Early civilizations must have watched with wonder the change of seasons, erratic weather patterns, and churning skies filled with constellations. Just as enigmatic, the seas encompassed the horizon and threatened to engulf terra firma. Modern emphasis on logic, empiricism and practical applications are rooted in the same quest for orderliness and rational understanding that impels less quantifiable fields of study like psychology, history, philosophy, or sociology. The scrutiny of the our ancestors increased our collective understanding of physical, natural, and mathematical sciences. From our neoteric perch it is difficult to recapture the mentality of an earlier era, in which man seemed at the mercy of his surroundings. Meteorology gives man an opportunity to anticipate and prepare for approaching weather systems, just as seismology and vulcanology ameliorate fear of the terrifying Titans of the nether world. With the aid of innovative technological advances man cannot control the forces of nature, but he can, at least, in part, anticipate and build bulwarks against them. This response to a very basic human impulse — the will to know the environment and control its destructive by-products; the will to understand and control inner space is just as compelling. After all, rage, prejudice, murder, greed, and war are not just plot motivations within The Iliad: the lust for power has been as disruptive to human progress as any shift in the earth’s crust. The mystery and finality of death fascinated and confounded then, just as it does now, more emphatically though, because death was always at hand. The search for immortality was all the more urgent and compelling. To the ancients, religion took the place of science. It is no surprise that generation after generation, rooted within the human psyche, the beguiling promise of everlasting life itself lives on.
The Greeks were the first to the see human mind and will as more determinative of the good society than other factors, including piety. Myths eventually became more palatable tales with psychological, social or philosophical implications. Socrates, Aristotle and Plato used myths to illustrate points about human nature and society, not as religious texts. One gets the feeling the philosophers are distinctly agnostic. This movement away from religious zealotry liberates human achievement. The invention of social sciences and philosophy offered some hope of understanding and altering the nature of man and society, steering humanity toward a utopian ideal quite out of keeping with natural instincts. According to Erich Fromm, an American social psychologist, “Humans have a need for a stable frame of reference.” Religion apparently fills this need. Humans crave answers to questions that no other source of knowledge can supply; only religion seems to hold this promise, for in spite of scientific advances, death remains an incorrigible enemy. It opens a gaping void which only imagination and faith can transcend. Fromm continues, “a sense of free will must be given in order for religion to appear healthy.” (Psychoanalysis and Religion, New Haven, Yale University, 1950) Currently we take refuge in some vague idea of ultimate goodness and purpose by espousing religious beliefs. This delusion by choice, provides meaning and makes sense of the world, as well as reduces the sting of death. We think we are the masters of our fate and become upset and self-destructive when we discover otherwise. Doesn’t that come from expectations rooted in humanism?
Judged by these beliefs the Iliad’s premise that Achilles has multiple fates is unreasonable to me. There is only one fate as a consequence of mortality and that is death. While fate and destiny are used interchangeably in our English lexicon, and thus appear synonymous in this translation of the Iliad, they are two distinct concepts. Fate implies an absence of choice in the circumstances or conditions of one’s life and is linked to death. Fate is an outcome determined by an outside agency acting upon a person or entity. . To rail against fate is an excersize in futility, a thought echoed in “Blasphemous Rumours” by Depeche Mode. Even the gods were constrained by fate. The goddess of the dawn, Eos, tried to give her mortal lover eternal life, but forgot to ask for eternal youth. Tithonos ended by turning into a wizened grasshopper, which suggests that immortality is not the natural state of mankind and must be accepted. Even gods can’t change this. Destiny, on the other hand, relates to specific actions or events that one must complete while alive. The destined individual is the chief actor in a scenario targeted to a particular end. This scenario is something unique and specific to himself. Furthermore, he is central to the drama. He must act willfully to achieve his destiny. In our modern culture, fate often makes its force felt in random senseless events, such as the assassination of John F. Kennedy or terrorist attacks like those of 9/11. The creation of heroes and monsters is perpetual.
