Albert Camus, in his 1942 essay
The Myth of Sisyphus, saw Sisyphus as personifying the absurdity of human life, but Camus concludes
"one
must imagine Sisyphus happy" as "The struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a man's heart."
In The Upside of Irrationality Dr. Dan Ariely describes an experiment that tests how people respond when the meaning of their work is diminished. The test condition
is referred to as the Sisyphusian condition. The two main conclusions of the experiment are that
- people work
harder when their work seems more meaningful
- people underestimate the relationship between meaning and motivation
