The Sisyphean Curse: The Human Instinct Underlying Institutional Collapse

The Modern Sisyphus

The Root of Human Transgression

“To fear death is no other than to think oneself wise when one is not, to think one knows what one does not know. No one knows that death is not the greatest of all blessings for a man, yet men fear it as if they know that it is the greatest of evils.” — Socrates^[1]

The Greek myth of Sisyphus recounts the exploits of a cunning and deceitful king who consistently outmanoeuvred and embarrassed both gods and mortals. Angered by his repeated defiance, particularly his evasion of death and his capture of Thanatos in the Underworld, Zeus condemned Sisyphus to an eternal fate commensurate with the gods’ disdain towards him. Thus, Sisyphus was doomed to push a massive boulder up a steep hill, only to have it roll back down just before reaching the summit, day after day, for eternity.

Over the centuries, the legend of Sisyphus has come to symbolise different things to different people. Traditionally, it has been regarded as a cautionary tale about the destructive potential of wit blinded by hubris, resulting in the folly of man’s audacity to outwit the divine. However, some interpret Sisyphus’ ordeal as emblematic of human existence—the ultimate futility of the endless toils of a burdensome life. Notably, Albert Camus and others identify a form of triumphant rebellion in Sisyphus’ resilience in confronting the absurd.^[2]

Regardless of what else one may infer from Sisyphus’ legend, the narrative clearly attributes Sisyphus’ eternal, gruesome, and mindless servitude to his insolence toward the gods. Even those who admire Sisyphus’ wit and audacity acknowledge this point. Virtually no one appreciates that if the only way Sisyphus could have averted the wretched fate described earlier was by suppressing his flamboyant brilliance or curbing his natural boldness, then he was predestined to a life of obsequiousness and drudgery, in one form or another. Ultimately, the root of Sisyphus’ downfall lies in the compulsive urge to survive at any cost, even when a dignified existence is no longer viable.

Across thousands of generations, individuals who, like Sisyphus, chose to prolong a miserable and meaningless existence reproduced and propagated this tendency. In contrast, those who refused to delay the inevitable ended both their suffering and their lineage. As a result, nearly all modern humans are predisposed—through language and genetics—to interpret the moral of the Sisyphus legend uniformly.

The Sisyphean Curse^[3]—the irrational attachment to life and emotional investment in worldly matters—is the most powerful and enduring human instinct, and the ultimate root of all corruption. This instinct explains why, regardless of differences in language, ethnicity, culture, mythology, philosophical beliefs, or political views, people everywhere recognise that the most effective means of robbing banks involves deadly force. The Sisyphean Curse also perpetuates superstition among humans, as illustrated by the following thought experiment.

Consider the case of AK1, AK2 and AK3, three (hypothetical) modern humans who lived in the grasslands of Africa approximately 40,000 years ago. This period marked the culmination of the Cultural and Cognitive Revolution, when the human brain underwent the last paradigm shift in its capacity for abstract reasoning, sophisticated tool use, complex language and symbolic representation.

Although the human brain has continued to evolve since that time, it has not undergone another transformational leap in intellectual capability like the one that occurred during the Cultural and Cognitive Revolution. As a result, the modern human brain—with nearly all its faculties—fully emerged at that pivotal moment.

AK1, AK2 and AK3 were identical in every way except that, based solely on their reactions to a sudden rustle of the grass blades approximately fifty feet away, they can be categorised as rational, optimistically irrational and pessimistically irrational, respectively.

AK1 hears the rustle and concludes they lack sufficient information for a reliable judgment. They decide to investigate the site. AK2 hears the rustle, suspects it’s probably a small animal and heads to the spot for an easy kill. AK3 hears the rustle, fears it’s a predator or another fatal threat, and immediately rushes away from the source of the sound.

As they spend each day in the African grasslands, AK1, AK2 and AK3 hear such rustles several times a day. Even if the sound is linked to an approaching predator or other life-threatening creatures in only a small percentage of cases, they are likely to encounter such situations regularly. When they do, AK1’s and AK2’s choice to advance toward the threat dramatically decreases their chances of survival. In contrast, AK3’s decision to run away significantly enhances their odds of survival.

Over time, humans who rely on AK3’s rule of thumb—automatically fearing the unknown—survive to a far greater extent than those who adopt the approaches of AK1 and AK2. This survival allows them to procreate and pass on this tendency to their offspring. Thus, the mental heuristic that links dangerous intent with mysterious or poorly understood phenomena provides a significant adaptive advantage. Consequently, this perspective becomes ingrained in human instinct through the substantial contribution of AK3-like individuals to the overall human gene pool across thousands of generations.

Therefore, for thousands of generations, modern humans have been selectively conditioned to suspend critical thinking and succumb to fear in the presence of uncertainty, which they instinctively perceive as an existential threat. This tendency makes humans susceptible to superstition and conspiracy theories. It also puts into perspective a peculiar aspect of the modern human brain—automatically accepting things based on first impressions or heuristic generalisations. These impressions become beliefs unless subsequently rejected through an effort- and energy-intensive process of critical evaluation.^[4]

The conceptual framework outlined above helps explain why people feel increasingly paranoid due to fatigue, malnourishment, sleep deprivation and mental distress. When the brain perceives its body’s energy reserves as depleted and is concerned about its ability to fend off or escape from a predator or life threat in close quarters, it begins to anxiously analyse all available data in hopes of preemptively spotting threats at a greater distance than it would normally consider necessary. This increases its susceptibility to clustering illusion, illusory correlation and related cognitive phenomena.

Evolutionary biologists use the model outlined above to elucidate the prevalence of religiosity, various cognitive biases and mental heuristics among humans.

Survival Takes Many Forms

“It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power.” — Gautama Buddha

Daniel Kahneman, a luminary in cognitive psychology, was a fierce critic of human instinct.^[5] He explained that the human brain, which evolved into its current state primarily to keep humans alive in their natural environment around 40,000 to 100,000 years ago and to maximise reproductive success, is poorly equipped to handle the challenges and pressures of modern life. Designed to help humans survive in the wild, where fear of imminent death was the leading cause of stress and almost all stressors were linked to threats against one’s or one’s offspring’s survival, the human brain cannot interpret and respond to contemporary stress accurately.

When a public official accidentally deletes a significant database record produced by multiple officials over several weeks to extend benefits to citizens in need, they may feel anxious about the repercussions of their mistake on their career and relationships with colleagues. In such moments, their brains struggle to grasp the dynamics of the situation. It was never conditioned to perceive the loss of professional reputation or potential damage to career advancement as existential threats. However, the official who has based their life on the expectation of job security and a specific career path depends on those factors to support their family and fulfil their most cherished aspirations. They will likely perceive the incident as a grave threat to their lives as they understand them.

The cognitive processes described in the preceding scenario illustrate the far-reaching implications of the Sisyphean Curse. An individual need not face imminent death or extreme measures to acquiesce to perpetual servitude; the mere threat of losing an accustomed lifestyle is often sufficient.

This dynamic explains why, despite a general human preference for tropical food, companionship, warm climates, and inviting beaches, the most densely populated habitats are cities that lack these amenities. The small minority of humans who control the majority of the world’s material resources recognise that comfortable and pleasurable living conditions do not promote optimal productivity. Consequently, major global centres of commerce and finance are often situated in cold, harsh climates, where inhabitants frequently live in small apartments and rely on food imported from distant lands.

The psychological manoeuvres described above are essentially the same ones that lead animals of all types—regardless of their strength or intelligence—into zoo enclosures. The primary distinction, in the case of humans, is the existence of prohibitive laws that limit such outcomes.