Was this concept of Sisyphus defeating Zeus by making a game out of his punishment an original thought of yours, or did you read that somewhere? One of the more profound simplicities I’ve read in a while.
It just came to me, but it's entirely possible I picked it up somewhere over the years. May have just been inspired by Camus's book, but I don't remember him saying anything like that.
As a "Myth of Sisyphus" fanboy on the level of Taylor Swift to a 13-year-old girl (or whoever her demographic is), I can confirm that he definitely did not say that. All points to you, and I agree wholeheartedly that it is an incredibly profound insight.
Swift's demographic goes way beyond 13-year-old girls. I don't care much about her, but anyone who can make piles of money playing their own music these days (in the era of streaming) is bucking the trend.
Btw I sent you a private message the other day in case you didn’t see it. I know you’re a busy guy. Thanks again for making a lot of effort to create meaningful things in a world of slop.
I don't think it will end up "pro" but rather will give us a portrait of Hitler as another "Jim Jones" type who thinks he's a tortured messiah and winds up doing all the same things but just at a larger scale. I think Darryl already teased that ending, and I can't wait to see him paint it out in full, epic + tragic detail.
Just "another Jim Jones" requires a bit of auspicious thinking on your part, I'd say. One knew world history better than most ever could, able to speak of the foul things that would come to pass if he were to fail. And they have, on a world scale. He took that all on, he dared to change the world for the better, to challenge the authority of the financial gangsters which plague us to this day, and you want to compare him to some nutcase from the backwoods of America? This series might as well have been produced by Ben Shapiro if people come out of it at the end able to speak so little of so much.
As the recipient of Darryl’s work, I enact the meaning upon it. It matters little what his intention of the project was because the meaning that I derive from his work is the true fruit of his labor.
"Sisyphus’ curse of endlessly rolling a stone uphill only to watch it roll back down becomes bearable the moment he starts timing himself and trying with each lap to beat his personal best. With sufficient dedication he’d soon attract a crowd of roaring fans and competitors who, with earnestness and joy, take up voluntarily what was imposed on Sisyphus by force. In this way, Zeus is defeated and the curse abolished, even as Sisyphus gears up for his next ascent."
An interesting complication in the NBA/WNBA split is Caitlyn Clark, who is actually filling arenas and caused at least the DC WNBA team to play in a larger arena than normal because her two games were responsible for more than 40% of the DC team ticket sales.
Clark is, or was, right-coded, having played for Iowa, being attacked (both verbally and physically) by other WNBA players for being white/straight/popular, and until recently refusing to comment on politics. It will be interesting to see if she loses any fans by recently talking about "white privilege" and other woke musings.
I’m curious to see if her popularity (and more specifically that of the WNBA since her debut) is sustainable or more of a flash in the pan for a season or two.
I have a question about your thoughts on ICBMs and modern warfare. In an earlier podcast, you made the case that the way a state wages war, influences the way it governs. It makes sense that Ancient Greece founded democracy, when men were expected to fight in a phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, rich and poor alike. And the patronage system of Feudalism makes sense when it was only the rich who could afford to fight wars, and only the rich who were expected to fight them. Given that framework, how does modern warfare influence the way we structure our societies and governments?
But you still need a huge logistical apparatus behind that. If it takes a crane just to reload your missiles, and an entire military industrial complex to make sure you have a steady supply of them, you can’t rely on a tiny vanguard to accomplish that.
Well, it's comforting to know that all the naval aviators like myself will have been shot down a week before eggheads like Darryl are working with the problem of shooting down ballistic missiles. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt. It's like the standard engineering triangle of cost, speed, weight, pick two. Only with ten more sides of the triangle. From your description, it sounds like shooting down missiles with missiles is impractical, at best, and possibly futile. Do you think energy weapons could play a role? In theory, could energy weapons mounted on satellites, powered by the sun, be used? Is it a feasible response? If it is, Elon has reduced the cost of putting pieces of metal into orbit by an order of magnitude. Is this is a viable course of action? Love your history stuff, but missile defense is a pet interest of mine as well. I was never involved on the technical side, but have some stories about the policy and implementation side. Thanks!
