absurd is an adjective meaning : 1. inconsistent with logic or reason or commonsense 2. completely devoid of wisdom or good sense.
Here Camus described it as such :
Absurdity springs from two absolutely certain principles;
1. “I can negate everything of that part of me that lives in vague nostalgias, except this desire for unity, this longing to solve, this need for clarity and cohesion”.
This desire for unity is true of many aspects of human existence:
Unity of one’s life
Beauty and sense of the natural world
Meaning of the human world
Scientific endeavour to understand the universe
Even in discovery of the absurdity of life and of the world, many existentialist philosophers (Kierkegaard, Chestov, Jaspers, Husserl) have a paradoxical way of reinstating desire for unity
2. Strangeness of the world, the fact that the world is radically indifferent, not even opposed to, but brutally unconcerned by this desire:
“I can refute everything in this world surrounding me that offends or enraptures me, except this chaos, this sovereign chance (hazard in French) and this divine equivalence which springs from anarchy”.
All the aspects mentioned above are confronted with the brutal denial of the world and nature: death, indifference of nature, lack of meaning of human world, limits of scientific explanation, contradiction of philosophers.
Absurdity lies neither in 1. nor in 2. but is the relationship of both.
. . . . . . .
The fact that America produces enough food stuffs too feed all the people of the world (five times over) -- yet has a government that pays farmers to let grain rot in their silo is absurd. You can raise whatever argument about economics and prosperity that you want, but the fact is -- letting one nation wallow in the filth of riches while people starve to death is devoid of wisdom and commonsense.