He Didn’t Already Tell Them That

Ignorance is NOT Bliss

If we are to believe what our high school English teachers told us, every tragedy has a tragic hero, every hero has a tragic flaw, and tragic flaws usually involve a lack of self-knowledge. While this is a vastly oversimplified view of the history of literature, it is not entirely without merit. After all, most tragedies do in fact have a main character, and we can call this character the tragic hero. Most tragic heroes do something in the course of the story that leads directly to the their own ruin. Very often, this critical action of the main character can be seen as resulting from some lack of knowledge, though not necessarily self-knowledge. Of course, this is only an important literary theme because it is also an important theme in real life. Time and again, those blinded by their ambition or arrogance bring about their own demise.

In Herodotus’ Histories, many of the most important actions men take are based on prophecies made by some oracle or another. Oracles tend to be very ambiguous in how they word their responses to questions. This ambiguity means that many oracles convey almost no information whatsoever. When the oracles foretell that Croesus “would destroy a great empire” if he attacked the Persians, they are not telling him anything at all significant.[1] Granted, the prophecy indicates that an empire will fall, when it could have instead indicated that a stalemate would have occurred, but this is far less significant than the meaning Croesus attaches to the oracles. He assumes they are referring to the Persian empire, and acts on that assumption. If Croesus had not already made up his mind to attack, he may have considered the fact that the oracles never specified which empire would be destroyed. He is too blinded by his ambition to see that they give no indication of which empire will be destroyed, and his misinterpretation of the prophecy leads ultimately to his own defeat. This defeat leads to Croesus becoming the advisor that Cyrus frequently misunderstands or ignores.

Herodotus’ advisor figures are in many ways quite similar to oracles. People believe that both oracles and advisors have potentially useful information about a situation, so advisors are asked many of the same types of questions people ask oracles. For instance, after Xerxes and Artabanus discuss the brevity of human life,[2] Xerxes asks Artabanus if he would have insisted on not attacking Greece had the same dream not appeared to both of them. This is very similar to Croesus asking the oracles what would happen if he attacked Persia, but there are some important differences. When a man consults an oracle for advice, he makes two basic assumptions about the answer he will receive before the oracle even speaks. First, he assumes that the oracle is essentially infallible. Second, he assumes that the answer will be ambiguous. This differs from the expectation that advisors will give straightforward albeit fallible answers.

When Xerxes ignores Artabanus’ advice and ultimately sends him home,[3] he is doing something quite different from when Croesus misinterprets the oracles in Book I. He ignores a much more straightforward answer whose meaning is obvious: “Do not attack the Greeks, because if they don’t defeat you, the land and the sea very well might.”[4] At the same time, he is merely choosing not to agree with one of his imperfect human advisors. On the one hand, because he ignores a straightforward piece of advice, whereas Croesus simply misinterpreted an ambiguous oracle, Xerxes might seem more blinded by his ambition. On the other hand, because he simply dismisses a human advisor, whereas Croesus misunderstands an infallible oracle, Xerxes might seem less blinded by his ambition. Regardless of whether one man was more ignorant than the other, it is clear that both acted without considering all the information and ultimately failed to conquer the group they hoped to conquer.

In Sophocles, the advice Oedipus and Creon largely ignore comes from the blind seer Teiresias, who exists somewhere between the categories of human advisor and divine oracle, as well as the categories of male and female. There are several legends about Teiresias, as there are about nearly every figure in Greek mythology and folklore. In one account, the gods blind him because he disclosed their secrets to mortals (that is, he was already a seer). In others, he is blinded by a god out of spite, and later endowed with the powers of a seer as compensation for his physical blindness. One of the latter stories includes the claim that Teiresias was a woman for seven years after wounding a female snake.[5] His words, therefore, are less fallible than human advice while being less ambiguous than divine oracle.

When Oedipus tries to persuade Teiresias to reveal the identity of the murderer,[6] we who know the story are struck by the irony of the situation. The blind seer knows what Oedipus is too blinded to see. Teiresias drives this irony home in lines 412-14: “Since you have taunted me with being blind, here is my word for you. You have your eyes but see not where you are in sin, nor where you live, nor whom you live with.” He goes on to speak of the “multitude of other evils establishing a grim equality” between Oedipus and his children.[7] This equality, of course, is the fact that Oedipus and his children were born of the same woman. We know this, the blind seer knows this, but Oedipus refuses to acknowledge it. Even when Teiresias says outright that Oedipus “shall be proved father and brother both to his own children in his house; to her that gave him birth, a son and husband both”,[8] he doesn’t get it. Of course, it is difficult to see any way in which the tragedy of Jocasta’s suicide could have been avoided, even if Oedipus did see what Teiresias was telling him.

