The Absurdity of Safety. Camus and the Search for Meaning in a Reductionist System

By Simon Renatus

The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy. (Camus, 1955, p. 78)

Contemporary Safety presents an unresolvable paradox: it promises predictability, control, and coherence, yet operates within environments defined by unpredictability, ambiguity, and human fallibility. The result is an industry that is simultaneously meticulous and meaningless, a reductionist structure[1] that projects virtuous purpose, yet remains devoid of meaning. It is a system caught in the very absurdity described by Albert Camus; the irreconcilable tension between the human desire for meaning and an indifferent, unresponsive universe. If Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus is the ultimate metaphor for absurd existence, then Safety management is its corporate embodiment: an endless cycle of procedures and compliance rituals, none of which meaningfully alter the realities of risk.

Yet Camus does not call for despair. Quite the opposite. If meaning cannot be found in the system itself, then it must be created in the spaces between: in the conversations, the connections, and the small human moments that refuse to be flattened by bureaucracy. The absurd hero does not escape the system but navigates it consciously, subverting its weight in ways that matter.

Camus and the Philosophy of the Absurd

Albert Camus (1913–1960) was a French philosopher, novelist, and playwright, best known for his exploration of existentialism and absurdism. Absurdism, a concept central to his philosophy, emerges from the fundamental contradiction between humanity’s relentless search for meaning and a dispassionate, chaotic universe that offers none. Camus argued that this tension, this absurd condition, leaves individuals with a choice: to either escape into false meaning (ideology, dogma, nihilism), or to embrace the absurd with defiance.

Camus’ essay The Myth of Sisyphus (1942) (https://postarchive.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/myth-of-sisyphus-and-other-essays-the-albert-camus.pdf) serves as the cornerstone of absurdist thought. Drawing from Greek mythology, he recounts the story of Sisyphus, king of Corinth, condemned by the gods to an eternity of futile labour. But Sisyphus was not a victim of misfortune; he was clever. He had tricked the gods, cheated death, and defied divine authority at every turn. His punishment was not arbitrary; it was retribution for disrupting the divine order. And so, his fate was sealed: an eternity of meaningless toil, designed not to kill him but to break him.

Perhaps his most brilliant act was exposing the gods to absurdity themselves by enraging Ares, the god of war, and making war meaningless. When Sisyphus trapped Thanatos (Death) in chains, war itself lost all consequence. Soldiers fought, but no one died. Ares, stripped of his dominion over bloodshed, found himself presiding over a theatre of pointless violence. Furious not at defiance but, at the realisation of his own redundancy, Ares intervened, demanding the natural order be restored.

The parallel to Safety is impossible to ignore. The system, like Ares, cannot tolerate obsolescence. If workers engaged with risk through wisdom rather than imposed control, what would become of the machine? Just as war requires death, the Safety bureaucracy requires an ongoing struggle: an unending battle to make the uncertain certain. Without it, its function collapses.

Like Sisyphus, the safety practitioner is condemned to an endless cycle of compliance rituals. Every audit resets the process, every investigation returns to pre-approved conclusions, and every ‘improvement’ is just a rebranded control, offering the illusion of progress. The system may claim to prevent harm, but its first priority is self-perpetuation. A mature understanding of risk ranks far below the need to sustain its own authority, rituals, myths and existence.

Yet, rather than surrendering to despair, Camus envisions Sisyphus as embracing his fate. He does not find meaning in the punishment, but in his own defiance. The absurd hero does not seek an escape but finds freedom in pushing the rock with full awareness, without illusion. The same choice confronts the safety practitioner who refuses blind compliance: to either buckle under the weight of absurdity, or to push forward consciously, resisting the system in full knowledge of its futility.

Revolt, Freedom, and Passion: The Only Rational Response

Camus offers three potential responses to absurdity: suicide, philosophical suicide, or revolt. In the context of Safety, these correspond to:

1. Resignation—accepting the system’s futility and disengaging completely.
2. Ideological submission—yielding to the comforting illusion of Safety dogma, persuading oneself that the system’s inherent contradictions are not only reconcilable but virtuous.
3. Revolt—confronting the absurd without succumbing to it.

Camus argues that revolt is the only viable response. It does not seek to resolve the absurd but to live within it, refusing to be crushed by its weight. Within Safety, this means rejecting both blind compliance and nihilistic disengagement. It is the deliberate decision to act ethically and with critical thought, despite full awareness that the system itself is indifferent to both.

But revolt is not just resistance; it is creation. If the system offers no inherent meaning, then meaning must be forged in the moments that matter: the real conversations, the acts of care, the flashes of honesty that break through the bureaucratic noise. The safety practitioner who sees through the absurdity does not need to burn the system down; rather, they engage in benevolent subversion, carving out moments of genuine human connection where it truly matters, not just where the paperwork dictates.

The policy may be indifferent, but the person standing in front of you is not. The system may reduce people to data, but revolt means refusing to see them that way. The true act of defiance is not rejecting the absurd but choosing to act meaningfully within it, to push the rock not for the gods but for those who must climb the hill beside you.

Conclusion: The Absurd Anti-Hero in Safety

One must imagine Sisyphus happy, Camus tells us. Not because the task has intrinsic value, but because he owns it. The same holds true for those within Safety who recognise its absurdity yet refuse to surrender to it. However, rather than the archetypal hero, perhaps the more fitting figure is the anti-hero, the fallible, imperfect yet conscious actor who, despite lacking perfect virtue, is drawn toward something genuinely better. The system, by contrast, favours the ‘Safety Hiereis’[2], those who unquestioningly perform its rituals, reciting doctrine with unshakable belief to ensure that compliance remains unchallenged.

But the anti-hero knows the truth. They do not seek to reform what cannot be reformed. Instead, they navigate the absurd with clarity, defiance, and an unwavering refusal to internalise its false premises. And in doing so, they create something real: a space where connection, ethics, and care persist, not in spite of the system but in defiance of it. This is also the space of Kierkegaard’s ‘faith’.

In the end, Safety does not provide meaning, nor was it ever capable of doing so. Those who seek meaning within its structures will find only frustration. The only honest path is to acknowledge the absurd, push the rock with open eyes, and in doing so, become free. Those who refuse to engage with the absurd reality are not spared its weight; they are instead consumed by it, either as broken idealists or as willing adherents who become nothing more than instruments of the system. Meaning, then, is something that must be continually forged in the face of the absurd. The absurd hero does not revolt because it is logical but because it is the only response that makes life worth living and, in doing so, preserves human dignity.

For everything begins with consciousness and nothing is worth anything except through it. (Camus, 1955, p. 10)

Sources

Camus, Albert. The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays. Translated by Justin O’Brien, Hamish Hamilton, 1955.

[1] Reductionism refers to the tendency to simplify complex systems by breaking them into discrete, isolated components, at the expense of understanding their full context, interrelations, and emergent properties.

[2] Hiereis were the priests of ancient Greece, responsible for conducting rituals, sacrifices, and maintaining the sanctity of religious traditions. Unlike modern religious figures, they were often administrators of sacred duties rather than moral or spiritual leaders.