The Myth of Sisyphus

Is Sisyphus happy? I believe that what I discern to be his mental and emotional state are irrelevant, any analysis would only be a reflection of my ideals. I say this not to avoid assertion of my own opinion but to highlight how limited I am by my own experiences, how uneducated we all are forced to remain. Camus states, “I am interested … not so much in absurd discoveries as in their consequences.” Here is where I find his analysis of The Myth of Sisyphus to fall flat. This dismissal of any need to explore the true content and possibilities within the absurd feels like a reductive approach to reality. My responses to these questions must be influenced by this observation, it appears to me to be all encompassing and applicable to any stated perspective (including every word I type). That quote may serve as reasoning to restrict our conversation to the matter of life and death, yet I don’t feel that this conversation is possible without recognition of the validity all of our viewpoints hold. 

Within the absurdity exists an explanation for every behavior and every opportunity for our notion of death to be disproved. “That universal reason, practical or ethical, that determinism, those categories that explain everything are enough to make a decent man laugh.” Camus professes to be detached from such rigid and rational thought, however his idea of death is exactly that. By becoming aware of the absurd, we forfeit our ability to speak with assuredness considering that the absurd has the potential to contradict our every belief. This could be analogized through the expression “the only constant is change”, for this to be true it must also be possible that this expression can change to be false. Following this reasoning it becomes easy to observe how any comprehension of the state we find ourselves in may be deemed legitimate or illegitimate by way of another. I would like to say Sisyphus is happy but I only feel comfortable in saying I’d like to hear what he would have to say.

The matter of life or suicide feels just as justifiable from both sides in my mind. As stated previously, the majority of our behavior throughout time and Camus’ ideals are heavily dependent on the conclusion that life and death are what we expect them to be. Who is to definitively say that death is not the answer to all of our questions? I may be leaning too heavily toward the Jim Jones lifestyle here but it feels irresponsible to discredit any part of what has happened across time. Suicide is a gamble just as a life of pain is.

I see possibility for further contradictions in Camus’ opposition of rational knowledge while harboring such resentment for suicide as well. If Camus truly believes suicide to be such a decisive end to what we know, wouldn’t exploring methods to circumvent death be a worthy pursuit? Science and rational thought are surely logical fields to explore if there’s a chance for us to cheat death. While finding a way to avoid death may not bring any greater understanding of this existence, it could provide more acute answers to the question of whether or not the struggle itself is enough. 

On a personal level, I generally have been seeing myself as my rock. Prior to recently I would separate perception from what is included in my realm of control. Currently, I’m attempting to cultivate command over ideas that are more commonly held as concrete and realizing how many painful experiences may be altered to become positive. Alan Watts said, “The worst part of torture is the beginning, where of course you’re full of all your illusions and all your fears about black and white and the terror that black may win. But it’s said that as torture proceeds, it slowly changed the state of mind of the victim to a kind of drunken masochistic giving in to the torture, so that it becomes something that he cooperates with. In other words, there is a point at which pain becomes an experience without having a negative interpretation put upon it.” All said, I hope to transmute myself into the rock or vice versa. The struggle is enough right now.

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