Wrestling With Oresteia
T.J. Seitz
Copyright 2012 by T.J. Seitz
Smashwords Edition
I sometimes wonder if we are all bound to endure the same ancestral execrations as our parents and grandparents. A section in the novel Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami mentions how a person’s Karma or Fate is connected to their past lives; initiating the question, “Can family curses follow individual souls, their families and/or both?”
A portion of everyone’s destiny is hardcoded into their chromosomes. It seems to me that every generation is challenged with a predetermined series of encounters or prophesies that serve as familial rites of passage.
We are all born with one half of both our parents’ genes, then raised under comparable attitudes and socio-cultural conditions. We can’t escape looking, acting and even thinking like our parents at times because all of those qualities and faults are programmed into our DNA then conditioned by the households we grow up in.
Why else would grandparents accidently mistake their grandchildren for their own kids or other blood relations at times? It’s probably because they easily recognize inherited mannerisms and that we are more like our relatives than we consciously realize.
Social classification and hierarchies are universal practices that have existed since humans started living together. They offer meaning, answers to complex questions, provide stability and direction for both groups and individuals.
Horatio Alger rags to riches lottery winner fantasies almost never happen in reality. Economically and socially speaking, family structure remains relatively consistent for most of its members because of established social class and caste systems. Every household has its up and down periods but for the most part those times aren’t longstanding, nor do they usually bring about radical change in wealth or status.
The indigent fulfill their destinies in trailer parks, tenant buildings, waiting in lines at Social Services or a locked jail cell. The rich drive BMWs, attend Harvard, Oxford or Yale, vacation on their yahts in the French Riviera and fly to board meetings in corporate helicopters. While the petite bourgeoisies get jobs in middle management, mortgages, married, divorced, married again, send their kids to college and retire when they turn sixty five.
Each of these collective landscapes, their boundaries and associated rules of conduct or rituals are recognized and enforced by family forebears. People usually inherit a role within their community and that function contains all the opportunities, responsibilities and obstacles they will be expected to manage accordingly throughout their lifetime.
Most individuals live and die within the established limitations of their birthplace, both physically and conceptually. Despite all the historical advancements in technology, transportation and communications, the majority of the world’s societies are still agricultural or sustenance based meaning very few people ever live or travel regularly beyond twenty five miles of their childhood homes throughout their entire lives, even in developed countries.
People generally find comfort in conformity and chose to follow in the footsteps of their predecessors even when it’s not necessary or in their best interest. Whether we like it or not our souls are strongly connected to our families and the places we were raised. It’s very difficult for people to shed their strong associations toward the world that they and their ancestors grew up in.
Tangible memories of a community’s distant past don’t go beyond its oldest living person. When no one remembers or practices something it loses meaning. After several generations of living and thinking the same way a lot of collective memory is forgotten thus creating an illusion that the present is the way life has always been. Other behaviors and beliefs are then construed as alien and unfamiliar, making members of a group suspicious of outsiders or change.
Humans are also naturally inclined towards biases, discrimination and stereotypes. Explaining why sweeping ideals such as nationalism are so easily embraced and dangerous because they will take precedence over common sense, even within the most progressive of societies.
Circumstances make it very difficult to empathize with others, especially when trying to comprehend the lives of people from different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. The contexts are often too varied to breech the differences and connect through simple analogies. An Inuit describing their homeland to a tribe of Arabian Bedouins would be considered insane by the desert people because the concepts of snow and ice do not exist in their reality.
Insignificant similarities are quickly disregarded by most people because without a well sanctioned association to establish a comfortable foundation from it’s much easier to differentiate between an ‘us’ and ‘them,’ labeling anyone not part of an established population or family as a foreigner, stranger or enemy.
The concept of Fate is sometimes used to by a society to keep members from straying too far from traditional practices. It can justify the reasoning behind their existence in a way that can be easily be understood.