On a smaller scale glitches in the mental apparatus that would lead a young girl to attempt suicide, militate against the idea of the divine. (After all, the girl in the song conforms to “God’s plan” for her life, and is still killed in an accident.) There is no rhyme or sense. As if to intimate that God is dead and people aren’t smart enough to realize it. Fatalism to the extreme, furthermore, the song implies that modern life is bereft of meaning. People despair because they don’t see that they are having any impact or could have any as individuals. This is because there is no room for the heroic. Education focuses on making people good cogs in the machine. Only organizations have influence and serve interests that are detached from daily life. These are quite opposite of humanist perspective. Individuals who want to succeed and attain power have to pander to the lowest common denominator. They must not step outside the lines of acceptability, so by definition they cannot be heroic. Even art is driven by economics these days. No one is willing to starve for his ideals. Money and possessions have corrupted all.
A similar tension existed in the lives of the ancient Greeks. They kept fighting the gods, and fighting the Fates, continually losing, but they didn’t surrender. They believed defiance was worthwhile. They didn’t give in to meaninglessness. They wanted to leave a legacy behind: immortality as individual glory. Death is ultimately coming and to the ancient Greeks the great beyond was an insipid, wispy afterlife in the underworld, only the frailest shadow of mortal life. So it is best that man should take advantage of the passions of life above ground while they are available. Enjoy them and use them to make a name for ones self that will live on. Even if punishment comes, by all means leave a legacy to mankind. The story of Prometheus illustrates this. He stole fire for mankind, became mankind’s benefactors and yet ended by being chained to a mountain and having his liver gouged out daily and eaten in front of his eyes by Zeus’ eagle. But wasn’t it worth it? He gave infinite comfort to mankind and lives forever in human legend. He was later set free by Hercules’ intervention—Hercules, the ultimate blasphemer who defied several gods and became a demi-god himself.
Today, humanity is facing the temptation to give into powerlessness. And yet, we hold to the Greek notion that we can improve life by our individual actions. All scientific discoveries, all courageous political acts, all revolutions in ethical and theological understanding, all artistic movements are built on confidence that individual actions matter and that man makes his own fate. Human progress is built on this notion. Today, as a complex, materially based culture, man has to give up something to make a stand and change course. We may have to give up some of our material comfort to preserve a livable natural environment. We may have to commit political martyrdom to change public policy for the benefit of the whole society. Those who have more may have to give up a bit of what they have so that the have-nots can attain a decent standard of living. One may have to live on the fringes of society in order to project the message it needs to hear. Defiance of fate often equates to defiance of social convention—it means crossing the line of the taboo with a purpose in mind (not just to shock or titillate) and bringing something meaningful back to one’s fellows at considerable cost. Socrates paid such a price--he was forced to drink hemlock; because he was perceived as corrupting Athens’ youth and being impious toward the gods. Having become so self-involved, we’ve lost a sense of society as a whole or the role the hero serves to re-form and reinvigorate it by transgressing convention. For American’s, patriotism equates to lock-step conformity, when it actually has more to do with courage and being faithful to conscience and vision. How, for instance, does the girl in the song respond to her brush with death? She becomes a religious conformist. What does she add to the condition of the world because of that? Potentially, a great deal, if only she could take that faith and do something practical to shake up the status quo based on ethical principles; but this is not typically how it runs and it is not what the lyrics imply. For too many people, religion is a vehicle that reinforces conformity and curses iconoclasm. It is merely a candied kind of fatalism, not so far removed from despair, postponing reformation to the afterlife, or turns the individual totally within himself or within his community. That is certainly not how it began. Jesus threatened the powers that stood by envisioning a Kingdom (beginning today, in this place) so different from the status quo. If he had been a harmless, otherworldly sort, they would not have executed him.
I question whether Greek heroism as depicted in the Iliad leads to social change. Surely, many of the warriors seem to see the pointlessness of the war, but are powerless to stop it. They try to live up to conventions of manliness and martial prowess, knowing that death may well await them. The greatest of them, Achilles, loses his dearest friend to the war and responds by committing a senseless act of physical desecration to Hector’s body—certainly an unconventional thing to do, but a self-absorbed one. The mercy he shows Priam in the end is probably more heroic than anything else he accomplishes. Perhaps the Iliad is fatalistic, but it does counsel readers to make the best of the situation in which we are enmeshed. If you are going to go down, go down with a bang that will resound through the ages. But I would say that the aspiration to defy the gods and the fates, in spite of the inevitable consequences, is an impulse that led to the great achievements of Greek civilization following Homer and inspired the very ethos of unlimited progress that is an essential component of Western thought. It is the very definition of the humanist impulse. The temptation to quietly acquiesce to one’s fate, then and now, means the breaking of the human spirit and the undoing of civilization.
