Philosophical Glossary - Mathew Storm

A working lexicon for the recursive condition.

The Recursive Absurd

The core condition. We no longer discover absurdity; we manufacture it. Systems built to solve meaningless problems have become our new meaning. There is no base case, no unwinding - just deeper loops.

→ Read the full essay

Terminology:

Recursion

In programming, recursion happens when a function calls itself. This results in very simple-looking logic eventually creating complex (sometimes incomprehensible) behaviors.

Traditional recursion: A function calling itself until it reaches a base case, then unwinding back to the solution.

Absurd recursion: We build systems that build systems that build us. There's no base case, no unwinding, just deeper loops.

Absurd

Camus defined the absurd as the confrontation between our human need for meaning and the universe's unreasonable silence. We cry out "Why?" and the cosmos doesn't answer.

The traditional absurd: "Life has no inherent meaning."

The recursive absurd: "Life has no inherent meaning, so we built an app for that. The app needs constant updates, and updating the app has become our meaning, except we've forgotten why we built it."

Key terms:

The Loop: - It's the feeling of being a "middle-man for machines." You use an app to schedule your work, so you can earn money to pay for the data plan that runs the app. The logic is perfect, but the purpose is missing.
The Base Case: - In code, recursion needs a "base case" to stop. In life, we've forgotten ours. We just keep looping.

The Three Extensions

Techno-Absurdism (The Problem)This is Algorithmic Indifference—the evolution from Camus's cosmic indifference. The universe didn't care, but at least it wasn't designed that way. Algorithmic indifference is calculated. It was coded, tested, deployed. Someone decided that your suffering was not a bug worth fixing.

Essay forthcoming.

Key terms:

Algorithmic Indifference - The evolution from Camus's cosmic indifference. Not the universe's silence, but the calculated indifference coded into systems designed for extraction.
The Systemic Shrug - The automated acknowledgment that goes nowhere. This is the ticket number, the "your inquiry is important to us," the queue that processes your suffering without addressing it.
Emergent Cruelty - The cruelty that arises when efficiency becomes the supreme value. No one authors it; it precipitates from thousands of local optimizations. Most systems were not originally built to cause harm, it just happens to be the shortest path between two metrics.

Neo-Absurdism (The Trap)

Essay forthcoming.

Humanist Absurdism (The Remedy)

The radical act of choosing humanity within dehumanizing systems. The daily practice of maintaining humanity within systems designed to eliminate it.

→ Read the full essay

Terminology:

Humanism

Traditional Humanism: The belief that human reason and agency are the center of the world and will eventually solve all problems.

Humanist Absurdism: The recognition that the systems we built are now the center, and they use "reason" to make the world colder. Being a "humanist" now means being intentionally inefficient or "irrational" to protect a person from the system's logic.

Solidarity

Traditional Solidarity: Standing together publicly to demand political change or reform a system.

Humanist Absurdism: The "Unspoken Network." It’s the quiet, anonymous knowledge that you aren't the only one slipping gears. It’s helping someone without the system (or even the person you helped) ever finding out, so the system doesn't learn how to close the gap.

Key terms:

Embedded Kindness - Mercy coded into architecture. Windows, gardens, and secret doors built into the labyrinth. Every line of code is a moral choice.
Anonymous Friction - Resistance that registers as error, delay, incompetence. The method by which embedded kindness operates - invisible by design, plausibly deniable by necessity.
The Unspoken Network - The quiet knowledge that you're not the only one slipping gears. Inferred from patterns, never confirmed by contact. You see the errors that aren't errors. You never see who made them.

"We build the labyrinth that contains us. The question is whether we build with windows, gardens, and secret doors for others to find."