The Reality of Sisyphus

This is a good topic to discuss. But I need to remind myself of the specifics of using Sisyphus as the example. This is the person who repeatedly pursued political power, right? Which is the reason for the title of the article "Not all politicians are Sisyphus...."

But do we have a good fix on "why" the person in the political example wants power? And that's where I am forgetting why Sisyphus was pushing the rock too.

So where I am going is that I would see the decision as to whether to "stop pushing" is very closely tied to the reason for the pushing in the first place. And so it might be good to comment more specifically on Sisyphus to help unravel that.

He repeatedly cheated Death (Thanatos, one of the psychompomps who escorted souls to the afterlife.)

Ultimately not significant probably, but it's interesting to me that one of the things Sisyphus did was to halt death on earth. Aside from the comment here about no relief for the sick and dying, I would have thought that this would have made him a positive figure to be admired, almost like a Prometheus. I do see the other references to him killing visitors and so forth, but most if not all of the bad things he did would pale in comparison to him putting a stop to death (and wars) even temporarily. From Wikipedia

Cheating death

Sisyphus betrayed one of Zeus's secrets by revealing the whereabouts of the Asopid Aegina to her father, the river god Asopus, in return for causing a spring to flow on the Corinthian acropolis.^[8]

Zeus ordered Thanatos to chain Sisyphus in Tartarus. Sisyphus was curious as to why Charon, whose job it was to guide souls to the underworld, had not appeared on this occasion. Sisyphus slyly asked Thanatos to demonstrate how the chains worked. As Thanatos was granting him his wish, Sisyphus seized the opportunity and trapped Thanatos in the chains instead. Once Thanatos was bound by the strong chains, no one died on Earth, causing an uproar. Ares, the god of war, became annoyed that his battles had lost their fun because his opponents would not die. The exasperated Ares intervened, freeing Thanatos, enabling deaths to happen again and turned Sisyphus over to him.^[13]

In some versions, Hades was sent to chain Sisyphus and was chained himself. As long as Hades was trapped, nobody could die. Consequently, sacrifices could not be made to the gods, and those that were old and sick were suffering. The gods finally threatened to make life so miserable for Sisyphus that he would wish he were dead. He then had no choice but to release Hades.^[14]