Scott Adams and Philosophy by Daniel Yim

Author:Daniel Yim
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780812699838
Publisher: Open Court
Published: 2018-07-04T16:00:00+00:00

IV

Comic-Strip Camus

11

Dilbert’s Absurd World

ALEXANDER CHRISTIAN

One of the entertaining aspects of Scott Adams’s Dilbert is its constant depiction of the absurdity of modern corporate culture. In the clutches of an obscure self-serving bureaucracy, which neither rewards professional skills nor encourages corporate responsibility, Dilbert and his more or less competent colleagues are bystanders fluctuating between consternation and resignation in view of blatant mismanagement.

Examples of this absurdity abound: Wally, a cynical office bum devoid of any ethical principles, manages for years to maximize his personal gain while minimizing his workload to the point of blatant refusal to work. Asok, although highly intelligent and skilled, only gets assigned to minor engineering tasks—if not outright ignored—and is a common target of cultural stereotyping. Most of this is caused by the utterly incompetent micromanaging Pointy-Haired Boss, who, though blessed with a skilled team of engineers, is not able to recognize his staff’s talents. Although it’s easy for the reader to point at the absurdity of busy work and ridiculous decisions in comic strips with sharp punchlines, it’s more difficult to give a precise philosophical analysis of what absurdity actually is—both in general terms as well as in terms of blatant corporate stupidity.

Dilbert and his colleagues seem to be confronted with absurdity similar to the kind described by philosopher and Nobel Prize–winning author Albert Camus. Some of the characters even seem to wholeheartedly embrace their absurdity. Think of Dilbert resigning himself to his company’s approach to increasing productivity: changing the dress code to “Business Dorky” (a red polo shirt and a badge on a lanyard) rather than getting rid of the incompetent corporate executives. Sure, Dilbert could openly revolt against it, intending to really change something, but instead he embraces the absurdity and takes on the new hip corporate insignia—making snarky remarks from time to time. Yet in Adams’s depiction of the absurdities of modern corporate culture there are departures from the existentialist reasoning about the absurd.

The Absurdity of Human Life

Among the existentialist philosophers interested in absurdity, like Jean-Paul Sartre and Søren Kierkegaard, Albert Camus is surely the one whose writing and thinking is most pervaded by the notion of absurdity. For Camus, absurdity results from an insurmountable conflict between the human desire for significance, meaning, and mental clarity on the one side, and a cold, unresponsive world on the other. Based on Camus’s extensive writing on absurdity, comprising novels like The Outsider, his philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus, and his Letters to a German Friend, the absurd to him is an immediate insight into a discrepancy between our own belief system, aspirations, course of life and current experience. It is a moment of existential crisis, which can only be answered with suicide, a leap of faith, or an acknowledgement of our own absurd condition.

The absurd has its roots in worldly suffering and misery. Since Camus is an atheist, worldly suffering and misery is utterly senseless to him. He doesn’t think it occurs as part of the grand plan of a benevolent god. The absurdity this

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