Aburdism. In the mid-20th century, that word was used to describe avant-garde theater and its focus on its sense of futility of communication and an inherent nmeaninglessness of human existence. Playwrights such as Samuel Beckett, Eugene Ionesco, Jean Genet and Harold Pinter offered up stageplays that featured illogical scenarios, repetitive dialogue, and tragicomic elements to mirror a chaotic world post World War 2. Characters repeating nonsensical or repetitive dialogue. A focus on islolation, mortality and the search for meaning in a seemingly meaningless world.

WWII, which took the lives of “between 70-85 million people, (million!) certainly bespoke a choatic and absurd world. All of it meaningless? Infused with a futility of communication? Illogical scenarios? Hard to argue with that assessment. It was exactly six years and one day of fierce fighting by land, air and sea. Its horrors and atrocities defied any logical justification. Of course. As with the history of wars throughout the centuries.

“Logic” and “war” is an oxymoron. Oxymoronic communication is inherent in war, as in “It was necessary to destroy the town in order to save it.” A town, village, or entire country if need be. 85 million dead equals a hell of a lot of failed communication. Diplomacy? Negotiation? Certainly, there has to be a way to avoid trying to kill one another? Sure, but only if everyone is reasonable and able to communicate clearly, manage conflict with agreed upon compromises and a desire for collaboration. Well, in theory, anyway.

Did that global carnage at least produce a wiser, gentler, productively communicative world? Now, over eighty years ago, when two atomic bombs were dropped on Japan to end that war, are we now a peaceful-seeking species, logically collaborating on solving problems? If 85 million people died because of a lack of collaboration amongst nations, certainly lessons have been learned, one would think. We are are now an enlightened lot, are we not? Love is the answer. In theory, anyway.

Sadly, regrettably, war is still in very much in fashion. Very ugly fashion, as always. Post WW2 we (in the USA, at least) have conducted wars in Korea, Viet Nam, the Gulf wars 1 & 2, Afghanistan, and now Iran. Smaller scale conflicts include the Cuban Bay of Pigs, Panama, Somalia, Bosia, Kosovo and Syria. Oh, and very recently, a war on “drug boats” that are arbitrarily identified as such, then blown to bits. To, you know, save lives from the possible drugs that each small vessel may or may not actually have been carrying. Logic dictates? The recent unprovoked bombing of Iran is absurdity writ large, given the chaos that has ensued. Go figure.

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Paging the nouveau Pinters, Becketts et al. We, in 2026, live in a world equally absurd as what abusrdist playwrights were reacting to those eight decades decades ago. While WW2 was relayed as expediently as possible by radio, newspapers, newsreels in cinemas and extensive photography, verifying how truly insane was its reality, today’s coverage of conflict is mostly digital and immediate. We are all now New Age approximations of Ernie Pyle, Edward R. Murrow or Walter Concrite. Maybe not in military war zones as much as in just about any urban, suburban or far flung outposts in areas around the world. Humanity walks about with varying apertures. Self focusing, too. To record reality. On a whim. Cameras are on people’s wrists, their eyeglasses, doorbells, dashcams, lightpoles, USB chargers, buses, retail centers, patios, rooftops, mirrors, smoke detectors, public parks. Cameras are everywhere. They are compact. Easily carried about. The good, the bad and the ugly are documented and disseminated in real time.

News is 24/7/365 and one need not have a degree in journalism to be a contributor. All it takes is a certain sum of money to be ready to capture a moment. Apple or Android. Get out there and help with documenting what is going on. But in our modern but still chaotic and often violent world, one’s footage may be challenged for its veracity. Was it edited to slant the “news” you just recored? Maybe it’s A.I. Or CGI. Maybe it’s FAKE NEWS!

Is Gaza “fake news”? Ukraine? Iran? The Epstein files? Is I.C.E fake? Climate extremes? A woman being shot dead in her home by threatening an officer with a “cup of hot liquid”? Chaos anyone? Anxiety spiking? ramping up along with the cost of being alive: having food, water, shelter, sleep and clothing? How about protection from threats, having financial security, health and stability? Basic needs, all. If so, consider yourself in great shape even if all of those needs have been met since you are only on the second level of Maslow’s famous 5-level hierarchy of needs pyramid. Those most basic needs are where more and more people exist as they watch things becoming more absurd in a world where the very few have been allowed to take more and more from them so that those few get more and more in a cynical, sinister zero-sum game. It is a well documented reality but, absurdly, it is one reality that evidently matters not in our upside-down, backwards moving, wrong-is-right, bad-is-good, fact is fiction, war-is-peace, slavery-is-freeedom, ignorance is strength entry into a now hybrid version of theater of the dystopian absurd. Orwell, Huxley, Bradury, Atwood, allow me to introduce you to Beckett, Ionesco, Pinter and Genet.

What would they produce in collaboration? Who’s Afraid of the Iceman Coming. Waiting for Thoreau. The Handmaid’s Big Brother. Brave New Catch-22.

Invasion of the Body Camera Snatchers.