2013-01-29
Explanation
This comic is a philosophical meditation on existentialism, mortality, and the possibility of human immortality. It opens by quoting the preface to the 1955 edition of Albert Camus'''s "The Myth of Sisyphus," in which Camus argues that even in the face of nihilism and the absurdity of existence, suicide is not legitimate, and that one can find meaning "in the very midst of the desert." A red-haired man reads this passage and enthusiastically endorses it, exclaiming "Yeah! Suck on that, desert of nihilism!"
However, the comic then introduces a complication: a graph showing average human lifespan increasing exponentially over time, suggesting that science may one day make humans immortal. The narrator reflects that future people, not so different from us, will look back on existentialist philosophy -- which was built around the certainty of death -- as just another ancient theology. The final panel delivers the punchline: these future immortals will summarize our era by saying, "When they realized they were in the desert, they built a religion to worship thirstiness."
This is a deeply layered joke. Camus'''s philosophy embraces the struggle of mortal existence as meaningful in itself, but if mortality is eventually conquered, then the entire philosophical framework becomes obsolete -- a coping mechanism for a problem that was eventually solved by technology rather than philosophy. The "desert" metaphor from Camus gets turned against existentialism itself: rather than finding meaning in the desert, we were simply making the best of a bad situation. The votey panel offers comic relief after this heavy meditation, showing a silly duck with the caption "Depressed? Enjoy this inept duck" -- a self-aware acknowledgment that the comic may have left readers in a somber mood.