Bill Buppert has a series here on Substack called Fixing Fight Club, at least one of the episodes deals with missile defense. Energy weapons are mostly microwave or laser. Microwaves lose too much energy over distance to be effective. This is less of a problem with lasers, although still present, but lasers have prohibitive power demands. The idea of solar energy is interesting, but it would have to store a very large amount of kilowatts, so the battery would be enormous.
I'm not a massive sports fan, enjoy following local teams, and watching "The Game" from time to time, but I can not sit and define 25 years of stats.......It's healthy and a good social endeavor and good to admire their shear athletics. Kids get examples of what IS possible with the right dedication and discipline. But where it's fallen apart (and where i believe much of the criticism comes from) is the over indulgence. People will spend every Sunday, all day (1/7 of the fall) watching every possible game to see every play....add in college ball. Plus dedication to sports betting and fantasy leagues, and we have a major waste of potential. As a fun hobby from time to time is fine.
and Roller Ball is a great movie. Glad i knew exactly what that was when it popped up.
the Sisyphus comment was great. Borrowing that and i'll give credit where due.
Great post, I appreciate this perspective! I don't watch sports as much as I used to, but I still think there's nothing quite like watching, or especially being at really good hockey game. Fun to follow a team. Thanks Darryl!
Can you please pause everything and begin addressing all the fraud and corruption that they're exposing because everyone else that talks about it is really dry and boring and I really would like your perspective on it.
I look at my sports fandom in this way: It gives me a chance to pick a tribe that doesn't result in great harm to other people, but still allows me to show humanity when the situation calls for it.
As a Denver Broncos fan, I am taught to hate the Raiders and the Chiefs, but while I will cheer on a win over either team or either team getting blown out by another opponent (meaning I enjoyed the Eagles taking the Chiefs to the woodshed), I never want to see anybody get hurt or injured and, thus, if a Raiders or Chiefs player is down on the field and has to be carted off, I'm always going to hope he'll be OK.
Compare that to war, in which the biggest cheerleaders for it basically shrug their shoulders at people getting killed or injured, if not outright say that those not on their side of the war deserved it.
As someone who lives vicariously through my (NY) sports teams, I’ve often maintained it’s the most benign way to practice out inherent tribalism. My fellow fans become a pseudo community; it’s baseball spring training so I’m reconnecting with friends I haven’t heard from since October. I had to make crow-eating, congratulatory calls to Eagles fan friends, that detested tribe, whom I get to “hate” but if any of them needed a kidney they’d have mine tonight.
Oh c'mon. As an Eagles fan I like the Giants. They ended Tim Brody's perfect season. Coughlin is one of my favorite coaches. Can't we hate the Cowgirls together?
i imagine with your knowledge on missile defense...you must find this talk about an iron dome for the US to be ridiculous, billions of dollars to defend against.....what? you just basically said it wouldn't stop a nuke so whats the point?
"Samuel insists that this is incomprehensible from his Jewish perspective: How could the morality of killing a defenseless animal have anything to do with whether we followed certain self-imposed rules?"
Someone is a little confused here, I think, since self-imposed rules regarding the treatment of animals one is in the process of killing or plundering are inherent to Judaism.
There's a double standard when it comes to killing wild animals vs domesticated ones. For my money it's worse to kill something that views you as a provider, the wild animal had a chance to live out it's life as intended, and probably would have had a worse death through starvation or predators than my arrow nailing it in the heart. But I'll eat either.
Look, I have enough problems with the ruthlessness required to keep my spider plants from taking over the living room. I try to remember to cut the shoots before they turn into little babies. You don't know how I suffer, putting them in the trash. You'll never find me in a live poultry market saying "I think I'll have Myrtle over there for my dinner." I'll take those anonymous parts from the supermarket chilled displays, thanks.
