Food for Thought: Albert Camus

Last week's food for Thought was deliberately provocative and I hope that those who read it and watched Michael Moore's new documentary film were left with questions that need answering. This week's Food for Thought will I hope, make you think and ask questions but if a different way.

Unfortunately, I have never been a reader of literary classics. I was put off reading early on in my secondary school education by an arrogant English teacher who was sarcastic and very egotistical. He took great pleasure in sarcasm and cynicism when embarrassing students for their mistakes. Hence, following an incident in class when I was picked on by this teacher, in the English equivalent to Grade 6, I stopped reading for almost 30 years. In the last 20 years, I regained an interest in reading about education, school, and today about what great minds think about the future. My interest in understanding through reading has returned. 

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During this period of lockdown, I had time, as I will have when I retire this summer, and I was introduced to the thinking and work of Albert Camus through a Youtube video and this NY Times article that I was sent. I managed to find a copy of The Plague, and read it. I was amazed at how so many of the events and feelings in this book matched the way we have reacted to COVID 19. Here is the video that made me want to read Camus's book.

Having enjoyed his writing and it's scarily predictive nature, and in many ways accurate insight into human behaviour, I looked for more Camus to read and discovered this work that formed the substance for his lecture tour of the United States, The Human Crisis. Written following the 2ndWW it too contains thoughts that we would be wise to consider as we reshape our present world. Here is this Viggo Mortensen, of Lord of The Rings fame reading Camus's lecture as part of the 70 years celebration of that lecture tour.

As a school, we have focused on positive emotions. Following the crisis of COVID 19, there are many people both here in Vietnam and at home that we need to be grateful for their actions and work. Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 and his response was to write this to one of his elementary school teachers:

"I don't make too much of this sort of honour” but “at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil.”