With a surprising sense of purpose and joy, Sisyphus ascends the mountain laughing to himself, pushing up the heavy boulder, step by step by step.
It’s tough and it’s long but the grind is its own reward.
It’s a good day. He’s just about to reach the peak of the mountain. But suddenly and without warning, something shifts in the ground and the boulder begins to roll away from him.
At first, Sisyphus feels relief as the heavy burden is taken away. But his comfort quickly turns to panic as he watches the stone roll down the mountain, gathering speed as it goes. He runs faster and faster, shouting and crying in desperation.
Sisyphus is no longer on an onward grinding heavy push that he can easily find joy in, but a dangerous, high-speed chase down a rocky mountainside.
A “Transitional Phase” is the period in-between, when things change from one condition to another. It can be short and sudden or slow and gradual. But the other side of a transitional phase is always notably different to what came before.
When ice melts into water for example, or when water evaporates into steam. Before and after, we have a relatively stable state, but there’s a volatile period in between as one turns to the next and something totally new is made from the old.
But transitional phases dn’t just happen at the molecular level as substances change state (solid to liquid to gas) they also happen at a higher level when a person matures and develops.
Psychologist Erik Erikson coined the phrase "identity crisis" to describe the transitions between distinct stages that human beings go through. He lists 8 existential questions that people ask as they go from baby to child to adult to senior:
Can I trust the world?
Is it okay to be me?
Is it okay for me to do, move, and act?
Can I make it in the world of people and things?
Who am I? Who can I be?
Can I unite myself with another person?
Can I make my life count?
Is it okay to have been me?
As people experience each identity crisis, answering these questions for themselves, they undergo a kind of psychological reorientation, discarding their old identity, and growing into a new stage of life.
At a higher level still, transition phases can happen between people and organisations of people. Whole communities and societies can change significantly and become almost unrecognisable, even though what comes after has grown out of what came before.
As technologies, loyalties, and the structures of the world around us develop, we can find ourselves moving from one stable state to something entirely new.
And the period of change between the two can be a confusing and overwhelming place to be.
I’m Ben Fleming, and if you’re a founder, an entrepreneur, a scientist, or a forward thinker of any kind, I want to partner with you and use my expertise in health and fitness to help you become the person you want to be so you can build the future you want to see. You and I can build a better world for everyone forever together. Let me know what you’re working on!
I'm going through a transitional phase of my own. After spending the last ten years working in local gyms as a personal trainer, helping people from all walks of life to be generally healthy, I’m now using my online presence to talk less about that and more about this new direction.
Gymnasion.net is maturing into more than just a place to improve routines, diet, exercise, and goals. It's a platform to explore the future and what we can do to create the future we want. This is what I find interesting and I think you'll find it interesting too!
So back to Sisyphus, the ancient king, sentenced by Zeus to roll a huge boulder up a mountain forever.
Usually, we focus on the part of the story where he has to keep pushing to move things along and we use that as a metaphor for the unrelenting mundane effort of living. In his essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe, the French philosopher Albert Camus famously wrote “La lutte elle-même vers les sommets suffit à remplir un cœur d'homme; il faut imaginer Sisyphe heureux.“
“The struggle to the summit alone is enough to fill a man’s heart; one must imagine Sisyphus happy.”
But Sisyphus doesn’t merely struggle upwards. In some ways that’s the easy bit. We forget the part where there’s a transition and the boulder rolls all the way back down to the bottom of the mountain. And what's worse is it happens just as it looks like he’s about to reach the peak!
In the modern world we’ve become used to the idea that life is a struggle. We find meaning in the work, of course, but we still generally expect things to be a long slog and for people to have to suffer for the things they desire. This makes intuitive sense because it's been true for a long time. Civilisation has been built up over the centuries by the hard work of generations, driving towards some kind of peak.
Francis Fukuyama coined the term 'end of history' in the early 90s, to describe the idea that we are close to finally reaching the culmination of civilisation; liberal democracy as the ultimate form of governance and capitalism as the ultimate model for a healthy and wealthy populace. This idea was prevalent in the 90s and into the 2000s.
But then the ground started shifting. Just when we were about to reach what we thought was the end, we were confronted with this fact: in the real world, nothing is fixed. Everything keeps moving, evolving, and developing. Sometimes that means gathering and unifying and sometimes that means we move to a period of fragmentation and unbundling.
In the western world, the last time we experienced a great societal unbundling was the fall of the Roman Empire.
But if you were living during this transitional phase it would not have been immediately clear that an empire was collapsing around you. This reshuffle was gradual and took many generations as regional powers slowly replaced centralised authority.
Following the breakdown of globalised Roman control, the Middle Ages was characterised by decentralised allegiances and local rulers commanded authority. Peace was kept between these smaller groups via confederations, treaties, agreements, and (of course) the threat of violence.
Recently political polarisation and economic stress has dampened people’s faith in democracy and capitalism. Corporations and other powerful organisations can effectively compete with nation states for power. Their ability to allocate resources, disseminate information, control labour, and influence policy are now at the level of any government. The state no longer commands the loyalty and authority it once held and people identify in other ways.
Technological advancements have transformed the way we work, communicate, and learn. Just as crop rotation, the windmill, the clock, and the printing press all revolutionised the way we lived during the Middle Ages, innovations today are creating huge shifts in society.
We used to expect that lots of people were needed to get big things done. But now we are already seeing the influence that small, motivated groups and even individuals can wield. The rise of remote work, AI tools, online education, and platforms for collaboration, creates open access to information, resources, and opportunity. This allows smart, hardworking people to operate on a scale previously reserved for very large organisations.
During periods like this we can find ourselves asking a lot of scary existential questions. But just as Sisyphus experiences both the burden of the climb and the crisis of the fall, we also need to learn to navigate the ups and downs with purpose. In transitional phases there’s uncertainty but also immense potential. By embracing this, both personally and as a community, we can find joy in the chaos and thrive when others panic.
Let’s not rely on the technology and potential of the modern world as if it will remain unchanged forever but make best use of the time we are in. The real world evolves, and so should we. My goal is to help smart, hard working people to not only improve their physical body but become forward-thinking leaders who can join together in shaping a better future for everyone forever.
Are you noticing a great societal unbundling?
What are you working on for a better future?
Comment below or send me a message.
My handle is @GymnasiOnUK on Youtube, Twitter, Substack, and Instagram.
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