With all the awfulness happening in the world these days, I thought it was time to step back and engage in a little philosophy. Why are we here anyway? Why can't we get past our animal ancestry and stop killing each other? What is the point of going on when the world is in such a state? What is the point of anything?

I suspect that like most people I think about these questions often. And as I have gotten older and seen so many philosophies, religions, and world views come and go, I've come to a conclusion. There is really only one outlook that makes any sense at all to me.

What is this outlook? Well, I am an absurdist, a nihilist, a skeptic and an agnostic. A believer in nothing except science and empirical observation and even that I take with salt.

Now please let me define these terms.

Firstly, what is agnosticism? To me, it is quite distinct from atheism and has nothing to do with being unable to make up my mind. Atheism, to me, makes an assertion: there is no god at all. But this assertion it cannot back up with evidence. Yes, science seems to suggest natural origins for all things, but it also does not explain what caused our universe or what is outside it, nor does it exclude the possibility all of nature has some kind of intent behind it. Science says nothing about any of this and possibly never will. So atheism seems to me a kind of religion and therefore is not for me.

Agnosticism, however, simply says that nobody knows and nobody ever has known the big picture. The truth could be literally anything beyond what we scientifically know, including something with prosaic, non-intentional causes, or something that involves a deity. Or, more likely, something humanity has never even thought of. And to me that makes perfect sense. It is a simple unknown. What else could it be?

Secondly, a nihilist is a person who believes all existence, everything humanity has ever done, indeed the birth of the entire cosmos itself, is meaningless. A random accident of unknowable and possibly random origin, in a place so vast nobody could ever discover each other or even communicate. We are effectively alone and life is just an incredibly rare happenstance within this enormous inscrutable pointless accident. Put simply, nothing matters. Nothing at all. If humanity vanished tomorrow, it would not change a single thing in the outside universe.

A bleak outlook but one that I find difficult to argue with. I do indeed suspect that we are an accident inside a universe so big it isn't even aware of us, the existence of which itself seems to be some kind of quantum one-off. So the nihilists seem correct, at least as far as we scientifically know today.

But nihilism does not address a key question: What should one do, given this sad state of affairs? There are a great many possible answers to that question, many quite destructive and dark. Some folks find all this terrifying and resort to all kinds of unhealthy behavior to cope. Others might see it as an excuse to abandon morals and indulge all kinds of dark fantasies.

But I think we should give existence the finger and get on with using the time we have for something constructive, for our own sakes. We weren't given any choices but we will not give up in the face of all this colossal indifference.

No, we will make meaning out of nothing, just to spite uncaring existence and the perverse unfairness of it all. We will build for the future and care for those we love despite the accidental prison we seem to find ourselves in. We will not surrender to despair nor descend into madness. We will work together to make our world be as good as it can be. And we will give whatever caused all this suffering the contempt it deserves.

Albert Camus once coined the term "Mountain Full of Night" to describe the Sisyphean struggle to continually push a rock up a mountain, only to see it tumble to the bottom every time the top grows near, forcing one to start over again. The epitome of utterly pointless existence and an apt metaphor for modern nihilistic life. This he called the "Mountain Full Of Night".

But Camus didn't just draw a picture of existential horror. He also offered a solution, a philosophical one that to me is the only possible answer. My interpretation of his solution is how I define absurdism and represents my philosophy in a nutshell:

The grudging acceptance of pointlessness, the contempt for its injustice, and the burning desire to create meaning and love from nothing at all, if only as furious defiance.

This album contains music and themes that reflect what I think of when in this headspace. This album is best experienced with good headphones or ear buds, relaxing quietly on the sofa at moderately low volume in a darkened room, with one's choice of incense.