All I ask is do it clean. If you're raising your kids to be hunters, don't let 'em practice on live targets. Make sure they got the skills necessary for the best odds.
Same for the death penalty in my view. Make sure it's a clean conviction, and do it fast.
If someone is gonna shoot at something with a pulse, they should have already put hundreds of rounds in targets at the range. Guns are one of the few things where the practice is actually fun.
Funny thing. I didn't understand that until I read one of the Reacher novels where our hero takes up a challenge by a shooting range owner. I was absolutely enthralled by the detailed descriptions and for the first time in my life I wanted to learn how to shoot.
Of course with my extreme lack of talent for manipulating any sort of tool the world will be much safer should I never follow through on the urge.
Was this concept of Sisyphus defeating Zeus by making a game out of his punishment an original thought of yours, or did you read that somewhere? One of the more profound simplicities I’ve read in a while.
It just came to me, but it's entirely possible I picked it up somewhere over the years. May have just been inspired by Camus's book, but I don't remember him saying anything like that.
As a "Myth of Sisyphus" fanboy on the level of Taylor Swift to a 13-year-old girl (or whoever her demographic is), I can confirm that he definitely did not say that. All points to you, and I agree wholeheartedly that it is an incredibly profound insight.
Swift's demographic goes way beyond 13-year-old girls. I don't care much about her, but anyone who can make piles of money playing their own music these days (in the era of streaming) is bucking the trend.
Btw I sent you a private message the other day in case you didn’t see it. I know you’re a busy guy. Thanks again for making a lot of effort to create meaningful things in a world of slop.
On Substack?
Yes, meant for the Q&A but wasn’t something I wanted to bring to a general discussion
I was struck by that as well.
I never read that anywhere else. Darryl keeps hitting homeruns, as it were...
Don't you mean Homer runs?
Please release more episodes on "The Germans' War." The first one was so good.
Working on it!
I need my fix of revisionist, pro-Hitler history.
I don't think it will end up "pro" but rather will give us a portrait of Hitler as another "Jim Jones" type who thinks he's a tortured messiah and winds up doing all the same things but just at a larger scale. I think Darryl already teased that ending, and I can't wait to see him paint it out in full, epic + tragic detail.
Just "another Jim Jones" requires a bit of auspicious thinking on your part, I'd say. One knew world history better than most ever could, able to speak of the foul things that would come to pass if he were to fail. And they have, on a world scale. He took that all on, he dared to change the world for the better, to challenge the authority of the financial gangsters which plague us to this day, and you want to compare him to some nutcase from the backwoods of America? This series might as well have been produced by Ben Shapiro if people come out of it at the end able to speak so little of so much.
🤓☝️”Erm, um uh axtshually I dOnT ThInK iTs GoInG tO bE PRO hItLeR nEcEsSaRiLy”
Are you being unserious on purpose? Doing so makes good men look worse for it.
He's a young guy mimicking Nick Fuentes. That's where he got the nerd thing from. We just have to be patient with the youth as they mature.
Tired of pretending like Hitler wasn’t the goat. 🤷
My guess at least.
I think it's ok to question the narrative and still be against Hitler.
For the same reason that I love Darryl + Haywood yet still think there is a woke right to be concerned about (Tate+Fuentes).
Bro no way 💀…
🤓☝️”erm uh im concerned about the woke right”
i think you’re missing the point entirely.
As the recipient of Darryl’s work, I enact the meaning upon it. It matters little what his intention of the project was because the meaning that I derive from his work is the true fruit of his labor.
Have you seen the two German TV miniseries that were on Netflix?
Generation War
Babylon Berlin
(Not sure Generation War was Netflix)
I was reading "When There is No Peace" by Hamilton Fish Armstrong (1939) when Taylor got booed...
