absurdity

Leave a comment September 21, 2025 Steve A. Wiggins

I recently lived a day directed by David Lynch. Or at least it felt like it. While I’m not at liberty to discuss the details, I can say it was a surreal experience that left me questioning everything. Ever have one of those days? It happened smack in the middle of work, forcing me to take an emergency personal day, if there is such a thing. I’ve self-identified as an existentialist for many, many years—that may be changing in the light of Frankl—and the part I most identified with was the absurd. It became clear to me, starting at least in seminary, how absurd my life was. Strange things happen to me. Always have. I had a weird childhood and it hasn’t become any more normal since then. Even so, some days are brought to you by David Lynch.

When I proposed to my wife, I told her that I couldn’t promise her much (I was functionally unemployed at the time, but applying for Ph.D. Programs) but that our life together would be interesting. I doubt she would argue the point now, some 36 years later. Even in a life defined by the odd—let’s use the existentialist word—absurd, some days stand out. Days when, as Bruce Springsteen might say, you’re toppled over by “things you don’t even see coming.” This particular day it was the direct consequence of the internet, our electronic metaverse, to borrow a term from Neal Stephenson. The older I get the more I wonder if the blessing of constant connectedness is more a curse in disguise. For thousands of years society got along without it. Yet, as with most devils, there are definite advantages to dancing.

The next morning I saw a great horned owl while out jogging. I know owls are difficult to spot and I’ve read enough about screen memories to make me wonder if something truly cosmic was going down. I’d only seen one great horned owl before, and that was while jogging at Nashotah House. I have been pondering my David Lynch day. It actually grew into several days in which I felt completely out of control of my own life. And the pneumonia vaccine didn’t help, donating a restless night and fuzzy head. Some people, it seems, are magnets for the odd. We don’t ask for it—it simply happens to us and we have to figure out how to respond. Recognizing the absurdity may be a good start, right, Mr. Lynch?

Image credit: Alan Light, under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license, via Wikimedia Commons

Leave a comment April 4, 2023 Steve A. Wiggins

Okay, so it was bound to happen eventually. You see, the internet makes us all interchangeable in a way. I occasionally lament being confused by various algorithms with other “Steve Wigginses” out there (and there are many). So while innocently checking my personal email after work the other day I spied a message clearly not sent by one of the many organizations that spam me constantly. It was an invitation to participate in a conference. Now, with a 925 job that’s just not possible, but I always appreciate being asked. Then I read what the conference was about. Agriculture. Why were they asking me to attend a conference on agriculture? Then I recalled, one of the other Steve Wigginses is a professor of anthropology, specializing in agriculture. Was this an electronic mail mishap?

It also made me wonder if this poor soul (I don’t know him and have never met him) has been receiving email about horror films and wondering why. His research trajectory has him trying to help people (which is why I wanted to be an academic in the first place) in a real down-to-earth way. This made me realize the dilemma of other biblical scholars I know who are interested in monsters and horror, but who also realize that we need to help the world. I can say from experience that it’s a lot easier to do as a professor than it is as an editor. At least a professor has a platform to stand on. And all of this brought to mind the theater of the absurd, tying me back to my younger days.

As I started high school I learned about the existentialists. Looking at my own life, I saw it was absurd. The times when I start to get down are when I’ve started to take all this seriously. This Steve Wiggins, in any case, spends his life trying to figure things out. But he lives in a world where two and two don’t always come to four. Anyone who’s been inside an organization with open eyes knows the absurdities—large or small—that go on within it. As old Ecclesiastes says, the race isn’t always to the swift. That’s biblical and bankable. So it’s a bit absurd that three (that I know of) Steve Wigginses are or have been professors. It’s absurd that we don’t all use our full names because most two-name combinations on the web are going to lead to duplicates. Mix-ups are bound to happen and we should just enjoy the absurdity we see.