First reflections on the first 10 pages of The Myth of Sisyphus; unedited.
Being that I engage the world through my sense faculties, and it being true that these faculties create inferences to another power that I cannot have knowledge of, am I to spend my life worrying about the impossibility of a reconciliation between the urges of my human soul for a unitary whole and the world I interact with, which refuses to cooperate with my mechanical makeup and deliver me that totality?
After a certain amount of purely automatic action, we awake to consciousness violently and begin all over again to contemplate whether or not life is worth living. This is the philosophical event which trumps all others, and which is the most immediate. From this event we can either recover or push life away and deny ourselves. The wording here is important, because clearly we must recover from consciousness, as if it were some sort of malady. To not recover would be to deny the habit that forces us perpetually through hoops and twists and blind turns; to see the absurdity of life, if you will. Importantly, though, admitting to the absurd nature of life does not force ones' hand. This is what I believe will be the central theme of the treatise: Man is akin to Sisyphus because in our automatic time we are rolling the boulder up the hill. Upon reaching consciousness, we stop and consider whether or not all of this rolling is worth any goddamned thing. Either we drop out (an option Sisyphus admittedly never had) or we recover from our reverie to see the boulder at the valley floor. Time to start pushing again. The point is that no matter how long we take in consciousness, eventually we have to push the boulder again, and again, throughout our time. I don't know if I agree with this spin on things, but it certainly makes sense to me and I will have to mull it over some and really think about it.
After a certain amount of purely automatic action, we awake to consciousness violently and begin all over again to contemplate whether or not life is worth living. This is the philosophical event which trumps all others, and which is the most immediate. From this event we can either recover or push life away and deny ourselves. The wording here is important, because clearly we must recover from consciousness, as if it were some sort of malady. To not recover would be to deny the habit that forces us perpetually through hoops and twists and blind turns; to see the absurdity of life, if you will. Importantly, though, admitting to the absurd nature of life does not force ones' hand. This is what I believe will be the central theme of the treatise: Man is akin to Sisyphus because in our automatic time we are rolling the boulder up the hill. Upon reaching consciousness, we stop and consider whether or not all of this rolling is worth any goddamned thing. Either we drop out (an option Sisyphus admittedly never had) or we recover from our reverie to see the boulder at the valley floor. Time to start pushing again. The point is that no matter how long we take in consciousness, eventually we have to push the boulder again, and again, throughout our time. I don't know if I agree with this spin on things, but it certainly makes sense to me and I will have to mull it over some and really think about it.