Tragedy and its discontent

These ideas arose from the context of reading the tragedy Antigone in French by Jean Anouilh.

The gist of the tragic structure is that Creon the king has a niece Antigone. Antigone's brother Polynice revolts against the king and is killed. Creon orders that Polynice is not to be buried. And hence in the mythology of the times his soul can not find any rest. Antigone feels duty bound to bury her brother so he can find rest. She disobeys Creon's edict and is caught. Creon is duty bound to uphold the law and kill her no matter who she is as she refuses to hide the fact that she was burying Polynice and will continue that attempt. Hence the tragedy - as long as Creon and Antigone follow their perceived duty, Creon will have to kill Antigone.

The structure of this tragedy is a frequent occurence in human affairs. As long as people, within the structure of their culture and society, follow the norms of their context, tragedy may result.

However, tragedy is also a pathway to adaptation. One way to avoid the tragedy is to do second order learning, i.e., see the inappropriateness of the rules we are operating by and change those rules in some fashion. There are many examples of this in human affairs. Nelson Mandela kept the tragedy of revenge / justice from happening at the end of apartheid by a series of rule changing actions in sports ( by getting blacks and whites to support the national team), social mixing by inviting white and black women to social functions to foster connections, truth and reconciliations groups, .... This is an example of rule changes happening top down. An example of rule changes occuring from the bottom up is Gandhi with his non-violent movement and civil disobedience with the salt march.