r/Dudeism

Since the recent Eclipse I’ve reached Dudeism.
How may I use it to stop being so judgmental and frustrated with people who aren’t awake?

🙏

Hi Dudes!

By many measures, The Big Lebowski is an unconventional film. To quote Maude, “the story’s ludicrous,” our characters are rarely heroic, and we encounter a mysterious narrator in The Stranger who seems to be both in the narrative and weaving the narrative all at once. 

Usually, stories have rules. This isn’t ‘Nam.

And yet, The Dude reminds me of another fella. A fella by the name of Albert Camus.

French-Algerian writer Albert Camus was a fellow traveler with Existentialists like Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. One of the youngest recipients of the Nobel Prize in Literature, Camus wrote novels, plays, and philosophical essays before his life was tragically cut short by a car accident. Hardly a lightweight. 

It’s Camus’s notion of the Absurd that I’d like to connect with The Dude. Indeed, The Dude is portrayed as an Absurdist hee-ro, one from whom we can learn a thing or two.

Put simply, Absurdism posits that existence is meaningless, and people experience an existential unsettling when they attempt to find meaning in a universe that has none to offer. In his book The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus cheerily suggests that, given this, there’s really only one major philosophical question: why don’t we all kill ourselves?

I’ll not spoil Camus’s legacy by poorly parsing it all out. For the purposes of this post, it’s enough to bring up that Camus references the Greek myth of Sisyphus to point us toward an answer. In the myth, Sisyphus is condemned to roll a boulder up a hill only to have it tumble down over and over again. Forever. Further, Sisyphus knows it’ll never stay up there. If he had hope that it would, there’d be less of a sting to his punishment.

Camus writes that this is our existence. We push our boulders up our hills. We start projects that will fall apart. We struggle and sweat, and, well, for what? 

Now, Camus is no nihilist. Instead of looking upon the condition our condition is in and despairing, he looks on it as some kind of cosmic challenge or joke. He throws the burden back on all of us, asking, “Well friend, all of your systems and beliefs, all your supposed knowledge and wisdom, are for naught. What’s keeping you going?” 

There’s no right answer. It’s anything that can get a Dude out of bed in the morning. Anything that, after one clearly admits the absurdity of one’s situation, allows them to carry on.

The Dude gets this.

By the end of The Big Lebowski, all the boulders rolled up all the hills have tumbled down. The Dude is still down a rug, no one’s any richer, and the semis continue. The Dude is down a friend, but the world is up a child, so the human ledger is balanced.

Hell, The Dude bowls, an activity that is Sisyphean in nature. Balls roll, pins fall, balls are returned, and pins are restacked. But damn does he enjoy the game in spite of its futility.

So, what are some absurdist lessons we can draw from The Dude:

Drop the story, Dudes: There is no story to speak of in The Big Lebowski. All of the scenarios each character concocts for Bunny’s disappearance are half-right at best. Life, too, is just one damn thing after another. But that’s no reason to despair.

Admit your situation: The Dude knows he’s a loser who the square community doesn’t give a shit about. He knows he’s never going to be one of The Big Lebowski’s achievers. But that doesn’t matter. It’s all smoke and mirrors anyway. One can still grab some burgers, a few beers, and a couple of laughs, and abide the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune with a smile on one’s face.

Nihilism is exhausting: Unlike the nihilists, The Dude doesn’t believe in nussing. If anything, he believes in something, even if it’s just bowling and friendship. As many learned folks have written, it’s not about not giving a fuck, it’s about being judicious on what to give a fuck about.  

Finish your coffee: There’s a quotation misattributed to Camus that I think still captures his spirit. “Should I commit suicide or drink a cup of coffee?” Even though Camus didn’t write this, he could’ve been speaking about Walter at the counter. We might not be heroes in epic tales. But we can abide by continuing to engage in the small acts that give our lives meaning to ourselves and to others.

If there’s no Stranger out there unfolding our story, it’s up to us. 

Your roll, Dudes

Rev. Ross

I think it will really tie my room together hanging on my wall

Hey dudes, hope you are all abiding as best as you can. I thought I'd ask my fellow dudes for some music recommendations?

Hey Dudes!

