The Virtual Rambler

Number twenty three: 16^th April 2012

The Myth of Sisyphus

In the distant days of ‘proper Education’ , Greek myths were thought to be a necessary part of the syllabus for grammar school sixth forms. They struck those still awake at the end of such lessons as just daft , full of people being transformed into trees or goats by a bewildering number of gods , some of whom were drunks and others lechers ; some were bone-idle and some were industrious but easily irritated. Among these hoary old wives’ tales was the Myth of Sisyphus , its content having a more familiar ring. Here was repeated , futile labour , whose end-product was of no earthly value to man or beast. That is the daily lot for considerable numbers of people on our over-populated globe. The eponymous hero’s fate was to roll a large rock to the top of a hill , watch it roll back down again to its resting-place and re-iterate the procedure for eternity. Why this mythic version of Its A Knockout had come to passremains obscure. In the same spirit as the Old Testament Genesis , Greek myths are full of prolonged , arbitrary punishments for trifles such as ‘disobedience’ to the gods. According to one tradition , Sisyphus was the wisest and most prudent of mortals. According to another tradition , however , he was disposed to practice the profession of highwayman. Maybe he was just in perpetual training for a triathlon.

In his essay The Myth of Sisyphus , Albert Camus⁽¹⁾ muses over our hero as he goes back down the mountain , in the breathing space between each successive uphill bout of fruitless toil. This proletarian of Ancient Greece knows the full extent of his wretched condition , it’s what he thinks of during every descent. “There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn,” Camus writes. “In that subtle moment when a man glances backward over his life , he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which becomes his fate , created by him , combined under his memory’s eye and soon sealed by his death.” For atheists that inevitable death is merely a dark continuation of the arbitrary nature of life. For the religious , eager to see life as something more than just material existence , that sure extinction we travel to is transcendentally re-routed to heaven. It's a commonplace theory that all religions were created in order to pretend we never die. But meanwhile , nothing is more alien to the present age than idleness. When we are at work in the world we seek a refuge from our insignificance. For the ancients , unending labour was the work of a slave. Our dedication to a life of purposeless work is a servile alternative to idle dreaming.

Anyone who has seen through the repetitions of daily life , the stifling calendar of existence – eat , work , google , shop , sleep – grasps the risible farce of busy modern life , with its ideal of never slowing down and perpetually signing up to new tasks. The promises of eternal updates and unlimited progress encoded in the bible of technological change now appear as a mythic compulsion toward endless repetition. Here comes a suited Sisyphus with his laptop , brown pointed-toe shoes and hipster beard. He’s climbing the management ladder by repeating all he was taught in Business School. A metaphor is one thing but what’s an unambitious chap to actually do ? He just keeps on keeping on , smiling wryly at the repetitive nature of all things - animal , mineral or vegetable - and occasionally chortling through his allotted succession of present moments. That is particularly the case when he comes across certain phrases : the meaninglessness of life , individual autonomy , the dialectic of conformity , the thrown-ness of existence. Repetition ? It may be said that it compromises much of the time life affords us. All we can do is to embrace it , in the abandoned spirit of a serial hokey-cokeyist. According to the free-market boast , we are free to choose - but what’s on offer is always more of the same.


Wig

⁽¹⁾ Camus (1913-1960) was a French Algerian writer best known for his novels The Outsider and The Plague. With his belted raincoat and a cigarette in his mouth , he was the gumshoe as cultural critic , describing the essence of noir as an existential void below our feet. An advocate of the absurd divorce between an actor and his setting - men and the conditions of their lives - he died in a car crash three years after winning the Nobel prize for literature. In the week before the crash he had written to five different women pledging eternal fealty to each of them.

Archive

Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27^th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13^th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3^rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15^th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15^th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12^th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13^th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6^th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22^nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24^th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4^th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15^th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21^st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27^th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3^rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan and Charles Dickens, 8^th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16^th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16^th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18^th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17^th March 2012
Virtual rambler #23 – The Myth of Sisyphus, 16^th April 2012
Virtual rambler #24 – Natural History, 20^th May 2012
Virtual rambler #25 – European Self Importance, 26^th June 2012
Virtual rambler #26 – Sweet Dreams, 25^th July 2012
Virtual rambler #27 – Excess, 17^th August 2012
Virtual rambler #28 – In Denial, 20^th September 2012
Virtual rambler #29 – The Way, 21^st October 2012
Virtual rambler #30 – On Rambling, 14^th November 2012
Virtual rambler #31 – Gazing Into The Abyss, 18^th December 2012
Virtual rambler #32 – Intellectual Gloom, 25^th January 2013
Virtual rambler #33 – Great Human Achievements, 20^th February 2013
Virtual rambler #34 – Autobiography, 20^th March 2013
Virtual rambler #35 – Your Good Health, 21^st April 2013
Virtual rambler #36 – Deconstruction, 20^th May 2013
Virtual rambler #37 – My Home Town, 19^th June 2013
Virtual rambler #38 – Ancient History, 21^st July 2013
Virtual rambler #39 – Possessions, 20^th August 2013
Virtual rambler #40 – Sporting Stoics, 20^th September 2013
Virtual rambler #41 – Free Time, 20^th October 2013
Virtual rambler #42 – Ewan Don't Allow, 20^th November 2013
Virtual rambler #43 – A Literary Nexus, 20^th December 2013
Virtual rambler #44 – Taking Liberties, 16^th January 2014
Virtual rambler #45 – More or Less, 20^th February 2014
Virtual rambler #46 – Under Control, 20^th March 2014
Virtual rambler #47 – Waiting, 20^th April 2014
Virtual rambler #48 – They Rose Without Trace, 20^th May 2014
Virtual rambler #49 – Bigger Impression , Smaller Footprint, 20^th June 2014
Virtual rambler #50 – Terpsichorean Instrumentations, 18^th July 2014
Virtual rambler #51 – Socially Mediated, 19^th August 2014
Virtual rambler #52 – Rambling Into The Sunset, 20^th September 2014