ok. who /are/ you talking about? (if you don’t mind my asking…)
Monooq, I’m interested in hearing what you got from Camus… particularly what broke your heart?
The italicized part has everything to do with the bold part. Is all that crap-talking just a joke? I am interested in your take on Camus (not that my interest is any of your concern, but – I don’t want my words to be taken out of proportion), if you’re not just here to fabricate some fake-insults while talking about heart-break (be it broken by love or … whatever else). I’m so tired of being confused by whether or not someone actually means what they are saying. We may as well literally speak nonsense.
me: “The who dog shoe yonder?”
you: “Trees pass quickly under.”
me: “Went gone hello party cat tails leather ribbon.”
you: “Sort shirt Dixon music paper swatter.”
… I just can’t keep up. It’s like I’m interested… but wondering if I should be…
Perhaps I take myself too seriously, though. Knowing that… if I consider someone a friend, I’m fine with them making fun of even my most soul-felt expressions, 'cause I know they mean well. But should I care if they mean well? Should I care if I can call someone “friend” based on their meaning well? Should I just become a hermit and avoid all the stupid-ass hooplah?
If you’ve never said a positive word to me, how do I know you’re not being serious(ly retarded) with the crabs comment? If I knew you were just jabbing-friendly… I’d jab back. But if you’re seriously offended that I misunderstood you… and you made that comment to offend me back (which would be dumb)… then if I were to jab back, it would just piss you off worse.
There are too many g-d rules to follow. tosses rock to Monooq can you catch it you little pussy? (that’s a friendly jab.) (if you don’t be friendly back then I will be the one to back off…)
I feel slightly more at ease now.
I don’t know if you were serious now about your heart, or in what way you were being serious. I think I will just listen from here on out.
It’s about a way of seeing. A choice about how to see our own plight. Once we see it in the light Camus proposes, it’s not a lie covering the truth of how we really must be. The seeing defines what we actually are. MUST to me is a warning, but also the logical result of the premise that as he navigates each crag and slope, places each foothold, he’s having an adventure. Each ascent is different. The more he trains himself to see the tiny differences and subtleties of each ascent, the more his plight becomes an infinite GAME…a gripping adventure, an endless ascent toward excellence. Maybe this is why Dunamis philosophizes. Nobody can take that away from him. As long as he steers the rock, he can choose a lens that will lead to happiness. Hell, then, is much more closely realized by Tantalus than Sysiphus. But taking it further, Hell would be being forced to think a static thought for eternity, the only thought being the awareness that you’re being forced to think a static thought.
camus? um, i was herded through him in a class like a sheep. i wouldn’t recommend him. i was just making a point. besides, i plagarized my way through that reading i think, so you don’t want my take. go read a book on him if you want, i wouldn’t recommend it though.
did russell say something about camus? you left out what nobody cares about, that the rock rolls down the hill not at the top everytime. you might do well to read it with only one foot in the metaphor like i do… ‘each ascent’, what do you think that means… i think it means each menial job, janitor, business man, laborer, you try to scragg something for yourself for. he chooses his lens… he never seems to care it is a fake happiness. he actually has nothing to be happy about, but is happy nonetheless. well thats weak.
What? No, I read the actual Camus. A janitor could enjoy his job if he saw that it does actually require technique, creativity and excellence to get through his day. He may marvel at how the soap bubbles form different patterns in the bucket every day. He might find worlds of veriation embedded in the drudgery, which is again, a way of seeing and extending. A way of binding and loosening. A wise choice.
"At the very end of his long effort measured by skyless space and time without depth, the purpose is achieved. Then Sisyphus watches the stone rush down in a few moments toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again toward the summit. He goes back down to the plain.
It is during that return, that pause, that Sisyphus interests me. A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself! I see that man going back down with a heavy yet measured step toward the torment of which he will never know the end. That hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering, that is the hour of consciousness. At each of those moments when he leaves the heights and gradually sinks toward the lairs of the gods, he is superior to his fate. He is stronger than his rock.
