sisyphus.gay
I have no regrets having picked sisyphus.gay instead of sisyphus.social, I really like that name. :neofox:
For those of you who are curious on why: I sympathize a lot with the ancient legend of Sisyphus, who was a social-engineering genius.
Sisyphus used to be a king in the ancient Thessaloniki. He once thwarted one of Zeus’ plans, which outraged him so much that he sent the Death to him. However, Sisyphus shackled the Death in chains, leading to humans becoming immortal for some time.
The Death was eventually freed and returned to Sisyphus. However, before he took Sisyphus into the underworld, Sisyphus told his wife to not give him a funeral and just throw his corpse onto the open city.
He asked the Death if he could return to the world of the living, just to ask for a proper funeral and such, after which he would return back. Death agreed and so Sisyphus returned to the world of the living, he however not kept his promise of returning back to the underworld.
This outraged the Gods so much that he was forced to do the most stupid and frustrating task until all eternity: Rolling a boulder up a hill, with the boulder falling down every time he is about to approach the summit.
In the 1940s, Albert Camus, a philosopher whom I greatly admire, compared the situation of humanity, especially in the capitalist world, with the situation of Sisyphus: Living in an absurd world with no deep meaning, performing one task after another, with the result always being determined.
He argued that the way in coping with the absurdity of the human condition lies in what Sisyphus must feel for the past thousand years, every time the boulder rolls down: He has no hope, he has acknowledged the truth and his condition, but yet lives it to the fullest. Instead of being mad about the Gods for this punishment, he embraces it, making it his own endeavor, becoming the champion of his own domain, being happy and actually enjoying it. This mindset theoretically upsets the Gods the most.
Not seeing the punishment as one destroys it by giving meaning to it, is the most powerful thing one can do, as even the Gods no longer have any control over you (according to Greek mythology, the Gods have no control over the thoughts of a human, iirc).
Ending this with one of my favorite Camus quotes:
> Whoever gives nothing, has nothing. The greatest misfortune is not to be unloved, but not to love.
