. it then lead to me reading every other work of fiction that camus had written,¹ which then lead to the me that exists today. i should reread it sometime, though… it's been a while.

the part in your writing that i find most interesting is your statements about how "[w]e need an individual value system" and then showing support for a strong form of shared morality. and while i don't necessarily believe that values and morals are the same thing, at the very least i can't see a way where the former wouldn't be built on top of the latter, and so would be influenced in some significant way by it.²

i'm not quite sure how to feel about this position, taken within the context of everything else you wrote. at the most restrictive i read in it a call to abide by the norms of the culture you grew up in, which i can't help but take umbrage to.³ at the least restrictive i can read this more as a call to find your place in this world, your people, your roots. either way, this would still become a relativistic basis for morality: what is right and valued in life is what those around you also believe to be right and valued… but why do they believe these things to be right and valued? i think it's only natural for people to want something more substantial to act as the backbone for why their morals and values are actually worthwhile to pursue; religion functioned in this role for a lot of human history, but the existentialist project is one of trying to establish morals and values outside of the framework of religion.

it's within this line of thought that camus is writing, even going so far as to suggest that one can find meaning in one's life even in a state of solitude and deprivation. which is a bold take, and i do think there's something valuable in the sentiment, but i also don't think you're wrong for finding something hollow in this conclusion. if i recall right, simone de beauvoir would later push back on these more solipsistic branches of existentialism for downplaying the fact that we nevertheless exist alongside other people – others whose conditions and consciousness are much the same as our own. so maybe you'd like her writing more.⁴

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¹: exile and the kingdom is my favorite book of his. i should also reread that one sometime…

²: that is, assuming a conception of morality that states that there are things that we ought to do, and not just one that is only a list of prohibitions.

³: by my existence, i'm sort of an outlier: someone who can only exist the way i do because of the cultural climate in my specific place and time. nowadays there is a lot of support for "people like me," whereas fifty years ago this amount of support would be unthinkable, and a hundred years ago it would've been so far outside the frame of cognition that there wouldn't be any strong social sentiment either way.

⁴: the ethics of ambiguity would be her main philosophical work that gets into this. i'm not sure how much this shows up in her fiction, since the only novel of hers that i read is all men are mortal (which i thought would've been more fun if it turned out that fosca was bullshitting her throughout his whole story).

[hint_of_jasmine]

Yeah, I think that’s closer, it’s the participation in the shared value system that is key to meaningful participation. It’s echoes of Omelas: the inherent virtue of the value system is irrelevant, simply its participation. And he just doesn’t! But I *wouldn’t either* — his value system is foreign to me, and the value system he is judged in would equally be foreign. I would see no problem with someone having a smoke after seeing (or not seeing) their mother’s body. I understand (correctly or incorrectly!) funeral hookups to be “a thing”. I ascribe no moral value to coffee.

But how much of that is pure individualism and lack of participation in a collective morality? We killed god so successfully that all of our substitutes are hypocritical, shallow, and subjective. Can a justified moral judgement even exist in a modern society?