The workman of today works every day in his life at the same tasks, and this fate is no less absurd [than that of Sisyphus]. But it is tragic only at the rare moments when it becomes conscious.
The worker is paid for his work, and with this money he obtains a roof over his head, food on the table, and the wherewithal to raise a family and to pursue other activities when he is not working. Sisyphus works for nothing and does nothing but work. That Camus sees, or affects to see, no difference between their situations says something about Camus, but nothing about work.
Is it truly different to work because the Gods have forced you, compared to working because the threat of starvation and homelessness has forced you?
I thought the quote was suggesting both tasks are equally arbitrary and pointless, though, rather than discussing compensation. It seems more interesting.
Is it truly different to work because the Gods have forced you, compared to working because the threat of starvation and homelessness has forced you?
Yes, it is.
Some people have it harder than others, but we all work because the threat of starvation and homelessness forces us; except for those relying on the charity of friends and family (including deceased ones), or of institutions. The meat machines we live in require sustenance and shelter, without which we die, and these resources are provided either by our own work or by that of others. Death is free. Life has to be worked for.
Some are fortunate enough to have the abilities, health, energy, and social environment to be confident of always finding people to pay for whatever it is we want to direct our efforts towards. The wolves are so very far from our door that we can forget, or never realise, that they are out there, inching closer when we rest and retreating when we work.
So you can apply the story of Sisyphus to all of us, but only in the larger sense that we are forced to run all the while just to stay alive, and that only for 70 years or so. It applies just as much to Camus (whose Wiki page is rather uninformative about how he actually earned a living) as to the lowest factory worker.
We may, of course, daydream of a future in which we need care no more to clothe and eat. We may work to bring such a future about. But that is not the world we live in today, nor has it ever been, nor will it be for a very long time.
I thought the quote was suggesting both tasks are equally arbitrary and pointless, though, rather than discussing compensation.
(One might argue that “the workman of today” is less likely to accomplish something meaningful, in the course of earning their living.)
Even if everything was meaningless—which it isn’t, in my opinion, but Camus does seem to have thought so—and everyone must work or starve—which, as you note, is not true because people are compassionate—surely that merely makes the comparison to Sisyphus that much more relevant? How does it undermine the quote?
Indeed, if it’s that hard to escape, surely comparing starvation to the inescapable will of the gods is that much more accurate?
Indeed, if it’s that hard to escape, surely comparing starvation to the inescapable will of the gods is that much more accurate?
That depends on the strength of one’s transhumanist faith. :)
One can repurpose Camus as much as Camus repurposes Sisyphus, but the original passage does go on to say, “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious...” So Camus is not talking about us all, certainly not intellectuals like himself, but about the proles.
I think there’s a non-negligible difference between “I push the same rock around every day, and there it is back in the exact place it started again” and e.g. “I push the same kinds of rock around every day, but last year’s are now embedded in the building we just finished.”
Camus may answer along the lines of “since [any ascribing of meaning] is absurd in the first place, if you think there’s objectively more meaning in the building you built than in the rock you pushed up, you’re not taking the premise seriously”. In a way we’re whistling in a dark forest.
Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus
The worker is paid for his work, and with this money he obtains a roof over his head, food on the table, and the wherewithal to raise a family and to pursue other activities when he is not working. Sisyphus works for nothing and does nothing but work. That Camus sees, or affects to see, no difference between their situations says something about Camus, but nothing about work.
Is it truly different to work because the Gods have forced you, compared to working because the threat of starvation and homelessness has forced you?
I thought the quote was suggesting both tasks are equally arbitrary and pointless, though, rather than discussing compensation. It seems more interesting.
Yes, it is.
Some people have it harder than others, but we all work because the threat of starvation and homelessness forces us; except for those relying on the charity of friends and family (including deceased ones), or of institutions. The meat machines we live in require sustenance and shelter, without which we die, and these resources are provided either by our own work or by that of others. Death is free. Life has to be worked for.
Some are fortunate enough to have the abilities, health, energy, and social environment to be confident of always finding people to pay for whatever it is we want to direct our efforts towards. The wolves are so very far from our door that we can forget, or never realise, that they are out there, inching closer when we rest and retreating when we work.
So you can apply the story of Sisyphus to all of us, but only in the larger sense that we are forced to run all the while just to stay alive, and that only for 70 years or so. It applies just as much to Camus (whose Wiki page is rather uninformative about how he actually earned a living) as to the lowest factory worker.
We may, of course, daydream of a future in which we need care no more to clothe and eat. We may work to bring such a future about. But that is not the world we live in today, nor has it ever been, nor will it be for a very long time.
It is suggesting that, and, I say, it is wrong.
(One might argue that “the workman of today” is less likely to accomplish something meaningful, in the course of earning their living.)
Even if everything was meaningless—which it isn’t, in my opinion, but Camus does seem to have thought so—and everyone must work or starve—which, as you note, is not true because people are compassionate—surely that merely makes the comparison to Sisyphus that much more relevant? How does it undermine the quote?
Indeed, if it’s that hard to escape, surely comparing starvation to the inescapable will of the gods is that much more accurate?
That depends on the strength of one’s transhumanist faith. :)
One can repurpose Camus as much as Camus repurposes Sisyphus, but the original passage does go on to say, “Sisyphus, proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious...” So Camus is not talking about us all, certainly not intellectuals like himself, but about the proles.
I think there’s a non-negligible difference between “I push the same rock around every day, and there it is back in the exact place it started again” and e.g. “I push the same kinds of rock around every day, but last year’s are now embedded in the building we just finished.”
Camus may answer along the lines of “since [any ascribing of meaning] is absurd in the first place, if you think there’s objectively more meaning in the building you built than in the rock you pushed up, you’re not taking the premise seriously”. In a way we’re whistling in a dark forest.