"Sisyphus’ curse of endlessly rolling a stone uphill only to watch it roll back down becomes bearable the moment he starts timing himself and trying with each lap to beat his personal best. With sufficient dedication he’d soon attract a crowd of roaring fans and competitors who, with earnestness and joy, take up voluntarily what was imposed on Sisyphus by force. In this way, Zeus is defeated and the curse abolished, even as Sisyphus gears up for his next ascent."
Yes! Fucking brilliant. Thank you.
An interesting complication in the NBA/WNBA split is Caitlyn Clark, who is actually filling arenas and caused at least the DC WNBA team to play in a larger arena than normal because her two games were responsible for more than 40% of the DC team ticket sales.
Clark is, or was, right-coded, having played for Iowa, being attacked (both verbally and physically) by other WNBA players for being white/straight/popular, and until recently refusing to comment on politics. It will be interesting to see if she loses any fans by recently talking about "white privilege" and other woke musings.
I’m curious to see if her popularity (and more specifically that of the WNBA since her debut) is sustainable or more of a flash in the pan for a season or two.
I have a question about your thoughts on ICBMs and modern warfare. In an earlier podcast, you made the case that the way a state wages war, influences the way it governs. It makes sense that Ancient Greece founded democracy, when men were expected to fight in a phalanx, shoulder to shoulder, rich and poor alike. And the patronage system of Feudalism makes sense when it was only the rich who could afford to fight wars, and only the rich who were expected to fight them. Given that framework, how does modern warfare influence the way we structure our societies and governments?
Gonna add this to the Q&A list for the next post. I think about this a lot.
But you still need a huge logistical apparatus behind that. If it takes a crane just to reload your missiles, and an entire military industrial complex to make sure you have a steady supply of them, you can’t rely on a tiny vanguard to accomplish that.
Back to small extremely trained professional mercenary armies...
Think we're going to go Swiss?
Well, it's comforting to know that all the naval aviators like myself will have been shot down a week before eggheads like Darryl are working with the problem of shooting down ballistic missiles. Just thinking about it makes my head hurt. It's like the standard engineering triangle of cost, speed, weight, pick two. Only with ten more sides of the triangle. From your description, it sounds like shooting down missiles with missiles is impractical, at best, and possibly futile. Do you think energy weapons could play a role? In theory, could energy weapons mounted on satellites, powered by the sun, be used? Is it a feasible response? If it is, Elon has reduced the cost of putting pieces of metal into orbit by an order of magnitude. Is this is a viable course of action? Love your history stuff, but missile defense is a pet interest of mine as well. I was never involved on the technical side, but have some stories about the policy and implementation side. Thanks!
Bill Buppert has a series here on Substack called Fixing Fight Club, at least one of the episodes deals with missile defense. Energy weapons are mostly microwave or laser. Microwaves lose too much energy over distance to be effective. This is less of a problem with lasers, although still present, but lasers have prohibitive power demands. The idea of solar energy is interesting, but it would have to store a very large amount of kilowatts, so the battery would be enormous.
A good chunk of what I learned about life, I learned from sports
I'm not a massive sports fan, enjoy following local teams, and watching "The Game" from time to time, but I can not sit and define 25 years of stats.......It's healthy and a good social endeavor and good to admire their shear athletics. Kids get examples of what IS possible with the right dedication and discipline. But where it's fallen apart (and where i believe much of the criticism comes from) is the over indulgence. People will spend every Sunday, all day (1/7 of the fall) watching every possible game to see every play....add in college ball. Plus dedication to sports betting and fantasy leagues, and we have a major waste of potential. As a fun hobby from time to time is fine.
and Roller Ball is a great movie. Glad i knew exactly what that was when it popped up.
the Sisyphus comment was great. Borrowing that and i'll give credit where due.
Great post, I appreciate this perspective! I don't watch sports as much as I used to, but I still think there's nothing quite like watching, or especially being at really good hockey game. Fun to follow a team. Thanks Darryl!
