ancient greeks as the originial absurdists?

been reading the odyssey for the first time in like ten years

you realize why nietzsche thought the ancient greeks had a better worldview than the christian worldview that was passed down from the middle ages

it was a kind of happy cynicism/pessimism blend


they thought that if there was a higher power, ie the gods, that the gods were totally amoral and indifferent

they wanted to push to expand human possibility because they didnt believe anyone else was really looking out for them and they didnt want to be passive

they didnt want to just maintain

one invention or idea wasnt enough, they wanted to progress while realizing the relative futility of progress

they wanted to achieve

reminds me of camus' myth of sisyphus

how he describes sisyphus passionately rolling the rock up the hill over and over again even though it drops every time

the christian worldview places god and not humans at the center

it focuses on something that should be achieved rather than what can be achieved

nowadays it seems people want to live a normal comfortable life of pleasant pleasure and not really strive for any kind of achievement beyond the minimum

maybe that is an exagerration though

the reason i like absurd literature is because it takes reality at face value but puts a kind of weird touch on it

its like saying "ok this is normal and weird at the same times. oh well. what now?"

of course, the epics have a much more adventurous tone whereas in modern lit there is a kind of flat and dry approach to creating a work of fiction

feel like none of this is too groundbreaking

but the attitude it implies is relevant, i would say

it accepts the apathy that life might entail in many respects, but has a nagging critique and question of what that means at the same time

or not

you get the feeling even plato was kind of absurd

as in, can you take the republic at face value?

or is it a thought experiment that has had the lasting value of fueling different specific or dogmatic ideas?

there is a sense of a grasp for something more but an attitude that things will remain as they are and not change too drastically regardless of what one individual does but that that individual activity is still inherently essential to the world if only because that individual themselves only know the world through their own perspective

or something

i dont know

this post is stupid