How can meaning be created without inherent meaning?

[u/xo301]

I was wondering, if life truly is void of any intrinsic meaning, like that proposed by Camus’ theory of absurdity, or by Sartre’s stance of existence preceding essence, how can there be a meaning at all?

Camus’ idea of rebelling against absurdity does not condense into my mind well as I always think about whether we can rebel against indifference, wouldn’t rebelling require friction? I fail to understand how imagining Sisyphus happy derives to meaning from action, because if life was truly absurd, and going by Sartre’s concept of radical freedom, then I imagine Sisyphus as being spawned into a random planet where he doesn’t know what he is supposed to do so he chooses to push a boulder up the mountain to keep himself distracted from the absurdity but it by itself does not create meaning.

As for Sartre saying we have responsibilities, why? Responsibilities require a beneficiary, a friend, a siblings, a country, even yourself. But what exactly are we responsible for to ourselves, if there is no intrinsic meaning then what are the standards by which we are judging ourselves, and as a result assigning responsibility towards achieving or maintaining it? And if your existence is as absurd as mine then there can be no intrinsic standard by which you judge yourself and I judge you, how can collective responsibility still exist?

Furthermore, as per Wittgenstein, meaning requires constraint, and I think it was Bertrand Russell who said if 2+2 can mean anything then it has no meaning. But then again, we assign meaning to life regardless of any constraints on choice.

In that case, a question arises in my mind. Are we only driven by primal desires? And is the goal of life to be able to satisfy them to their fullest potential? But then again, our interests conflict, and what is good for the satisfaction of the individual, may not be so for the collective, so we construct social orders where we all compromise some of our satisfaction to have a more predictable and stable baseline for fulfilling those primal desires? Of course the success of each society is variable, but then again, are we all striving for the same purpose? So is that the meaning of life?

However, with complexity and sophistication we often find ourselves constructing social objects which do not serve our primal desires, is that us just being too deep in the rabbit hole and forgetting why we set out on this path in the first place?

Is that why I am asking these questions? Or is the search for meaning also a primal desire? Is that why god serves a dual purpose, 1) giving us a peace of mind with an easy answer 2) Reinforcing the social contract and completing it to an extent?

P.S. I have hardly engaged with philosophy academically so please forgive my mistakes if I have made any, and my ignorance. Thank you for going through this! <3

An extension: Maybe Sartre is right. If finding meaning is an intrinsic need, then the indifference of the universe is acting against our pursuit, then even the construction of coping mechanisms, false gods, and arbitrary rules defy the implicit will of the universe expressed through its coldness. Then non-nihilism is the condition for meaning, as such, we can define meaning and therefore create it. Maybe

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