I didn’t drop the boulder. I just stopped pretending it mattered.
The myth goes that Sisyphus was condemned to an eternity of pushing a rock up a hill, only to watch it roll back down, over and over. Camus dared us to imagine Sisyphus happy. But what if, instead, Sisyphus shrugged?
What if he looked at the boulder–the job, the bills, the rent, the empty promises of “progress,” the demands to smile and reproduce under capitalism–and said, “Nah.”
Because here’s the truth no one wants to admit: the system is absurd. The wealthy are absurd. The idea of building a family on a dying planet is absurd. Apartheid Clyde tweeting like he’s the Oracle of Mars while workers piss in bottles? Absurd. Trump resurrecting fascism in a McDonald’s wrapper? Absurd.
We’re living in a pyramid scheme where life is the product, and the only way to win is not to play. They tell us to dream of owning homes we’ll never afford, to hustle in jobs that don’t care if we live or die, and to have children just to hand them the same existential debt.
But absurdism isn’t despair. It’s clarity. It’s rebellion.
To shrug like Sisyphus is not to give up–it’s to opt out, it’s to refuse the assigned meaning and create our own. It’s saying no to the wealthy, no baby cults, no to the grind–and yes to solidarity, sabotage, and stolen joy.
Sisyphus Shrugged 
Are you saying that we should stop banging our heads against a brick wall? That might lead to sanity in an insane world. Or maybe we need to tear the walls down and just bang our heads to music. I don’t think its just Capitalism that’s the problem. Its Dumbocracy as well. It enables illusion. We drones. We happy drones. We the herd. The happy herd. To vote is to confirm conformity.
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Exactly. But we shouldn’t stop banging our heads. We should just aim better. Instead of brick walls, let’s headbutt the gears of the machine until it sputters. If voting is conformity, then I say we vote for chaos: write in your cat or dog or hamster, a sentient blender, or Karl Marx’s ghost. Dumbocracy might be a circus, but at least we can set the tent on fire and roast marshmallows on the ashes of illusion. Happy drones? Cool. Let’s reprogram ourselves to dance erratically and glitch the hive. Bang your head, but do it to a revolutionary beat.
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Do you write poetry, K? This was very poetic prose of yours. And not for the first time. I do find it hard to disagree with a lot of your sentiments and ideas. Especially when the pantomime villains like Trump, Musk, Vance, Leavitt, MTG etc are amongst the most gutless examples of power corrupting people in history. Musk says that the people of the UK need rescuing from a tyrannical government (that is far from perfect but is the only one of the three main parties that isn’t about the super rich). Vance says that freedom of speech is under threat in the UK, when Christian Republican groups have managed to intimidate book sellers and libraries from featuring hundreds of book titles that endorsed genuine equality in the USA and are now trying to do the same here. Its clear. Freedom of speech is something that only rich conservatives are entitled to. And if we say “fuck you!” to that, their Stepford Christian dupes call us “potty mouths” whilst they play THE major role in suppressing the vulnerable in their own country. I’d rather drink piss out of a potty than have to eat the shit of their stinking hypocrisy.
We SHOULD aim better. I’d love to headbutt Trump. But these days, if we so much as fart in his general direction we reaffirm his messianic status as a cunt leader. Oops. Cult leader.
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That means a lot, thank you. I don’t write poetry, but sometimes the outrage leaks out in verse. You’ve laid it out perfectly. These people weaponize free speech only to protect their own hate and delusion. They don’t want dialogue, they want dominion. And yeah, every time we call it out, they twist it into martyrdom. But I’d rather be labeled “potty mouthed” for standing up to cruelty than stay polite while they bulldoze the future. We aim better not because we deserve grace, but because we deserve to be heard through the noise.
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As I’ve said previously, you are a very good writer in my opinion. No doubt reading many classic writers has had a beneficial effect on your thinking and approach to life. Which isn’t always the case with people. But you seem to have absorbed so much of the spirit of certain key communicators that maybe you could write for a larger audience than WordPress. And think in terms of novels or treatises. You have the tools to do that. The technique. If you can map out a plan of literal assault upon this broken world maybe you’ll have a good enough effect to make a significant difference to a useful number of people. You are young-hearted. Young-minded. Your spirit has not withered with age. As Dylan Thomas said. “Rage, rage against the dying of the light”. That could mean so many different things than he literally meant. But could be felt with the same kind of passion that he yearned for.
I’ll end by saying that Kafkaphony is a very good name. A Kafka inspired cacophony. A ringing of alarm bells. And maybe one day, a deafening protest.
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Thank you. That means a lot, although I do wrestle with the idea of writing for a larger audience. Part of me wants to throw everything I’ve got into that kind of work. Another part of me knows how rigged the system is, how it eats truth for breakfast. I want to write like an assault, like you said. I want to map that out, not in theory but in action.
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Let’s think and decide things for ourselves rather than perpetuate a stranglehold existence based upon someone else’s estimation of what makes life better for them. They don’t show their strength or intellect, they show they’ve discovered ways to squash, manipulate and control. There are larger scopes of cyclic living that would actually behoove human beings not stifle the majority.
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Totally agree–most of what we call “civilization” is just people reinforcing systems that serve the powerful. That’s why I’m more interested in dismantling the whole game than playing by its rules.
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A few years ago a friend gave me Heroes and Mythos, two books by Stephen Fry, unlike the boring dry book Norse mythology by Neil Gaiman they are both a very entertaining, though slightly camp read – as you would imagine. They cover Greek Myth and Greek Heroes – if there is a difference. That’s where I came across Sisyphus though I often confuse him with Prometheus – jailbirds hey. I recommend them, they are quirky and are the only things that have made any sense to me about Greek Mythology.
It’s a great title especially if you’ve also read Atlas Shrugged.
You’ve always been a good writer, you weave the zeitgeist into a velvet glove, it’s a shame WordPress doesn’t have a wider audience.
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I’ll be honest, I haven’t read any Greek mythology since 9th grade. I remember enjoying reading it, but when it came to the tests, I hated it–having to remember which Greek god did or fucked which one or did this or that. I enjoyed American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It’s too bad he turned out to be a piece of shit rapist.
Thank you for complimenting my writing. I’ve been looking for other sites with a wider audience or places to get published, especially now that my goal is to attack capitalism. Let’s get in some fucking trouble!
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Yeah I almost want to burn my collection of Gaiman’s books, but he does write good fiction. You know the story of Calliope from his Sandman comics now makes me feel a bit sick – or sicker than it did when I first read it.
Greek mythology is interesting for what ripples out of it, I find the idea of the Greek gods interesting because they behave like people, vain, callous, selfish and cruel. I wonder why god would be any different than us?
Yeah lets be naughty! I haven’t been to jail for years!
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