Post #102: Sisyphus

14 March 2024

“Making an effort and struggling with resistance is as necessary to human beings as digging is to groundhogs. It’s the overcoming of obstacles, whether materially or mentally, that is the height of human enjoyment; to struggle and be victorious is happiness itself.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer, Aphorismen V, §17

     Much of what Camus does with the ancient myth of Sisyphus (in his famous book of the same name, published in 1942) looks utterly wrongheaded to me, pernicious even. The original Sisyphus was not only an ingenious schemer for human interests, he also stood guilty of the vilest impieties and foulest crimes against his fellow man. Camus acknowledges in passing that he was a brigand—more precisely, a shameless murder of his guests, sacred under the ancient code of hospitality, who also seduced his brothers daughter as part of a plot to kill him, among other horrors—but such petty scruples do not detain the absurdist for long. On the contrary, he sees much to admire in this Luciferian figure’s bold defiance of all law and order, be it human or higher.

     For there is no more edifying sight than human pride, according to Camus, no greater victory possible for man than scorn, no other truth than defiance. Thus it is essential, we are told, to die unreconciled after a life of extreme tension, of bearing a crushing burden of which one must not be in any way relieved. Labors of love, or the call to selfless service, or any other sparks of light and warmth in the unremitting darkness of this nightmare vision, do not merit mention, apparently, and might as well not exist in the void before us. As a psychogram of a tormented soul in 1942, this makes sense; but it is wretched and disturbing all the same.

     Or rather it would be so if there were not, in the use made of Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill only to see it roll down again every time, the gleam of something better, the seed of a worthier outlook than the one Camus develops in such bleak and barren directions. Leaving aside the miserable worldview in which it is embedded, the metaphor itself is well-worth pondering. In the original story, Sisyphus was sentenced to unrelenting torment for his fiendish deeds; it was intended as a hellish punishment not amenable to any mitigation or redemption by suffering. Camus was quite right to take the image in a more heartening sense. Not more hopeful, mind, or happier as the term is usually understood; but more meaningful in a sense that even an indifferent universe might permit.

     We are fortunate in that we can find human meaning and satisfaction not only in our successes—for what are they, in the end?—but also in our struggles. Indeed the latter may be the more natural place than the former to look for what matters most. What, then, of the moment when, another uphill task completed by the sweat of your brow, you must watch the boulder roll down the hill again? Is it a time for tears, for heartache and disappointment, or is there perhaps another, a more cheering way to see it: the way of letting go the fruits of your actions, for example, which I have invoked several times before with a nod towards Gandhi and the Bhagavad Gita (#19, #47, etc.).

     In the ordinary worldly mode, we expect our good deeds to be rewarded, our efforts to be crowned with success; but we must recognize, as life draws on and the hopes of youth fade, that such rewards and crowns are by no means to be counted on in life. What to do when this recognition dawns: must we lose heart, despair of our prospects, and throw ourselves down the hill after the boulder? Or can we indeed walk back down, as Camus imagined, with a heavy but measured step, to shoulder our burden again? A lot depends on our answer to this question; at times the strong but precarious thread of life itself. It can be surprisingly tenacious under pressure, even miraculously so; but it is also easy to cut, if we resolve that it is not worth the trouble anymore.

     Should we let the unabating toil and tears harden us, as Camus presumes, turning our faces to stone as we keep pressing them against the boulder? I think not. What Camus fails to mention is our hearts, which must not become petrified if we expect them to keep beating for us. Shake your fist at the gods all you want, and sneer at the very notion of any higher order, if you must; time will tell how well that posture serves you or anyone. Only let your heart run cold, allow it to turn to rock, and you are done for.

     Fortunately, for those who have temperaments or biographies that protect them from having to inhabit a Camusian universe, and who refuse to do so by choice, there is no compelling reason why our hardships and heartbreaks should have this deadening effect. Broken hearts don’t necessarily harden; they can soften too. It is not the scars that make them rigid, but the muscles that tighten and become rigid with our disappointments, if we let them.

     It is not up to us how things turn out for us in life, and be our efforts ever so valiant; our part is to make what we can of our defeats and failures, to choose the right attitude towards them and learn the right lessons. The old Benedictine motto of ora et labora—say your prayers and do your work—deserves better than the short shrift that modern man has usually given it, writing it off too quickly because of its monastic associations and because “praying” has been understood too narrowly. The preoccupation with who or what might be the recipient of our prayers, even to the point of killing each other over it, has ever been far too much the focus, when we should be more concerned with saying those prayers at all, to whomever or whatever we think best.

     Camus would have us be prideful, scornful, defiant to the end, and die unreconciled. Thus he vaunts himself, as many a twentieth-century thinker has done, on reversing the wisdom of the ages. In our bleakest moments, we may all be disillusioned enough to see what Camus was getting at, and what despairs impelled him; but that does not make his conclusions any more salutary. Our attitude towards the boulder is indeed the key to life; but we should find a way to push it again with a smile, not a frown or a sneer.*

     Contemptuous pride always turns against itself, while selfless service is redeeming even if we can only approximate it, at best, in our fallen state. That love conquers all (#55) must appear a bad joke to the cynic, granted, and even to the faithful, a pious hope and a half-truth at best so far as the visible world is concerned. Love’s victories are glorious enough, but often not very conspicuous, and thus easily overlooked beside the more eye-catching evils in the world. Yet, as mere drops can make an ocean at last, and gentle water can wear away even stone, so the smallness of the light that shines in the darkness should not deceive us. And the darkness did not overcome it. Let the scoffers do their scoffing, the faithful, their loving; both shall have their reward. The Tao would not be the Tao if fools did not treat it with disdain.

     Camus repudiated all such hopeful vistas, deeming talk of redemption to be mere babbling of babes. And thus he proved it so, fulfilling his own faithless prophecy in the usual manner (#100). But we need not follow a dubious guide into all the absurd corners and dead ends he has in mind for us, and we can gain a more assured sense of direction from his pointers even if we would not for anything be willing to go where he would direct us.

*Camus does argue that the descent, though often miserable, can be joyful too, and that “one must imagine Sisyphus happy.” Such happiness does not go well, in the world I inhabit, with the extreme tension that Camus prescribes, with scorn and defiance as default positions in life, or with the refusal to accept and be reconciled.