Discussing Albert Camus' "The Myth of Sisyphus", one encounters many ways of appreciating, or observing, the absurd. The question, in my mind, is whether or not our lives are comparable to the life of Sisyphus. To me, there's no doubt that Sisyphus is living an absurd life- he's condemned, or allowed, to push a rock up a hill for all eternity, as an immortal punishment for rebelling against the gods; the absurd notion that from that point on, his is an experience limited to a bland, repetitive, and all together meaningless (from my perspective) task. So then the question is whether or not we, as individuals with choices, are similar to Sisyphus; is our collective individual experience absurd?
In class, my table was discussing moments of absurdity, as a momentary and transient occurrence; but through the full discussion while we were in a circle, I began to ponder things a slightly different way. What if it's not a moment of absurdity that we experience, but rather it's this- our existence as a whole is absurd, and our non-experiential moments are the transient ones. That is, when we have those "moments" of cognizant absurdity, we're possibly dipping into our greater individual reality?
So metaphorically, we are starkly similar to Sisyphus, in so far as my classmate Heston put it, and I paraphrase with abandon, "We're born, we do some things, and we die"- that the whole experience from an outsider's perspective would seem entirely pointless without the momentary and individual sense of ascribed meaning. To put it in another light, it could be the case that there is no greater meaning to our lives, that all of the meaning we find in life is found in those moments of triumph, metaphorically when our goals are reached much like when Sisyphus finishes pushing the rock up the hill.
I'm really uncertain about all of this, and I'm looking forward to continuing the discussion tomorrow; to anybody reading, I've got one question to you- do you think that Sisyphus, if given the opportunity, would commit suicide, or would he continue to roll the rock up the hill? Perhaps not suicide in the literal sense, but maybe in a momentary one- what if Sisyphus had a chance to take a day long break, or something similar? Would that integrally alter the meaning of his experience, if either in the literal or momentary sense?
I like how you phrased that, "dipping into." If I could swim in anything besides water, it would be my individual reality.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me of the slightly cruder version, "Shit happens, then you die." SHTYD
I'd imagine that if the human life is directly comparable to Sisyphus's existence then to us a "day long break" would be something like a movie, music in between class, a book. Whatever to escape reality. I don't know if that alters it significantly. He will still be rolling the rock up the mountain the next day.