TL;DR: Parallels between Sisyphus' punishment and male lust.

I hate this website, but I'm u/BackJustForThisPost.

So anyways, I was checking out this game (Dread X Collection), and I came across this very very interesting passage:

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Have you heard the tale of Sisyphus?

Once the king of Ephyra, Sisyphus was cursed for his boastful deceits with the task of pushing a boulder of immeasurable size up the side of a hill.

Upon almost reaching the top, the boulder would always slip his grasp and roll back down the hill. In truth, it is not the size of the boulder, the roughness of its sides, nor the steepness of the hill that was the real torment. Nor was it simply the futility. His true plight was far more insidious.

How was it that the Gods compelled him to push the boulder? Did they warp his brain, forcing him to push the rock? If so, then he'd know no other existence, and the torture would be nothing unusual.

Or did they offer him some grand reward? Surely, no reward would be worth an eternity of pointlessness.

The only answer is that the Gods forced him to enjoy the struggle, to embrace the futility, and only at the end of the grand task realize the pointlessness of it all.

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It immediately reminded me of

  1. Post-nut clarity (kenjataimu), or on a greater scale,
  2. Living a life directed towards obtaining female validation and sexual access.

In either case, throughout the punishment, the realization of its futility is right there at the back of our minds, nagging and calling at us to pull away. But the overwhelming pleasure, or the unquenchable desire of experiencing it is so melodious that we willfully choose to be enchanted by it regardless, and become deaf (or even annoyed by) the jarring wailings of its pointlessness.

But it is invariably only at the very end, when the pleasure has completely dissipated, that the futility becomes painfully prominent. Not because it becomes louder, but because it is the only voice that is left.

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If only we can learn to muffle the screams of desire and pay more attention of the warnings of its futility earlier, perhaps we can escape our punishment and choose not to roll that boulder up the hill, but simply walk away from it.