Theory and Practice of Myth

The Myth of Sisyphus of Camus was ridiculous (partly because the French are always ridiculous). Camus says that Sisyphus is “happy” with his eternal punishment because he keeps “going back to his rock.” Firstly, nobody is happy with an eternal punishment, Sisyphus is damned to roll a rock up a hill and have it fall back down before it reaches the summit. Secondly, Camus says that happiness is doing something over and over again with no different result, and the lack of result makes you want to do it again because it makes you happy, and all of that seems to me like a fat crock of BS. I’m pretty sure that doing something over and over again with no different result is the definition of insanity, not happiness – or eternal punishment. And finally, where does Camus get the idea that Sisyphus is a good comparison for not committing suicide? Camus took the idea of making a philosophical argument out of something absurd and unrelated to a new level of stupid. Sometimes arguments like this, arguments that take something like the essence of the color green and compare it to the anatomy of a liver are acceptable, but I feel like Camus’ argument that if Sisyphus can be happy in his eternal damnation then a person should not commit suicide is entirely illogical. Even if one were to believe that “oh sure, he’s happy because he keeps pushing the rock up the hill,” the rational side of any half-brained human would be like “wait, that’s not happiness, that’s insanity, and wasn’t he damned? That’s a punishment. My life is insanity and it’s a punishment.” Camus is making a mess, he should have used a different story to demonstrate his nut-job “philosophy.” I’m not even sure if he is a philosopher, I’m just guessing.

And from this week, the last little bit we spoke about in class on Friday about how Proteus counts the seals off by 5 but when his daughter covers the men with the seal skins he counts the four of them and doesn’t bat an eye at the number but instead lays down next to them. I don’t think this was miscounting, or a weird Homeric joke, but rather a fact that Proteus is always the 5th seal (or whatever animal of the sea he is counting) that probably wasn’t translated properly or was lost in the oral tradition or in the myth of Proteus. He is, afterall, the Old Man of the sea AND a shapeshifter. He is everything, and he’s probably a little proud. It would make sense, more sense than the whole “counting is important” idea.