I've read "The Stranger", "The Wasteland", and a few other similar works though I'd say I was too young young when I read them to appreciate the ideas. I'm not sure I do understand "absurdity" or "modernity" fully but I do remember them from the student days.

I suppose "The Absurd" is often used in connection with Existentialism which is why I made that remark (it's been that long since I've seen the word "absurd" being used). A difference between Pascal and Existentialism might be that "God is Dead", therefore (according to "existentialism", if I've understood that) we choose who we are instead of the Church telling us who we are.

More importantly you're asking why you don't do what you want to? An earlier topic on this site was whether Buddhism believes in Free Will. When I read en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will I read that "will" is mostly used synonymously with "free will" (e.g. if it's not my "free will" then it's not "my will" at all), except in the context of addiction (e.g. people taking drugs whether or not they "want" to). A related article en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_free_will includes the statement, "Human agency ... may be ... a result of training unconscious habits beforehand."

@Sisyphus And that, i.e. "unconscious habits", has an I-think obvious tie-in to a perhaps-more-formally-Buddhist way of answering to your question: which is that people keep on doing it because that's their "karma". Maybe changing your karma would implies training/retraining so-called unconscious habits.

I'm glad you brought up the topic of addiction. Usually when we think of addiction, it's with respect to substance abuse, but I wonder if a consensus will be reached that the lay life is also an addiction. Dopamine and reward chemicals shape our behavior perhaps more than science has yet shown. There was a controversial NIH scientist (his name escapes me) who denounced the APA's DSM in favor of physical biological markers in the brain. I have a feeling Quantum Science will also some say in our behavior and free will. May be if I meditate long enough the answers will become apparent.

@Sisyphus People have noticed parallels between Buddhist "craving" and Western "addiction": Taṇhā - Relation to addiction (e.g. the Dalai Lama saying, craving fuels addiction).

Earlier I said May be if I meditate long enough the answers will become apparent. Books like The Tao of Physics suggest science is affirming the principles of Buddhism which is the context I meant it in.

Well unfortunately I kind of agree with the criticism from Physicists in en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tao_of_Physics#Acclaim_and_criticism ... I read that book before I went to university and studied Applied Maths (i.e. Theoretical Physics) and as far as I remember that book ("Tao of Physics") and what I learned at university (e.g. about quantum mechanics and astrophysics) have little-or-nothing in common.

This person buddhism.stackexchange.com/users/2225/user17755 asked many questions trying to find relationships between Physics and Buddhism. I don't know what your background is, but I didn't/don't find my background as a physicist (which is "lay" i.e. non-professional, but still, more than the average person) helpful to understanding Buddhism.

See for example this answer in which I say that the theory-of-karma is closer to predicting-the-weather than it is to "physics".

So maybe something like the Tao of Physics would make sense to you. I doubt it would to me. Perhaps it uses words from the vocabulary of Physics, but assigns its own special non-standard (i.e. not mainstream Physics) meaning to those words. Theoretically I could try to puzzle out / make sense of how those words are used in context in that book, try to decypher what the author might have meant ...

... in practice I'm not sure why I could want to study the "Tao of Physics", when I could instead study mainstream Physics and/or study mainstream Taoism (or in this case, mainstream Buddhism).

It's been decades since I read Tao of Physics so I don't remember what's in it. :0)

According to Wikipedia its preface says, "helped on my way by power plants or psychedelics". sigh

Heisenberg stated an "Uncertainty Principle" in Physics: which is that observing something changes it. That's about it ... but people get excited about that, "Ooh! Mind can affect matter! The Observer is important!"

@Sisyphus Sorry if I don't understand your enthusiasm for Physics/Quantum Science.

I agree that the DSM diagnoses based on behaviour. That's partly pragmatic i.e. I suppose it's not too informative/safe to assay a living brain's neurochemicals.