just a little correction on Sahir’s wonderful poetry. The 2nd line of the mukhDa reads thus:

Pal do pal meri ‘hasti’ hai, pal do pal meri jawani hai.

Hasti = existence

Regards,
Manju

On Sisyphus vs. Wile E. Coyote… you missed the point in that comparison. The reason Sisyphus is so interesting (and no, it ain’t reverence for ancient greeks…more for Camus’ reconstruction) is the absurdity of his situation. There are 2 differences between Sisyphus and Wile E. One is that Sisyphus knows the rock will never stay at the top of the hill (that’s the rule of his punishment). The second is that Sisyphus’ predicament is absurd. As you say, Wile E. has a meaningful goal (full stomach). Sisyphus must somehow construct meaning from his entirely meaningless goal. And do so knowing that his victory even in this meaningless goal will be fleeting and gone in an instant as the rock rolls back down.

I have to admit, much as I agree with you that Greek references are overused, Sisyphus is one story that I have found no equivalent to anywhere. If you know of one with the same characteristics (known impossibility of success and absurdity of goals), I’d like to know.

Creative destruction shows up at its best in evolution. Look at a tiger chasing a herd of deer and picking up the slowest straggler. By definition – mathematically, in fact – that act of destruction has improved the average speed of the herd and, over time, its genes. (The inverse is the tiger who is too slow to catch anything – by his death of starvation, the average tiger is improved)

And let’s not forget the most spectacular own-goal in all of history – anaerobic bacteria poisoning the atmosphere with oxygen, almost wiping themselves out, but in the process paving the way for oxygen based life forms. Perhaps we are merely returning the favour now…

We are unlikely to destroy life itself, no matter what stunt we pull. But think of life as the most interesting phenomenon in the universe, bubbling and frothing and teeming on the surface of the only known Goldilocks planet. A few bits of froth even burst forth to briefly touch the moon, before falling back to earth.

The only way to keep this interesting stuff happening is to leap right off the planet and keep going… and it’s taken about half the lifetime of the sun to get to the point where the self-replicating bags of chemical soup have a chance in hell of doing it. And if instead, they get sidetracked into blowing themselves up spectacularly, there may not be enough time for a repeat performance. Only a few billion years left before the Sun calls it a day and goes nova, which – who knows – may give another star system a legacy of gold and silver and iron and all the other heavy elements which make life worth living

Why Sisyphus? Why must our metaphors be limited to the imagination of the ancient Greeks? I give you a far better Sisyphus than Sisyphus: one who dwells in a stark, rocky desert landscape, whose eternal optimism and (often) ground-breaking technical innovations are always thwarted by a universe which is not merely capricious but actually malicious; flouting its own laws to keep him from attaining the basic goal of all living things: a full stomach.
Wile E. Coyote, I salute you.