#005 Just Your Imagination with Albert Camus and Rita J King
“Life is the sum of all your choices.”
How can we find meaning in a meaningless world? In this episode on Albert Camus with futurist Rita J King, we explore the idea of absurdity and how the imagination can be our greatest resource for accomplishing our goals and resolutions. #TheHappierHour
Painting of Albert Camus by Rita J King
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:
Existentialism is a philosophy that emphasizes individual existence, freedom and choice.
Absurdism asks us to define our own meaning in life and try to make rational decisions despite existing in an irrational universe.
Our imagination is perhaps the most powerful resource we have to turn our existence into our essence.
The Tedium of Creativity is necessary for our ideas to become reality.
Symbols of the Imagination Age
BOOKS:
The Stranger by Camus
The Plague by Camus
The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays by Camus
QUESTION OF THE EPISODE:
“If you were to sum up your life by the choices you’re making, what would your tombstone say? If that’s not how you imagined it, what choices can you make now to change? ”
ABOUT RITA J KING
Rita J King is the co-director of Science House in Manhattan. She is a futurist, formerly with NASA Langley’s think tank and currently at the Science and Entertainment Exchange of the National Academy of Sciences, where she invents novel story architecture, futuristic technologies, cities, landscapes and characters. Her jewelry line, Treasure of the Sirens, is based on objects found in shipwrecks. She is also an ethnographer and formerly an investigative journalist.
The Happier Hour with Rita J King and Monica McCarthy at Caveat. Photo credit: Kenny Lozyniak