/lit/ - Literature

>>18673054
No idea. Made me think that it is impossible and that Camus recommends suicide in a roundabout way

>>18673054
by acknowledging and accepting the absurd, living in it & not alongside it with your head bowed

>>18673054
No one ever asked how Sisyphus felt about pushing up that boulder for eternity, so he couldn't say "one must imagine Sisyphus happy". Camus basically argues that the search for meaning in your life is meaning in and of itself, so don't worry, be happy. That's pretty much it.

Games. The key to constructing meaning in the absurdity of existence is recognizing life as a series of fulfilling games. You do not create meaning in a real way, but you do create a story which has internal meaning, internal value. By determining goals and setting rules you create for yourself a context which does not really exist, but does really provide you with satisfaction, and so long as you remember that these rules and this goal is an invention of your mind, you will never be slave to its edicts.
Sisyphus must be happy because he comes to understand that his task is no different in effect than life itself. It is an arbitrary duty with no true end result, and in the same way that his kingship faded in the infinity of time, so too does the measure of how many times he has pushed the boulder up the hill only to watch it fall back down again. In seeing this, he knows peace and pleasure, because he realizes that the duty before him is life itself- It is only up to him to contextualize the action properly to provide meaning and satisfaction to his burdens. Unlike you or I, he has had eternity to achieve this.
That is why Sisyphus must be happy. That is how Sisyphus finds his happiness.

The Myth of Sisyphus is descriptive not prescriptive. Camus is not saying you should develop habits in order to distract yourself from the absurd, he is stating that that is what humans instinctively do. That's how I read the essay anyway. Due to the style of the essay and also the main concept ("why don't we just commit suicide?"), it seems like Camus is going to explain how to be happy, but it is less about the how and more about the why: we do so to distract ourselves from the reality that the universe is meaningless and indifferent.

>>18673099
He ought to have re-evaluated his premises. The universe is neither meaningless nor indifferent.

>>18673101
t. sisyphus

He explains it very clearly, you just weren't paying attention. The act of rolling the rock up the hill is counterbalanced by the joy of chasing after it after it rolls back down. The point is not that Sisyphus is happy pushing the rock up. The point is Sisyphus is overall happy because his whole life isn't pushing the rock up, and there are moments of relief which he cherishes.

It's not even a long or hard essay, and he explicitly says all this shit. Can you guys please read closer, or some shit? Fuck.

>>18673054

The struggle towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart.

>>18673118
Ironically seems like you are the one who wasn't paying attention.

>>18673101
The universe may not be meaningless, but your post sure is.

It's a post hoc justification for his lack of the will to just kill himself.

I prefer to imagine Sisyphus laughing, personally. It allows for a broader range of absurdity.

>>18673084
Oh thought would be much darker than that.

It's a fundamental misinterpretation of the myth; obviously the ancient Greeks imagined the eternal, futile toil of Sisyphus as a nothing less than a punishment befitting an arrogant and devious ruler that had angered the gods. There is no room to imagine Sisyphus to be happy because the whole point is to make Sisyphus unhappy by subjecting him to an eternity of frustration, to make him suffer for his earthly misdeeds (of which there were many).

>>18674177
>fundamental misinterpretation of the myth
please tell me you don't actually believe this

>>18674232
please tell me you don't actually make posts like this.

>>18674177
This is literally why it's absurd to imagine him happy. You have to imagine him happy BECAUSE he is the literal essence of suffering.

>>18673069
>>18673084

These both sum it up really.

Doesn't Camus write that Sisyphus, rolling up the rock, feels every fiber of his body? As I understand it, therein lies Sisyphus' happiness. To exist and to feel.

Embrace the eternal struggle
Embody your physical form
Accept your place in the order

Optional: transcend and become the boulder crush the dreams of men by being through time

>>18673054
>I don't get it. Camus says one must imagine Sisyphus happy, but never explains how Sisyphus manages to force himself to be happy. How do we do it?

>>18674616
This gives me an idea.
I want a "Myth of Sisyphus" but written from the perspective of the boulder getting rolled up.

>>18674622
>the boulder getting rolled up.
The boulder only rolls down anon, man pushing against it only delays the inevitable.
It is only by embracing the eternal struggle and embodying the resistance of man that you overcome

>>18674566
This was the sense I got too.

The version of the reason given in the book why Sisyphus was punished is that he kept dodging death because he loved life too much. I remember Camus writing about how he lived a long, full life as a king, but when his time came he managed to persuade whatever minor god had collected him to let him return to the land of the living "just for a second" to help his wife do the proper rituals to let him. And then, once he was out, he basically skipped parole and lived it up for whole other life. I also read that in some versions he did it twice.

When he finally died (again) the gods decided to give him the most fitting, worst possible punishment, which is to never be free from the toils of life.

But he doesn't have to push the boulder. Presumably if there was a worse punishment available, Zeus, who wanted to make an example of Sisyphus so that no other humans would be tempted to cheat death, would have used it. He's already at the very bottom. His existence is just eternal, mundane work; no release of death on the horizon. He could sit down at the bottom of the hill and suffer just the same.

But in the end Sisyphus has won, because even when your 'life' consists only of a single possible act, he's still doing it. He gets up every day, he feels his body acting, he feels the sun beating down on him. He's still living, as much as a man can when the timeframe is eternity. He would be happ*ier* if he was on Earth. But even here, he's managed to be happy.

>>18674177
BASED

>>18675345
*to let him die, typo. Also he conspired with his wife pre-death to fuck up the rituals to give him a reason to return to the living in the first place.

>>18673084
>so don't worry, be happy
Amazing... so this is the power of philosophy...

>>18675361
Of French philosophy, yes. Camus is a fraud as a philosopher.

>>18675361
>>18675368
Shut your mouths, pseuds, MoS is far from being Camus' best work, that would be The Rebel.

>>18675382
No, The Fall is his best and the patrician choice.