this is more of a general reply, not a specific reply....
the past, was mostly a rural past, of farming, of agriculture, of
a way of life within the seasons, with the sun rising, with the
unpredictable weather.... it was a routine life...
one that can be predictable that life can be....
and one that was human life for over 7000 years...
of planting crops at certain time, picking crops at a certain time,
of resting some fields and working other fields...
and there is no argument that this agricultural life was/is
very Sisyphean... but it was the life of most everyone for most
of recent human history...and most people didn't live long enough
to reach the ''retirement'' age... you worked until you died...
generation after generation after generation for thousands of years...
you worked until you died....
and they didn't, nor had reason to question, the nature of their
''Sisyphean'' existence... all the institutions of the time, made it clear
that this work was needed for all concerned... most of human existence
made it mandatory that a farmer stayed a farmer and his children were
farmers and their children throughout the centuries, were farmers...
this is the entire story of the Middle Ages... the entire system was
rather fixed, in keeping its workers, working in their respective tasks
their entire lives... there wasn't what we would think of the
mobility of working.... I have had several vastly different jobs, and so have
most people... but that wasn't the case until the modern age, roughly
around the French Revolution, or 1800... Europe had a caste system,
it just wasn't as obvious as say the Indian caste system, but it was there...
and in reading history, for the most part, people just accepted their
role in existence.....but for some, some, they rebelled against that idea
of having the purpose of life as being ''Sisyphean''.... which have been
called "Peasants Revolts''... and the reasons for these revolts have a
familiar ring to them... an increasing gap between the rich and poor,
the declining incomes of the poor, rising inflation, rising taxation,
the external crisis of famine, plague, war and religious backlashes....
an example of this was the English Peasant revolt, also named
the Wat Tyler's rebellion or the Great uprising..... in which
a specific set of circumstances created the conditions to rebellion
of the citizens....I see these as the beginning realizations of the
forcing the peasants to lead ''Sisyphean'' lives for the betterment of
the state and the nobles, but not for the betterment of the citizens
themselves.... a situation we see even today in modern America....
the state believes in it right to defend/protect itself to the point
of protecting itself from its own citizens...and nothing that we
don't see today... for the state/society benefits from its citizens
leading ''Sisyphean'' lives...and I ask, what do we citizens get
in return? Freedom, liberty, stability, small enough income to
run out of money a few years after retirement?
in all of this, where is our motivation for continuing a system
that basically turns its citizens into slaves, working only for
and about the system in question......
or said another way, today society/state negates its citizens by
forcing the citizens to work for the state/society at large...
without any regard to the needs and wants of the citizen
in question at large.....again, where is my motivation
to slave under a system that has no interest in my needs
or wants?
Personally, I lead a Sisyphean life with two possibilities of escape and
no voice in that system.... I can retire and quietly and fairly quickly
run out of money or I can simply die... both choices are quite acceptable
to the state/society...
so, I ask, what is left for us to do?
Kropotkin