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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.
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Archive
Virtual rambler #1 – Posturing, 9th March 2010
Virtual rambler #2 – Managerialism, 17th March 2010
Virtual rambler #3 – Nostalgia, 27th March 2010
Virtual rambler #4 – The Alpha Male, 13th April 2010
Virtual rambler #5 – General Elections, 3rd May 2010
Virtual rambler #6 – The Leisure Industry, 15th May 2010
Virtual rambler #7 – Guide to The World Cup, 15th June 2010
Virtual rambler #8 – Human Nature, 12th July 2010
Virtual rambler #9 – Communities, 13th August 2010
Virtual rambler #10 – Worlds Apart, 6th October 2010
Virtual rambler #11 – Dawdling, 22nd November 2010
Virtual rambler #12 – ELVIS, 24th December 2010
Virtual rambler #13 – Transience, 4th February 2011
Virtual rambler #14 – Regional Accents, 15th April 2011
Virtual rambler #15 – The Afterlife, 21st July 2011
Virtual rambler #16 – Bizspeak, 27th August 2011
Virtual rambler #17 – Night Walks, 3rd October 2011
Virtual rambler #18 – Bob Dylan & Charles Dickens, 8th November 2011
Virtual rambler #19 – Another Nutty Professor, 16th December 2011
Virtual rambler #20 – Customer Choice, 16th January 2012
Virtual rambler #21 – Wearing Shorts, 18th February 2012
Virtual rambler #22 – A Brief History of Progress, 17th March 2012
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