ABSTRACT
Prior to September 11, 2001, the scourge of fundamentalist Islam was mostly felt by Israelis; victims of the Taliban in Afghanistan, suppressed students in Iran, and by slaughtered villagers in Algeria. This chapter determines the inter-relationship of the SisypheanTantalic personality type continuum with the separant-participant continuum of cultures. The social characters which embraced during the last millennium and a half the Muslim creed's ethics and way of life tend more or less towards the Tantalic pole of social character continuum, whereas the occidental cultures tend to move towards its Sisyphean pole. Accidia is a hangover of the Tantalic low entropy social character that was dissipating in his leveling encounter with a high entropy Sisyphean social character. The polarization into Sisyphean-separant and Tantalic-participant social characters has influenced the Weltanschauung of observers from time immemorial.
