“The struggle itself is enough to fill a …

“The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.”

In The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

…introduces his philosophy of the absurd: man’s futile search for meaning, unity, and clarity in the face of an unintelligible world devoid of God and eternal truths or values. Does the realization of the absurd require suicide? Camus answers: “No. It requires revolt.” He then outlines several approaches to the absurd life. The final chapter compares the absurdity of man’s life with the situation of Sisyphus, a figure of Greek mythology who was condemned to repeat forever the same meaningless task of pushing a boulder up a mountain, only to see it roll down again. The essay concludes, ‘The struggle itself […] is enough to fill a man’s heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.’

Camus argues:

that man is faced with an absurd predicament: being a meaning-making creature in an meaningless universe. He compares the human experience and specifically the experiences of the people of his time—spending their lives working futile jobs in factories and offices—with the absurd life of Sisyphus, the tragic hero. Ultimately, he argues that if Sisyphus acknowledges the futility of his task and the certainty of his fate, that he can then be free to recognize the absurdity of his situation and reach a state of contented acceptance.

And that’s what sits behind this comic from Existential Comics, which is simultaneously poking fun at human psychology and alluding to a major mechanism of control in modern societies, that is gamification.