Fate: Bound By What We Don't Want To See

Our Great Books Redux rolled through Oedipus Tyrannos and Oedipus at Colonus. John McGowan is taking us through the "trilogy" in the order of writing - starting with Antigone and followed by these two. Our discussion was animated and insightful but foundered on the concept of fate.

The Greeks were clear that there was such a thing as fate, but our modern mind of increased powers denies the concept - the fundamentally human and, to my way of thinking, primary theme of the Oedipus Tyrannos and Oedipus at Colonus works. Dr. McGowan outlined two approaches to these works - a conservative one and a radical one. 

In the conservative view, Oedipus is not a hero but an atheist who attempts to fight his fate and thus the gods. In the radical view, Oedipus is a hero as he attempts to address the huge gap between what is divinely ordained and the humanly acceptable. In these terms, I find myself a radiservative - with elements of both views.

Fate is fate. We can will what we want, but we can't we will what we will. Fate gives rise to a notion of powerlessness and that seems fatalistic. Yet, accepting powerlessness as limitation is the basis of sanity as opposed to the insanity of Greek-termed hubris. Oedipus was reactive as he heard his fate and moved through three of the four Fs: flight (from "home"), fight (killing his father), f (with his mother). All of these Fs assist in removing conscious attention from reality. But the body knows.

Oedipus's name is rooted in a Greek cognate that "he knows something." Oedipus exhibits a long-term "willful blindness" (as one of the classmates perfectly put it) that is how we function in today's world - making these plays as relevant as ever. In twelve step programs, the essential power given to the recovering person is "in-sight" - the ability to see her or his role in life. Oedipus's journey is one of accepting his fate and moving to surrender. His surrender is how that huge gap between what is divinely ordained and humanly possible is closed and, in that, a model for all of us.

Embracing the idea of fate, then, is critical to accept to gain the fullness of the play's meaning. Incest and parricide are introduced to simply elevate the terms of the acceptance of fate. Great fates require no surrender. In surrender is power and Oedipus's awful fate requires great surrender - which he ultimately achieves through the peer support of Theseus. 

We, too, live in a world of fate but our "willful blindness" makes that of Oedipus look puny. While we exhibit enormous individual latitude, the dynamics of probability indicate on a law of large numbers, we continue to head inexorably towards our individual and collective fates. Acceptance of that sets our feet on solid ground and builds towards the fifth F: freedom.