Dan Ariely provides thought provoking insight about the way we make decisions in his TED talk "Are we in control of our decisions". He argues that we are not in as much control of our actions as we think, for example optical illusions. An optical illusion is nothing more than a regular picture, only one where our brain can't make sense of what it's seeing. That's very troubling because we have evolved to have very precise and adequate visual processing, but even less so logic. And that's exactly what you can see in certain studies done by colleges, for example when given advertising prices. when given 3 options, 1:paper advertising 100$, 2:Online advertising 150$, 3:paper and online advertising 150$, people chose the third option by far the most because it's the "best deal". Now when they took away option 2 the distribution became much more even between option 1 and 3. This shows that we don't necessarily choose everything through rational thinking, and sometimes by just changing how information is presented to us changes our choices. This is significant because we think we are very in control of our decision making, when in fact we are easily manipulated by subtle details. This is related to tragedy, in that people often think that they have a choice in how everything happens, or they believe their choices will directly change every outcome accurately to how they imagine. When in fact some of these choices aren't entirely their own, for example Oedipus thought he made the choice to not kill his dad and not marry his mom, but that didn't workout to well did it. And the same goes for Kreon, He thought he chose to uphold his rules and everything would end up fine, that was his choice, but he ended up causing a very similar situation to occur, ending in his son and his son's fiance dead.
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Tragedy, to me, is a very perspective dependent thing. So what may be tragic to one person is not as tragic to another, perhaps maybe one person may find death tragic but another person may not. I say this because what I find tragic about Oedipus may be different from what other people find tragic about Oedipus. And with that, there are a couple different tragic perspectives I can see in this writing. Firstly, Oedipus, he was cast out because of no fault of his own, then trying his hardest to do right he fled Corinth when he heard the prophecy. Trying his best to outrun his terrible fate, he never had a chance to stop what was coming to him. And the truly tragic part of this to me is that I don't believe he deserved it, his tragic flaw was what... trying to not kill his father and screw his mother? No, i don't see why he would deserve that. Secondly, Jocasta, what she did to Oedipus when she heard of the prophecy was terrible no doubt, but would it be different if she had killed Oedipus herself? surely that would've ended the story there and none of this would've come to pass, but wheres the fun in that, Sophocles. She attempted to kill a baby, at the prodding on of the gods... what else could she do let him live and have the child kill the father and fuck her? No every action these characters took was because of something Apollo set into action, and the dominoes fell without the peoples permission. They didn't have a chance, and every single person in this story is a victim of the gods, but they don't focus on that in the story, and that's the true tragedy to me. Those accountable for their actions are held to those standards.
In "Tragedy and the Common Man", Arthur Miller argues that tragedy is not about and only including those in high positions. He argues that the commonality in tragedy is rather about the want or need to maintain or gain a higher position in life. And that is a very relatable struggle for everyday, we want to maintain our social status, and so every person reading this can perhaps see parts of themselves in Oedipus' struggle. Arthur Miller goes on to expand on the idea of relatability through the main character's struggles, and something called their "Tragic Flaw". The tragic flaw is basically the character's unwillingness to ignore what challenges themselves. Which eventually leads to the main character to have a change in his world view, which is a major point in nearly all tragedies, leading to a conclusion point where the main character has changed in some way (not always for the best). Miller also confronts the Trope that tragedy is full of pessimism, he argues that instead of pessimism tragedy is about the character trying their best; the character has tried their best, which is all any of us can ever do, and still losing which is a relation to the imperfectability of human nature. Which will bring it back to that relatability between tragedy and the common man. Millers views on tragedy really enlightened me on the actual reason why people like these sad, depressing stories, its because they're relatable. We all have flaws, and we don't always win but we can put up one good fight and hope for the best. And here's an Oedipus Rex Rap Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1V_H6xklEJ0 Ambition and success mean different things to different people, often times that means they want a new car, a big house, tons of friends, but do they think of where those ideas come from? OK now the other direction, failure, living on a street corner, haven't showered in a month, and perhaps alcoholism causes people to think that whatever that person did to be there is usually their own fault, and the reason i'm driving by in a Mercedes is all my doing. These are some of the things Alain de Botton argues to us, that both of these situations are much deeper than we might initially think. Alain de Botton argues to us, that these ideas of success are often not our own, and our thoughts of self determinism are sometimes misconstrued. For example Alain talks to us about how we get our ideas of success often from marketing, buy a nice car, because it'll make you happy and get you a hot girlfriend; but Alain argues that, " if you see someone with a Ferrari, assume they are vulnerable and in need of love & sympathy, rather than contempt or greed." Because the feeling of needing that sports car is often the root of their possible unhappiness. Alain also argues that our lack of caste system, has now made a new age of self determinism extremely present in the way we look at people. We assume that if someone is successful (whatever that means to you) they deserve that success, but that also means that when we look at people less fortunate, we assume that they deserve what they got; for example in the middle ages they called the homeless the, "Less fortunate" but now they are are often thought of as "losers". And this is where tragedy comes in, Alain states that if we look at these less fortunate individuals with the guise of tragedy, we can have a more complete and sympathetic world view, because not everything is their fault, and this world is not a perfect meritocracy. Alain uses the fact that the suicide rates within these developed individualistic societies are much higher than the opposite, and claims that is the case because people believe that the reason they failed is because they deserved to fail. When in fact if we realized that the world will never be a perfect meritocracy, and that our failures are not just that, failure, but a way to learn we can help change things around. Everyone has failures, from the smartest mathematician, to Oprah (OK maybe not Oprah), to succeed everywhere in life is not feasible and so we should focus on learning what success means to us. Because "it feels bad to fail to achieve success, but much worse to achieve it and realize it wasn’t really what you wanted." Whenever I hear the word "tragedy", i think of natural disasters, a 10 car pileup, and my will to do this blog; not some sad literature from the Greek philosophers and European elite. And yet my initial tragedy is bound together with this ancient form of writing, because the "10 car pileup" of my day is the blood feud between 2 lovers of their time. So lets discuss what really is going on in these tragic writings, to get a more complete understanding of what's the big deal,
As stated by Aristotle," tragedy is characterized by seriousness and involves a great person who experiences a reversal of fortune". So like many things, the O.G. western world (Greece&Rome) though Greece specifically, are thought to be the first to develop Tragic stories in their theaters. And as such it has effected the western world, particularly artists like Shakespeare, to Samuel Beckett's moderns meditations on death and suffering have explored the genre further, expanding on human suffering and the misfortune that befalls many. So basically tragedy is exploring what it means to not be the perfect, everything good happens to, person. It, to me, a much more realistic (sometimes) exploration of peoples stories, people lose sometimes, misfortune happens. That is why I believe people enjoy tragedy sometimes. It's no different than a scary movie the good ones let you believe you could be in that position yourself, allowing you to really get into that part and enjoy the story. |
Logan Smith
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