You’re freaking me out with the rollerball reference, i just watched it 3 nights ago.
I KNOW 👀
I reviewed 'Rollerball' for my Community College newspaper. Yes. I'm that old.
Can you please pause everything and begin addressing all the fraud and corruption that they're exposing because everyone else that talks about it is really dry and boring and I really would like your perspective on it.
I would appreciate that, also.
The Last Refuge at theconservativetreehouse.com is a good resource on that question. Also John Carter here on Substack and on X.
I'll check out John Carter on X, thank you v much
“Silly comments” might be the understatement of the year so far 😂. Appreciate the cliff hanger.
I look at my sports fandom in this way: It gives me a chance to pick a tribe that doesn't result in great harm to other people, but still allows me to show humanity when the situation calls for it.
As a Denver Broncos fan, I am taught to hate the Raiders and the Chiefs, but while I will cheer on a win over either team or either team getting blown out by another opponent (meaning I enjoyed the Eagles taking the Chiefs to the woodshed), I never want to see anybody get hurt or injured and, thus, if a Raiders or Chiefs player is down on the field and has to be carted off, I'm always going to hope he'll be OK.
Compare that to war, in which the biggest cheerleaders for it basically shrug their shoulders at people getting killed or injured, if not outright say that those not on their side of the war deserved it.
As someone who lives vicariously through my (NY) sports teams, I’ve often maintained it’s the most benign way to practice out inherent tribalism. My fellow fans become a pseudo community; it’s baseball spring training so I’m reconnecting with friends I haven’t heard from since October. I had to make crow-eating, congratulatory calls to Eagles fan friends, that detested tribe, whom I get to “hate” but if any of them needed a kidney they’d have mine tonight.
Oh c'mon. As an Eagles fan I like the Giants. They ended Tim Brody's perfect season. Coughlin is one of my favorite coaches. Can't we hate the Cowgirls together?
i imagine with your knowledge on missile defense...you must find this talk about an iron dome for the US to be ridiculous, billions of dollars to defend against.....what? you just basically said it wouldn't stop a nuke so whats the point?
"Samuel insists that this is incomprehensible from his Jewish perspective: How could the morality of killing a defenseless animal have anything to do with whether we followed certain self-imposed rules?"
Someone is a little confused here, I think, since self-imposed rules regarding the treatment of animals one is in the process of killing or plundering are inherent to Judaism.
Haha you know what that’s a good point, but he doesn’t square it
Well, you know those university-educated guys. There's an awful lot they miss.
There's a double standard when it comes to killing wild animals vs domesticated ones. For my money it's worse to kill something that views you as a provider, the wild animal had a chance to live out it's life as intended, and probably would have had a worse death through starvation or predators than my arrow nailing it in the heart. But I'll eat either.
Look, I have enough problems with the ruthlessness required to keep my spider plants from taking over the living room. I try to remember to cut the shoots before they turn into little babies. You don't know how I suffer, putting them in the trash. You'll never find me in a live poultry market saying "I think I'll have Myrtle over there for my dinner." I'll take those anonymous parts from the supermarket chilled displays, thanks.
All I ask is do it clean. If you're raising your kids to be hunters, don't let 'em practice on live targets. Make sure they got the skills necessary for the best odds.
Same for the death penalty in my view. Make sure it's a clean conviction, and do it fast.
If someone is gonna shoot at something with a pulse, they should have already put hundreds of rounds in targets at the range. Guns are one of the few things where the practice is actually fun.
Funny thing. I didn't understand that until I read one of the Reacher novels where our hero takes up a challenge by a shooting range owner. I was absolutely enthralled by the detailed descriptions and for the first time in my life I wanted to learn how to shoot.
Of course with my extreme lack of talent for manipulating any sort of tool the world will be much safer should I never follow through on the urge.
You’d be amazed how natural it feels. First time I fired an AK I realized how children could be deadly with one.