The Myth of Sisyphus
Albert Camus · 1942
"The absurd is the unresolvable collision between the human need for meaning and the universe's indifferent silence — the only honest response is conscious revolt, not suicide or false belief."
Camus argues that the absurd isn't meaninglessness itself and isn't your need for meaning itself — it's the collision between the two: you cannot stop asking 'why,' and the universe never answers. He identifies three common escapes from this collision — physical suicide (eliminating yourself to end the question), philosophical suicide (adopting a belief system that pretends to resolve it), and simple denial (staying busy enough not to notice) — and argues all three are failures because they resolve the tension by cheating rather than living inside it.
Read more about the topic
The Selfish Gene (and Memes)
"The gene, not the organism, is the true unit of natural selection — animals are 'survival machines' built by genes to replicate themselves, and culture spreads by an analogous unit Dawkins named the meme."