Spoiler-Alert!
This post contains mild spoilers about the Disney+ series “Loki”.
The biblical creation narratives describe how God created the earth and ordered the chaos. Thus the world became a place for life and humans could subdue it. But what is the moral of the story? Perhaps that chaos is the enemy of human beings? That chaos is the one thing we can’t handle? Who knows? In the “Loki” series, on the other hand, there is a remarkable quote that may help to look at the issue from a slightly different angle.
“Existence is chaos. Nothing makes any sense, so we try to make some sense of it.”
Mobius in “Loki” S01E02
Existence (at this point I identify existence – i.e. εἶναι “to be” – with life) and chaos go hand in hand according to Mobius, an official of the TVA (Time Variance Authority) who dedicates his life to the preservation of the “Sacred Timeline”. I find this statement remarkable for two reasons, because a) I would have expected a line like this more from Loki, the god of mischief himself and b) someone who believes in the Sacred Timeline is trying to prevent chaos, the multiverse. Why then would Mobius recognise chaos as a component – or even something beyond, the essence perhaps – of life?
Well, I think that the answer to this question lies in Mobius himself and in what he believes in. But if you want to know more about that, you’d better watch the series!
As a result, let’s leave aside who is saying it and look at what exactly is being said. “Existence means chaos” means that we are constantly confronted with chaos. That is, that which is confusing and incomprehensible and possibly contradicts reason. A French philosopher had another expression in mind for this: the absurd.
This of course refers to Albert Camus, who died in 1960, and who approached the subject precisely in the face of unjustifiable, absurd suffering.
“The absurd has meaning only insofar as one does not come to terms with it.”
Albert Camus, “The Myth of Sisyphus”
But neither with Mobius nor with Albert Camus does it end with the statement of chaos. Both go beyond this and ask about the search for meaning. Camus actively tries to overcome the absurd by embracing it. But this does not mean that the absurd must therefore be accepted. No, Camus calls for revolt and wants mankind to defy the absurd and remain active in its striving to improve the world – as absurd as that may be.
When Mobius says that nothing makes sense and one therefore tries to find meaning, this sounds very similar to Camus’ words to my ears. Although here the search for meaning seems to be even more of a coping mechanism, both Mobius and Camus are concerned with the procedural. The “senseless defiance of the absurd” (Camus) and the “search for meaning where none is to be found” (Mobius) are not aimed at a concrete goal, the world is therefore no different in the end. But we manage to get up in the morning and carry on because we have a task.
In fact, Mobius goes a little further in his quote: “[…] And I was simply lucky that the chaos I was born into gave me this.” What is meant here is his task at TVA, which will never be fulfilled, since every unintended action of every being in the infinity of time can trigger alternative time rifts. I must say, Mobius at this moment reminds me of Sisyphus, who in mythology is doomed to roll a stone up a mountain for all eternity. For Camus, Sisyphus is thus the happiest absurd man in the “world”. He has his task. So I don’t know whether it’s good or bad for Mobius that he learns to question his faith with Loki’s help… I guess he can only answer that for us himself.