If this myth is tragic, that is because its hero is conscious. Where would his torture be, indeed, if at every step the hope of succeeding upheld him? The workman of today works everyday in his life at the same tasks, and his fate is no less absurd. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious. Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, knows the whole extent of his wretched condition: it is what he thinks of during his descent. The lucidity that was to constitute his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that can not be surmounted by scorn." It is that last sentence which strikes me particularly
“If the descent is thus sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. This word is not too much. Again I fancy Sisyphus returning toward his rock, and the sorrow was in the beginning. When the images of earth cling too tightly to memory, when the call of happiness becomes too insistent, it happens that melancholy arises in man’s heart: this is the rock’s victory, this is the rock itself. The boundless grief is too heavy to bear. These are our nights of Gethsemane. But crushing truths perish from being acknowledged. Thus, Edipus at the outset obeys fate without knowing it. But from the moment he knows, his tragedy begins. Yet at the same moment, blind and desperate, he realizes that the on ly bond linking him to the world is the cool hand of a girl. Then a tremendous remark rings out: “Despite so many ordeals, my advanced age and the nobility of my soul make me conclude that all is well.” Sophocles’ Edipus, like Dostoevsky’s Kirilov, thus gives the recipe for the absurd victory. Ancient wisdom confirms modern heroism.”
From this site: stripe.colorado.edu/~morristo/sisyphus.html
You must imagine Sisyphus happy, because you share his fate. To do otherwise is to live unbearably.
i think “one must imagine sisyphus happy” means that of all the absurdity in the Universe, it takes a giant such as Sisyphus to become happy. Can you imagine Sisyphus happy? and if so then you are that giant and you become sisyphus. He who can imagine sisyhus happy is imagining ‘himself’ happy.
I imagine Sysiphus happy not to be satisfied with mediocrity, but to know that you are handed this life without asking for it, it is taken away from you whether you like it or not, by the gods or by something else unexplainable, but it is /your/ life and you can either see the beauty in it and own every effort you make, or you can moan and see every effort as wasted (as Sysiphus could have viewed his punishment). To be happy for Sysiphus sort of mocks the god’s effort (as failed) who punished him (I forget that guy’s name). To be happy, for us, to is to put our own meaning into what we do, rather than having the meaning of it handed to us (for me, anyway) or viewing it as meaningless. But, throwing the rock and crushing the gods with it is a much better way to express that, for me.
To me, Camus was making an anti-dogma, anti-(totally)nihilist point.
I don’t think Sisyphus IS happy literally…at least that was not the intention of the myth-writer…and his intention trumps Camus’, I think we should all agree on that point. Concordant’s point made me think that maybe the cycle is important. Why should Sisyphus be happy, period? Perhaps he’s happy on the descent, sad on the ascent, or any admixture of the two. But when he IS happy, it’s because he finds depth and adventure hidden in the hopelessness – at least I prefer that to seeing it as a blocking out of “true despair.” This process of unfolding the depth is philosophy. I knew this better a year ago than I do today. Perhaps it is part of the loosening process to prepare for the next binding process. A closing (of a book) and an opening (of another.)
Gamer (whether you were talking to Rami or me or both)…
…on the closing and loosening, I really liked that affinities thread of Dunamis’ but had nothing to add… just thought about it.
Also – I like how Monooq brought out that ‘must imagine’ aspect. I had never thought of it like that before… we do it for our own sanity. Now, Sysiphus was a mythical god, so he didn’t feel anything. Camus can make it up as he goes on that one, and so can we…
i said in my essay there was one way Sisyphus could be happy, and that that was by virtue of the (totally) absurd. beyond all explanation, obviously. a ‘he just is’ sort of answer. that seems to be what you’re saying concordant, or am i wrong? i have a tough time getting a boner over soap bubbles. i take for granted we’re all conscious of our fate. if thats the case, in a way, you happy folk have lost a piece of your mind and don’t seem to miss it.
yes exactly. sort of a dead end. why i said camus put in that last line, ‘one must imagine sisyphus happy’. and then we all make our own happy ending, by a lobotomy or something like it, its not there already. well theres a better way; its to line your bed with teddy bears and get cuddly-wuddly with other people. but that back fires too. i’m not sure if that makes sense.
me too.
finding beauty in hopelessness rather than despairing over it… well, that’s beautiful.