Sisyphus Quits!
Some comfort in pessimism
Welcome to another pessimistic rant; uncensored and all over the place. Do not read if absurdist existentialism is not your cup of tea.
You know the story of Sisyphus, the man condemned by the cruel, sadistic gods to feel compelled to perform a tedious, pointless task for an eternity. This compulsion by the gods, this denial of self-ownership… that is the true torment, not the pointless labour.
Sisyphus’s is a story of learned helplessness, the deprivation of self-ownership, and one’s surrender to imprisonment. He is cursed with awareness — that he is indeed a slave — and that he must complete his meaningless task, again and again, for an eternity. He is subjugated, he knows it, and he has no choice but to keep going on, like a machine.
We spend our lives striving to achieve things that time will eventually nullify. Even if we know that our “significant impact on the world” will remain after our death, what meaning is there other than gratification of our meaningless vanity?
We spend all of our energy trying to get the approval of people whose disapproval honours us. So what if we get approval or disapproval from those whose existence matters not? What meaning is there to anything if our own existence matters not?
Isn’t this what Sisyphus is trying to tell us? That even the greatest accomplishment will be undone, no matter how many times it’s accomplished, no matter who accomplishes it…
And that no matter how much you pay for your sins, the cruel gods of reality will never forgive you… They will never grant you mercy, no matter how much you strive to earn it.
We waste our precious, irrecoverable time striving to please those who are perpetually displeased with us by default, those who deliberately withhold their approval (as if it matters to anyone that matters) so that they can manipulate us into submitting to their frameworks of desired behaviour at the expense of our own identity.
We betray our values and sacrifice our identity — which grants us arbitrary purpose and meaning — so that we can get the faux shallow ‘pat on the back’ from those whose pretentious approval means nothing, since it’s just a manipulative carrot dangled in front of a donkey. This is how they see you — as a dumb, will-less donkey — and you still hold them to regard that they clearly don’t deserve.
Sisyphus teaches us that, whatever performative morality you choose to abide by, there is no pleasing them. You cannot appease something so cruel as to plunge you into existence without your consent, define you by your nature, compel you with biological imperatives, and then condemn you to suffer the meaninglessness of it all, abandoned, ignored, and scorned by the forces that made you. And you’re treated by your peers as a sinner for having the gall to complain — or speak truth to power.
I think the allegory is Sisyphus is the learned helplessness of assuming you need to keep performing impossible tasks, when you could simply walk the fuck away any time.
Sure, the gods condemned him to keep performing this unending task… But what if he just decided to say, “Fuck the gods, I’m going home. I don’t need to ‘sit and roll over’ for the amusement of my cruel, insecure masters. Every faux reward I receive for my efforts in life is meaningless, since life itself is meaningless. So why bother? Why try? Why aspire for greatness?”
What if the true moral of the story is not to signify the obvious meaninglessness of life (since life eventually ends, while Sisyphus’s torment is eternal), but instead to show us that our obsession with unwinnable tasks is imagined? …that every single thing we achieve in life serves only to gratify our desperate pride, and has no lasting or transcendent meaning? What would happen if Sisyphus simply refused to carry on? What if Sisyphus is the mule tied to a plastic chair, thinking he can’t break free? What if, likewise, Sisyphus thought he had to keep struggling without end when he could simply say ‘fuck this’?
What if our endless drive to achieve isn’t a virtue but instead self-delusion?
What if the moral of the story of Sisyphus is the realisation that nothing matters, and all you achieve will all be nullified sooner or later, leaving you wondering why you should even bother other than just simply obeying your biological imperatives?
What if Sisyphus teaches us this depressing nihilism, that in fact, nothing we do matters, and none of us matters to this reality?
Sure, we may matter as NPCs in a simulation — our purpose may well be data generation for a cruel, indifferent demiurge. That’s our only logical purpose, if there is one. But this purpose is for someone else, not for us. Any individual purpose, and therefore meaning, we pridefully assign to our lives is invalid, since it is not for us to give to ourselves. The creation cannot assign purpose to its existence — only the creator can. Any meaning the creation deludes itself it has is no true meaning that can transcend its reality. And its reality is that it is a tool to its creator, a creator who likely has no transcendent meaning for himself either, seeing as though he felt a need to create, signifying inadequacy and lack. The creator creating “in his own image” could be this realisation.
Every breath we take is a Sisyphean task, a pointless labour dictated by gods, a denial of self-ownership. Perhaps the only act of self-ownership that Sisyphus is allowed is to quit.
The alternative is to keep labouring like Sisyphus. But do not delude yourself that you are free, or that your existence bears meaning for you. Perhaps this is what Camus was trying to say: that Sisyphus can only be somewhat “happy” once he gets rid of his delusions of meaning and self-ownership — if he rids himself of the cognitive dissonance of thinking himself great when the human experience is so limiting.
Perhaps this is what Nietzsche was trying to say also: that life can be bearable only if you constantly distract yourself with the escapism of hedonism; sex, drugs, rock n’ roll, ideology, food, media consumption, power over others, and the greatest hedonism of all: a loving family. Yes, there’s self-aggrandising in procreating.
So, where was I going with this?
I started with the psychology of the slave, the learned helplessness of a mule tied to a plastic chair, thinking he can’t escape, or a Sisyphus thinking he has no choice but to keep labouring. Perhaps their true test is to escape their own self-limiting beliefs, and say “fuck power”, and leave.
And then I went on to overanalyse, as I always do, and considered the possible freedom of accepting meaninglessness. Once you do, you are freed from your thickest chains: your endless aspirations, your earthly attachments, your fear of death, and most of all, your desperate quest for meaning.
Great essay. Thanks for linking me to it.
It really hit me at a right time, for it, too, as I alluded to in the post—but it did. It's sort of breathtaking that Sisyphus could just walk away—great metaphor for ourselves.