The real mistake that leads to the tragic conclusion of Oedipus took place much earlier, while Oedipus was still in Corinth. If Polybus had told Oedipus that he was not his biological father, Oedipus would not have fled after the Delphic Oracle told him he would kill his father and marry his mother. The story goes that he consulted the oracle after companions claimed that Polybus was not his real father, because he was so much milder than Oedipus.[9] If Oedipus had believed these companions or asked Polybus about the truth, he would never have felt the need to consult the oracle, which ignored his actual question and instead merely prophesied that he would commit patricide and marry his mother. Once again, we have an oracle giving incomplete information that is therefore useless on its own. Oedipus believes the oracle is saying he will murder Polybus, so he flees and thereby ends up killing his real father. All the events that lead ultimately to the tragic conclusion of Oedipus result from his acting on his misinterpretation of the oracle.

In Antigone, Creon is the one blinded by his own rigid belief that he is right. When it turns out that Antigone ceremonially buried the body of Polyneices, Creon holds to his earlier declaration that whoever did so should be considered a traitor. In his opinion, “anyone thinking another man more a friend than his own country” is worth nothing.[10] That is, loyalty to individuals is less important than loyalty to the state. Antigone thinks her brother is more important than Thebes, so she herself is worth nothing. Creon’s declaration, by extension, is as important as Thebes itself, because he is its king. It follows, then, that if he thinks his niece is more important than his declaration, he thinks another person more important than his own country, and is therefore as worthless as Antigone. It is his unwavering belief that the state is more important than any individual that leads, in part, to the tragic deaths of Antigone, Haemon, and Euridice.

However, the tragedy of those deaths is augmented by the fact that Creon eventually reconsiders his decision and ends up changing his mind at the bequest of Teiresias and the chorus.[11] If he had remained adamant throughout, the audience would not sympathize with him at the conclusion and therefore would find the play to be less tragic as a whole. Despite the fact that Creon changes his mind, he is not thereafter free of some responsibility for the three deaths. His decision to bury the body before freeing Antigone delays her liberty just long enough for her to commit suicide. As Creon and his party approach “death’s stone bridal chamber,” they hear “a voice of bitter weeping,”[12] which implies that Haemon had only recently discovered Antigone’s body. Sophocles most likely wants the audience to assume that Haemon discovered Antigone shortly after she hanged herself, because if she had killed herself before Creon changed his mind, the tragedy would not be as great. If Creon had decided to free Antigone before burying her brother, Haemon then would not have killed himself out of sorrow over her death, and Euridice would not have killed herself out of sorrow over his.

While we cannot blame Creon as harshly for his decision to bury Polyneices before freeing Antigone as for his previous rigidity, he still acts out of ignorance. He probably believes that Antigone will be more likely to appreciate her freedom when she knows that her brother’s body has already been buried. This belief is no doubt correct, but in believing it, Creon does not think of the fact that timing of Antigone’s release is far more important than how much she appreciates it. Perhaps Creon should have realized that locking Antigone in a tomb might possibly make her suicidal. If this had occurred to him, he would have known that freeing her was a far more pressing issue than burying the body of Polyneices.

There are countless other examples of literary tragedy in which the tragic flaw of the main character is in some way related to his or her ignorance. However, nothing in literature is important by itself, including the motif of ignorance as a tragic flaw. Literary works derive all of their importance from their applicability to real life. If a story could not be related in any way to the everyday lives of the members of its audience, it would be a worthless piece of writing. The audience has to be able to connect with a story if they are to get anything out of it. Therefore, writers only use ignorance as a tragic flaw so frequently because ignorance so frequently leads to tragedy in the real world.

Real-world examples of tragic ignorance far outnumber examples found in literature, but the most important of them are those that have occurred most recently. As one goes back through time, one very quickly reaches a point where history becomes useful in the same way that literature is useful, and serves no other purpose. That is, as soon as something becomes “history” as opposed to a “current event,” its only real usefulness to us lies in its applicability to present circumstances. As Thucydides states in his intro to History of the Peloponnesian War:

It will be enough for me, however, if these words of mine are judged useful by those who want to understand clearly the events which happened in the past and which (human nature being what it is) will, at some time or other and in much the same ways, be repeated in the future.[13]

The importance of a given historical event depends entirely on how much we can learn about the present by analyzing the event. For this reason, the real-world examples below are all what we would call “current events.”