Lots of shit goes sideways for The Dude. His rug’s pissed on, he gets socked in the jaw, his car is stolen then ultimately set aflame. I could go on, but you get the point.

And yet, at no time in The Big Lebowski does The Dude ever say, “Why me?” or something along those lines.

That’s worth lingering on, Dudes. I know I’ve gone through things that, relative to The Dude’s travails, were minor inconveniences and I’ve definitely railed against my fortune.

Again, intuitively, The Dude proves himself to be a model philosopher. Specifically, he practices something first coined by Friedrich Nietzsche in his book Ecce Homo, a love of one’s fate, or, to use the parlance before our times, amor fati.

Here’s Nietzsche’s quote:

>“My formula for greatness in a human being is amor fati: that one wants nothing to be different, not forward, not backward, not in all eternity. Not merely bear what is necessary, still less conceal it… but love it.” 

That’s a tall order, Dudes. There are lots of strikes and gutters in a person’s life, and some gutters can really send us to the dumps. But I’d say the genius of Nietzsche’s quote is that regardless of what one wants, one can’t change anything that happens to us. Sure, we have some agency over what happens next, but the past has passed. 

What’s left to us, as Jean Paul-Sartre wrote, is to take responsibility for it. Not to blame ourselves for what’s happened to us, but to determine what to do with it. To reframe it.

The Dude constantly does this. He allows for some venting, but then he muses he “can’t be worried about that shit. Life goes on, man,” or “Yeah, well, The Dude abides,” or even simply “Fuck it.”

The Dude’s not bypassing or disassociating. He’s acknowledging the immutability of the past and finding a way to embrace it in his present.

Ironically, the only character who says “It’s not fair” is one of the Nihilists, who adheres to a philosophy that counts Nietzsche as one of their forefathers. It’s so out of character, Walter calls them out sneering, “Fair?! Who's the fucking nihilist here?!”

No wonder believing in nussing can be so exhausting.

Ups and downs, strikes and gutters, I hope yer all abiding what’s thrown your way Dudes,  

Rev. Ross

Hey Dudes!

Kevin Smith’s 1999 movie Dogma was a formative film for me. Like Branded for Walter and The Dude, it came at the right time and hit me when I was in the midst of the stress of preparing for my Bar Mitzvah, dealing with the death of my grandfather (which was the first major death I’d experienced), and the general upheaval that comes from being a thirteen year old boy.

There are a lot of ins and outs to the movie, and I don’t want to give away too much of the plot. So let me isolate one exchange that has stuck with me and has influenced my approach to Dudeism as well. 

It’s between Bethany, our main character played by Linda Fiorentino, and Rufus, played by Chris Rock. Bethany is a Catholic undergoing an existential crisis that sets her on a quest equal parts epic and comic. Rufus is the 13th apostle, excluded from the Christian Gospels "for being Black”. During a quiet moment, Bethany asks Rufus what Jesus is like. He responds:

>Rufus: He still digs humanity, but it bothers Him to see the shit that gets carried out in His name – wars, bigotry, televangelism. But especially the factioning of all the religions. He said humanity took a good idea and, like always, built a belief structure on it.
Bethany: Having beliefs isn’t good?
Rufus: I think it’s better to have ideas. You can change an idea. Changing a belief is trickier.

This distinction, between the rigidity of a belief and the malleability of an idea, is what draws me to The Dude and Dudeism. Whatever The Dude holds on to, he holds lightly. His possessions, assumptions, opinions about others. They’re his, but they’re subject to change when new shit comes to light. And The Dude is quick to admit when his own thinking gets uptight.

Where goes The Dude, so goes Dudeism. Dudeism, for me, has never been about creeds or adhering to strictures. It’s an attitude or an orientation toward this whole durn human comedy. It’s a kind of seeking that one can do driving the roads or in one’s bathtub. It’s less a pursuit of truth as the weaving together of many, complimentary truths. Of following Rufus’ line of thinking and entertaining good ideas that are melioristic, yet always subject to change.

Or, to quote from sources from farther East, to remain green and supple. That which is rigid and unyielding, be it a tree or an idea-turned-belief, is already dead.

I hope yer all abiding as well as you can,

Rev. Ross 

[Edit: Formatting issues]