The Myth of Laziness

Prologue: The Myth of Sisyphus

Sisyphus, who founded the city of Corinth...witnessed the abduction of young Aegina, daughter of Asopus, at the hand of Zeus and revealed the name of the abductor to the girl's father....When at last he died at a great age, the gods made haste to give him a task that would hold him prisoner. He had to roll an enormous rock up a mountain and, when it reached the top, the rock rolled down to the bottom and Sisyphus' task began at the beginning again.

-- Pierre Grimal, "Greece: Myth and Logic" in Larousse World Mythology

In Greek mythology, King Sisyphus of Corinth witnessed Zeus's abduction of Aegina and told her father, the river god Asopus, who was searching for his lost daughter. Although Sisyphus was merely a bystander, his disclosure angered the other gods, who unjustly condemned him to spend eternity using his hands and his head to roll a mammoth boulder up a mountain in the underworld, repeating the arduous task over and over again.

Countless desperate children and adults are the modern-day versions of Sisyphus as they toil with their hand ... read full excerpt from The Myth of Laziness ebook