Tag Archives: Oedipus Rex

Sisyphus: The Hour of Consciousness

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Sisyphus watches the stone rush down toward that lower world whence he will have to push it up again. It is during his return, that pause, that hour like a breathing-space which returns as surely as his suffering; that is the hour of consciousness.

Greenlandic trail

The evidence is in the absurd divorce between the mind that desires and the world that disappoints, a nostalgia for unity; those are the contradictions that bind together. If the descent is sometimes performed in sorrow, it can also take place in joy. One does not discover the absurd without being tempted to write a manual of happiness. Happiness and the absurd are two sons of the same earth.

Grecian cave

Sisyphus’ silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is his thing. “I conclude that all is well,” says Oedipus, and that remark is sacred.

(Extracts from Albert Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus.)

The Myth of Conscience

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While literature is rife with the terror of a bad conscience – Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, William Shakespeare’s Macbeth, Edgar Allen Poe’s The Tell-Tale Heart and Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray – there is little evidence that we actually care about wronging others. MACBETH by William ShakespeareWe aren’t as smart as we think and end up believing that selfishness and greed is what keeps us alive. Children are taught all sorts of other good things – sharing and caring and all that – but they learn by watching how adults behave. downloadThe message is clear: Teachers and parents don’t practice what they preach; the wealthy stay rich through manipulation, and leaders maintain their power through collusion.

housegop-republican-party-westcottWe want what we have, and we want whatever everyone else has too.img_7698Bring on the flood.