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A fascinating human quality to me is self-sabotage. How is it possible that some people seem to have the world within their reach, while others unconsciously hold themselves back, downplaying their abilities and ultimately preventing themselves from achieving what they want in life? As mentioned in Anastasia’s blog, such self-sabotaging behavior can range from small acts like procrastination to deeper forms such as persistent negative self-talk.
One example of this human quality was found in Choe U-Ram’s artwork “Round Table.” At first glance, we see a group of mechanical creatures supporting a table. They all strive to reach the “head” placed on top, but as they tilt the table in their effort, the head continually slips away from them. Watching this, I can only think: how pointless is this struggle. At first, I questioned how this related to self-sabotage, but then I read a little more background information.
The artist Choe said the following about the artwork: “In this case, the straw bodies want something they'll never have. Like Sisyphus pushing the boulder, they are in a perpetual struggle.”. Thanks to this I revisited the myth of Sisyphus, and the connection became clear. To summarize the myth of Sisyphus briefly:
Sisyphus was a cunning man who repeatedly defied and deceived the gods. His arrogance and defiance led to his eternal punishment—pushing a boulder up a mountain in Tartarus, only for it to roll back down each time, forcing him to begin again endlessly.
The punishment of Sisyphus is pointless, yet it was his own actions (his self-overestimation and his refusal to accept limits) that brought him there. His downfall was, in essence, self-sabotage. In that light, Choe’s creatures mirror this same pattern: by obsessively pursuing the unattainable “head,” they trap themselves in an endless cycle of frustration. Their struggle becomes both pointless and self-destructive, so indeed a great metaphor for human self-sabotage.
The second example, the “Helpless Robot,” illustrated self-sabotage more clearly to me. The robot’s purpose is to move forward, yet it is incapable of doing so effectively. But this goal of moving forward is pointless, since there never will be a final result. People around it try to help, but the robot does not acknowledge or appreciate them. It continues its pointless attempts to fulfill a meaningless goal. Here, the act itself is pointless, and the refusal to recognize support becomes a form of self-sabotage.
From these examples, I would say that self-sabotage often contains an element of pointlessness. The two concepts, pointlessness and self-sabotage, are deeply connected. Sometimes they overlap, as in Round Table, and other times they coexist more loosely, as in Helpless Robot. Together, they form what I would call “pointless self-destruction.” However, I think this idea is also reflected in the title of Anastasia’s blog, “The Vicious Cycle of Self-Sabotage,” where the notion of a vicious cycle captures the pointless characteristic of this behavior.
If I were to capture this concept in a creature, I imagine it like this:
A creature lives inside a transparent glass box. Through the glass, it can clearly see the world outside where it longs for. It throws itself against the glass again and again, trying to get there. Each collision weakens and breaks down the creature. However, in the same room, there is also a glass door. The door is simple, but marked with a sign that reads “Closed”. Because of that sign, the creature never even tries to open it. Instead, it continues attacking the glass walls, destroying itself in the process. I think this would capture the "pointless self-destruction" where it could easily get to their goal, but by trying to get there, it destructs itself in a pointless manner by trying to do it via an impossible route.
Sources:
https://sites.google.com/view/artificial-creatures-2025-26/portfolios/anastasia-paschou/self-sabotage
https://mymodernmet.com/choe-u-ram-round-table-kinetic-sculpture/
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