Oedipus: Klep Model

Oedipus

Hubris Meets Integrity: An Honest Model for Kleptocrats

Theme: we have the same political structure as did Rome, as did the Jews, as did Jerusalem. Jesus could get kangarooed by us just as easily as he got kangarooed by Herod, Pilat, Augustus ... you and me. I don't care if the Republicans or the Democrats of the Communists are in so long as we are ruled by hierarchies of supposed experts using proxies: human exercising judgments without demonstrating (to any but ourselves) that our judgments are worth a damn.

Cave men couldn't have crucified Jesus, or put a contract out on Luther: because cave men didn't have big complex bureaucracies the lies of which complexify at every level. Cave men could have murdered Jesus, shot arrows at him the instant he first appeared; but they wouldn't have had trials, and jails, and specialists in flogging ... We do.

I rewrite, hoping to condense, points made more than a decade ago at Knatz.com: about the myth of Oedipus.

Oedipus was born to a king and queen (in the days where every town, certainly every county, had its own king. The king and queen, superstitious like everyone else, took their babe to the temple where a prophecy was made: the little prince Oedipus would grow up to kill his father and marry his mother. It's a you-can't-avoid-your-own-destiny kind of story. The royal couple try to avert the prophecy by killing their son. But of course they're squeamish, have specialists to do their work for them, priests, soldiers ... murderers. But the murderer is a softie too. He takes the kid to a border and leaves him in the "wilderness." Naturally the kid survives, is adopted by the king and queen of the next county over, raised as a prince: their prince.

Princes are trained in war, trained to be regal, haughty: ready to draw the sword at every perceived slight. So Prince Oedipus is out on the public road with his princely train, along comes some other doofus in his princely train. Get out of the way, No, you get out of the way. They fight. The younger man kills the older man. Oedipus goes about his business, thinks nothing of it.

Oedipus' foster parents hear that their neighboring kingdom has lost its king. Local royalty is being solicited to find a replacement king. Oedipus' parents volunteer Oedipus. Let's say that Oedipus real parents were the royal family of Sebring. Let's say that Oedipus' foster parents were the king and queen of Avon Park, a few miles up the road. Oedipus leaves Avon Park, his princedom, and travels south to Sebring. There's the unmanned kingdom, there's the widowed queen: unknown to him, unknown to her, his biological mother (who believes that her ill-starred son has been done away with). Oedipus does what is common to lots of cultures: as the new king he has an income, a palace. In that palace is the widow who's been there since time immemorial. He marries her. (It was their Social Security. The Arabs do the same thing, Mohammed did the same thing.)

Time passes. Plenty of kings wouldn't have bothered to sleep with their aged new queen; Oedipus and his mom had children, seem to have gotten along, must have perhaps even liked each other. So he did sleep with her, and loved her.

Oedipus is aware one year that things aren't going swimmingly with his kingdom. The priests say that it's a representation of the gods' displeasure that the murder of the late king hasn't been avenged. It's state of the nation type stuff. Oedipus responds. He commissions a committee to look into it. He'll chair the committee. Evidence trickles in, then pours. Oedipus finally realizes: he's been looking for the mother fucker: he's found him: it's he himself!

Oedipus rushes to see his queen. She's heard the news. She's seen that she and her former king's efforts to defy fate have only rebounded to kick them in the teeth. She hangs herself. Oedipus finds his dead mother, queen, consort, he takes her hair pin from her hair, he stabs his own eyes out. He can't bear to see what's happened to him, what he's done, what he's been party to.

Now: I've asked for decades, loving this story (and hating our own vanity, our own hubris): if one asked Oedipus, Did you kill your father? he'd reply, No, of course not. Maybe he'd add, How dare you? Maybe he'd play marimbas on your ribs after they'd bleached in the sun for a few years. But how could he be sure?

What if you asked him, Have you ever killed anyone? He'd say, Of course, what do you take me for? a faggot?

OK, enough of that for the moment: here's pk real point, pk's pk point:

If you ask an American, Have you killed God? They'll say, nearly all or any of them, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have any of your representatives killed God? They'll say, No, of course not!
If you ask an American, Have you or any of your representatives tortured any innocent party? Misappropriated their property? Not paid your bills? The first answers will be emphatic and indignant. As the questions progress, they'd become a bit more uncertain: except you wouldn't get to ask so many questions before you'd find yourself in jail, stripped of your rights, your property, your identity.

We don't know what we have and haven't done. That's why God will do the judging; not us.

Kafka has K immediately blurt on being charged, I'm innocent. But K doesn't even know what the charges are! How can he plead innocence?

Better questions are: Are your political institutions corruptible?
Have you ever looked at a Van Gogh painting in the museum? in an ad? in a movie? How is any such person not guilty?

How dare we quote Jesus? Did we pay him for the original utterance? Have we paid his disciples?

Have we paid the Father?

Are you sure? Are you sure we didn't give the money to a bunch of priests? How do we know the priests passed the money to God?

The US pays its debts to banks and to major corporations: does the US pay its debts to its enemies? To the natives whose land, ideas, institutions, culture we're stolen? To Sutter whose rout west we took, then took his gold? To Illich whose social networking we've perverted? To me whose offer of inter-networked digital libraries got stolen, and perverted?

Cave men may have murdered each other left and right (not really, or we wouldn't be here), but they didn't do atrocious things as a "nation": or as a "religion."