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'" command and control invariably decreases system resilience by reducing the range of natural variation and adaptive capacity for the system to respond to disturbances (Gunderson 2000). As resilience decreases, the likelihood of a disturbance shifting the system into an undesired or degraded state increases, and control is wrested from the manager. Practice of Command and Control recalls the story of Sisyphus, one of the most unenviable characters in Greek mythology because he is compelled by the Gods to forever push a heavy boulder uphill. Just as he nears the top, Sisyphus becomes exhausted, and the boulder rolls back down to the plain below, where Sisyphus must begin again. Like Sisyphus, we can become trapped in an endless cycle of effort to compel ecosystems to remain in single, transient, or unstable states, resulting in repeated episodes of surprise and crisis that can mimic the ball-in-cup analogy of system dynamics (Lewontin 1969, Holling 1973, Beisner et aL 2003), with the ball rolling around the cup and away from the manager's desired state. The Sisyphus Complex emerges when we act through Command and Control to hold a dynamic system static or force a system to exist in a transient state. In any restoration, some amount of Command and Control is required to perform the restoration. Additional nudges to physical or biological components will likely occur in the years after the restoration as well. There is nothing wrong with some tinkering-we cannot exist without having some effect on our surroundings. Actions to be avoided are those that are long term in nature or will decrease the natural range of variability in key processes, such as fIre regime or hydrology. The Sisyphus Complex often occurs when the dominant, large-scale drivers of the system have changed and are either not noticed or conveniently ignored. When we fall into the Sisyphus Complex, we become fIxated on treating symptoms rather than the root of the problem and so become susceptible to failure. Urban stream restorations often occur in response to severely eroded stream channels, and a more flashy hydrograph that results from increases in impervious surface area higher in the watershed. Many such restorations fail (sometimes multiple times) despite tremendous expense and effort, because the altered driver (the hydrograph) and the root cause (impervious surfaces) were not addressed. Other general examples include coastal beach restoration in the face of ongoing, natural erosion; rare species stocking/reintroduction programs that ignore the root causes of rarity; and Ecology and Society 10(1): 19 htto:/ /www.ecolol!.Vandsocietv.orl!/voII0/issl/artI9/ attempting to direct succession to end points incompatible with environmental conditions. Sometimes the Sisyphus Complex results from social or political mandates to do something despite credible science to the contrary. In these situations, we must make every effort for science to influence decision making so that the inevitable repeated failures are not perceived as employment justification or incompetence on the part of science. MOVING BEYOND THE MYTHS Myths have value because they help us to organize and understand complex systems and phenomena, and provide a starting point toward the restoration and management of degraded ecosystems. We feel this is why the myths of restoration exist and persist. We hope that proposing these myths (whether the reader agrees with them or not) will begin a dialog leading to a deeper thinking about and greater understanding of natural systems and advancing the science of restoration ecology and management. Identifying myths has several implications for restoration design. A common theme in the myths is a failure to recognize and address uncertainty. Ignoring uncertainty often results in surprise and failure, because we have not created a system capable of adapting or responding to future drivers or chance events, and we are unable to exert ultimate control over the system. An alternative approach would be designing for resilience by planning for surprise. Although we cannot anticipate all future events, we can manage and restore in ways that allow for uncertainty. Planning forresilience should allow systems a greater ability to deal with and recover from surprise and future change by focusing on a diversity of approaches, functions, and taxa. When viewed in the context of designing for resilience, restorations become experiments in adaptive management or adaptive restoration (Zedler 2000b). Restoration projects with decision points along the way allow for critical assessment and possible intervention with contingency plans if things are not proceeding appropriately. Rapid learning can also be achieved by using a diversity of restoration techniques and approaches likely to be successful within the larger restoration. Assessing the performance of multiple approaches may increase cost, but it allows for testing multiple hypotheses and adaptive learning, and may cost less in the long run. If more than one approach is