One can describe three basic types of ignorance in the above literary examples. The first is the misunderstanding of advice that is assumed to be infallible albeit ambiguous. The closest modern analogue to the Greek oracle is science. We typically take scientific theories to be in essence infallible. At the same time, the implications of these theories are frequently ambiguous and therefore can be quite misleading at times. A good modern example of misinterpreting or ignoring the implications of scientific findings has to do with global warming. For years, scientists have been telling the public that average global temperatures have been rising steadily over the past few decades. At the same time, it has long been known that high levels of carbon dioxide and other gasses in the atmosphere would cause a greenhouse effect, which in turn would cause rising temperatures. Even though it has also been shown that the levels of greenhouse gasses in our atmosphere has been steadily rising over the past few decades, the United States’ government refuses to officially admit that the rising levels of greenhouse gasses is the actual cause of the rising global temperatures. That is, because of its blinding arrogance, our government is dedicating itself to a course of action that may prove tragic indeed. If rising levels of greenhouse gasses are in fact the cause of rising global temperatures, and those levels continue to rise unchecked, humanity can look forward to eventually having a nice balmy climate like that found on Venus, where the average surface temperature is higher than the melting point of lead. Even if it happens that our current practices don’t end up causing this tragedy, the mere fact that tragedy is a very possible consequence of those practices makes our government’s ignorance just as dangerous as if it was the only viably possible consequence.

The second type of ignorance comes from ignoring advice that is straightforward, albeit human and therefore fallible. As human advisors still exist, whereas oracles do not, no alternate modern analogue is necessary. A good example for this type is the widespread ignorance of the likely consequences of the passage of the Congressional antiterrorism bills. The public, in its blind patriotism, refused to heed the warnings of groups like the ACLU, assuming that it was better to follow whatever the government did than to question the possible repercussions of its actions. People ignored all the room for governmental abuse of power. They decided they were willing to give up some liberties in order to ensure our safety, without realizing that in doing so they were implicitly giving consent for the government to access anything and everything we think we’re doing in private. Due to public apathy regarding civil liberties, there was very little pressure for members of Congress to vote against the bills. Now, the government pretty much has free reign to search our homes, vehicles, and persons; listen in on all our phone conversations; and read all our emails – all without our prior knowledge or consent. This present annulment of our civil liberties has not yet proved as tragic as that of the Japanese in the Second World War. However, the mere fact that it could makes it dangerous in the same way as our government’s stance on global warming.

Therefore, the third type of ignorance is blindness to a fact that seems obvious in hindsight. This is the type of ignorance that Creon exhibited when he failed to realize the urgency of Antigone’s situation. A good modern example is the belief we had of our nation’s invulnerability before September 11. Now that we know that using our planes against us is possible, we as a nation have taken precautions to prevent it from happening again. Looking back on it, though, it seems like it should have been obvious that someone could hijack a plane and use it as a weapon of mass destruction. After all, we have always taken precautions against possible hijackings and possible plane crashes. All that remained was to take precautions against the combination of the two. If only we had thought of this a few months ago, thousands of lives, and possibly the thousands or millions more that will be lost by the time this war is over, could have been saved.

Ignorance is only bliss until one suffers the consequences of his or her actions. If ignorant people never acted, then perhaps ignorance would always be blissful. Unfortunately, they are unaware of their own ignorance, so ignorant people are as likely to act as the rest of the world. Any action someone performs without sufficient knowledge of its likely consequences is a dangerous action, even if the tragic possibilities never manifest themselves. Just as a blind man who steps into a busy street is putting himself into a dangerous situation, regardless of whether or not he fails to cross safely; so it is with anyone who acts without considering the possible consequences of that action, regardless of whether or not a tragedy results from the action.

[5] These accounts from Carlos Parada’s Greek Mythology Link, http://hsa.brown.edu/~maicar/Tiresias.html

[9] Background on Oedipus from Greek Mythology Link, http://www.hsa.brown.edu/~maicar/Oedipus.html

[13] Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, I, 22 (emphasis added)