The instinct to survive is closely tied to identity. Change and differences are frequently interpreted by many groups and individuals as an unwanted challenge. When it comes to survival, a sort of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality is perpetuated by humans. Suggesting or implying that there are other legitimate ways to live and existence goes beyond the confines of an established, known world is often viewed as risky, heresy or repression. It’s easier and more efficient to keep continue behaving the same way rather than change.
Everyone is obligated to make pivotal choices at various stages of life with the same tool belt of limitations and bias’ as their ancestors. It’s all part of a timeless celestial joke.
Aristotle said that it’s a person’s strengths and virtues that lead them to their downfall, not their weaknesses. We naively assume that we can learn from our elder’s mistakes and limitations, forgetting that history often repeats itself, even when the errors made by others are well known. There is also a big difference between knowing something and understanding it. People can inadvertently set themselves up for trouble when they refuse to recognize their legacies. Instead of finding balance between their unique individual and genealogical tendencies the chose to rebel.
Those who attempt to conquer their inherited curses are often forced to make difficult decisions, become ostracized and risk suffering unpleasant conditions for their presumptuousness. After bravely or naively playing with fire and getting burned a few times though most stumble towards an ideal of maturity, acquiring a better appreciation of difficult concepts like wisdom and humility.
Blessings can have a similar effect, only from a different angle. Overconfidence causes a person to take their gifts for granted and forget just how lucky they may be compared to others.
Because of this angst derived blindness many individuals will repeatedly find themselves in identical or comparable life situations. Coerced by their arrogance and the proverbial patterns they follow, teenagers and young adults tend to irreverently think that they are superior and more knowledgeable than their parents. Assuming their decisions and choices are far better, not believing that their elders felt those exact same sentiments then reluctantly reliving many of the same less than flattering experiences their parents endured like divorce, employment issues and legal problems.
Generations of children have been lead by their lives to Stockton’s Arena just as their parents where, while under the influence of an identical frame of mind. Young people just assume the trail is different because many of the trees and bushes along the way have grown larger or died, not noticing that the sign posts and direction of the trodden path is unchanged. They are oblivious and don’t understand that the endpoint will not be any different for them than it was for hundreds if not thousands of people before them; becoming even more perplexed when they’re expected to open a door and cope with the familiar consequences.
Maybe Fate is not the supernatural spell we’ve been fooled by our culture, religion and upbringing into believing is imposed by gods or enemies but is really a trait that comes from within us, a primordial characteristic, like nearsightedness and allergies, woven surreptitiously by Mother Nature into a person’s genes. A recessive characteristic, that’s triggered by an individual’s feelings, choices and actions not imposed by outside influences. Projecting its-self outward, subconsciously driving people to set them-selves up for future endeavors.
Is it such a bad thing to yield to Destiny and be like our parents? Maybe that is how generational perpetuation is stopped. Fulfilling Fate instead of fighting it may cause it to disperse completely or significantly lighten its negative effects.
There are those who would justify the idea of surrender. Simply succumbing and dutifully passing the Gordian knot down to their children to deal with, just as their predecessors did, rather than wasting a lot of time and energy jousting with uncertainty. Deliberately or inadvertently continuing the Atreidaen Cycle, rather than facing their fears or challenging them-selves. Generational poverty, abuse and addiction are often the results of this mindset.
On the other hand stigmatized behaviors like divorce, having children out of wedlock and dropping out of school are socially constructed and culturally subjective. Oftentimes once a person surmounts the initial embarrassment of what other people might think of them and their choices, the overall experience can actually become more positive, allowing a person to become more enlightened or fully realized.
Is kismet a means for measuring a person’s overall character, serving some Devine purpose? A mythological struggle whose magnitude is gauged by the number of people a person takes down with themselves while commanding their personal and familial battles. Or is it a mystical force that guides and shapes a person, assisting them in finding their true selves and proper place in the world. I suppose too that people might invest far too much meaning in Providence and regardless of their origins these challenges may only be about making life more interesting and nothing more.