Observations on tragedy in a digital age | Hacker News Reader

Observations on tragedy in a digital age

tedgioia.substack.com

102 pointsjger1547 comments

I was struck by this bit in the passage about hubris: “The STEM student is taught that hubris is a useful vocational skill.” I recently asked a successful senior engineer how he was able to start an influential project, and the answer came down to a combination of hubris (he had to have confidence that his solution, starting from scratch against a well-funded team, would win out) and appetite for risk.

This is literally true in terms of Larry Wall's comment about the three virtues of a great programmer. (Arguably he doesn't really mean it in the classical sense, but he does use the word.)

It makes it less surprising that the social impact of the internet has so curdled in the last decade, doesn’t it?

Qualities which are endearing in individuals or small teams pursuing open source projects are a lot less charming in corporations controlling aspects of one's daily lives. Larry Wall was never a corporate tycoon, nor did he (to my knowledge) aspire to be one. But even back in the day I found the hubris of e.g. Tim O'Reilly far less charming, even though it was hardly on a scale to threaten society.

Beautiful sentence structure.

"I did not know it wouldn't work" is the core of this.

Don't think this attitude is just limited to STEM though as Gioia implies. Humanities majors have plenty of hubris themselves, though it may have a different moral flavor than in the sciences. Similar career incentives though for sure.

I think he is wrong: STEM (especially programming) is excellent at proving the person to have failed.

You cannot create software without experience failure a hundred times a day.

Compare this to humanities like literature: how many times a day is a literature teacher proven to have made a mistake? How much real experience does this person have with failure? How many times have your literature teacher admitted "I made a mistake"?

So the STEM person is likely to be confident because s/he has a lot of experience with failure and know how to handle them, and how much they can delay progress.

For what it’s worth, I’m not saying that confidence (even hubris!) is bad! Without his confidence, said senior engineer probably wouldn’t have built his successful project.

If I had any literary skill, I’d write a tragedy in which the hero’s flaw is his lack of hubris. (Perhaps it would be autobiographical - my grad school advisor said my weakness is that I’m not arrogant enough.)

>I think he is wrong: STEM (especially programming) is excellent at proving the person to have failed.

Yeah, i think the author has mixed STEM as a field with tech-startups business side where hustling attitude is advised and often necessary to be honest.

The lack of self-awareness of the author is rather amusing. He seems to be striving to be a poster boy for the willful ignorance C.P. Snow bemoaned in The Two Cultures.

Gioia's point about the worship of tragic, and sometimes even pathetic figures in modern fiction is right on the mark. He brings up Walter White as one example, but what I immediately had to think of when he talked about Marvel characters was Watchmen, Alan Moore's satire of that culture. What was so striking about the movie version in particular was how many people thought Rorschach was some kind of badass anti-hero, rather than the mentally ill Randian megalomaniac that he intended him to be. People didn't even get it any more, quoting an interview he gave on the topic: (https://www.stevensurman.com/rorschach-from-alan-moores-watc...)

"So, I thought, ‘Alright, if there was a Batman in the real world, he probably would be a bit mental.’ He wouldn’t have time for a girlfriend, friends, a social life, because he’d just be driven by getting revenge against criminals… dressed up as a bat for some reason. He probably wouldn’t be very careful about his personal hygiene. He’d probably smell. He’d probably eat baked beans out of a tin. He probably wouldn’t talk to many people. His voice probably would have become weird with misuse, his phraseology would be strange. “I wanted to kind of make this like, ‘Yeah, this is what Batman would be in the real world.’ But I had forgotten that actually to a lot of comic fans that smelling, not having a girlfriend—these are actually kind of heroic. So actually, sort of, Rorschach became the most popular character in Watchmen. I meant him to be a bad example, but I have people come up to me in the street saying, ‘I am Rorschach! That is my story!’ And I’ll be thinking, ‘Yeah, great, can you just keep away from me and never come anywhere near me again for as long as I live?’”"

when I read this I noticed how much this actually sounds like WW and how unironically celebrated the character was, in contrast to his family in particular online.

I have read these quotes from Alan Moore online, but then, the actual text of the book is different.

Rorschach is clearly portrayed as a hero, despite his issues and his crazy-right views. He is the one that stays to his morals and is martyred in the end.

Maybe Alan did not intend to do that but the book just does that.

There are two ways of looking at hero portrayal: moral uprightness and cultural form. Morally as in did the person do the right thing as per our current mores. Cultural form as in did he person have a similar form as other traditional heroes of our culture. Riding on a white horse, brandishing your national flag, acting as a lonely paragon, and saying bombastic statement are ways of going about this.

Rorschach (and actually a lot of villains) fit the form of a hero. He works alone, is driven by his beliefs and is willing to sacrifice himself for his cause.

The only way to separate him (and other villains) from heroes is by judgment of his actions morally. If you agree with his morals, then he’s a hero. If not, then he’s a villain with good PR.

Joker funny enough has been recently portrayed as almost as an anti hero. In the latest movie, he’s delusional and violent but has a large following because he’s acting “for us”. Even when he kills an innocent TV host, he is portrayed as releasing all the stress we feel at seeing talking heads on TV jeering at people. The movie underlines that Joker is morally wrong, but nihilism is seductive and if you agree with it then Joker is a hero too.

>he’s a villain with good PR

In the context of Watchmen, he isn't the only character who fits the description.

Great article, although I would quibble with the reference to the “tragic flaw”. What is Oedipus’ tragic flaw? That he’s smart and inquisitive? That he won’t rest until he learns the truth? These aren’t flaws but strengths. Aristotle, the originator of the term tragic flaw, fundamentally misread Oedipus: Oedipus is not destroyed by a flaw in his character, but by his very strengths! This is partly what makes humanity’s tragic condition so terrifying: that we fundamentally cannot consistently foresee the consequences of our actions and that the thing that ultimately destroys us could be one of our personal strengths applied well but without perfect foresight.

Oedipus’s flaw was devinely inflicted (his curse/prophecy); attempts to thwart it (exposing him on the mountainside rather than, say, simply running him through with a sword at birth)* guaranteed it would result in the most terrible fashion.

The point was that Oedipus’ fate was sealed despite his “golden boy” greatness, not because of it.

* prophecy being prophecy, had he been killed at birth, that would have brought the kingdom to ruin: the gods’ will is stronger than that or any human.

Correct, in that as the play opens he has already unknowingly done the things that once revealed will destroy him, which were all the workings of the prophecy. However, in the action of the play itself, he still makes a fateful choice of his own to resolve the mystery of Laius’ murder to expiate the religious pollution causing the plague. A less conscientious king or a less able investigator would not experience the dreadful consequence of this choice: learning the truth. But precisely because Oedipus is conscientious and is intelligent, he uncovers the truth which utterly destroys him. It’s not merely that he was doomed before the play begins, but that he affirmatively makes a choice in keeping with his strength of character that reveals that doom.

Oedipus aside, the notion of the "tragic flaw" is deeply, deeply, deeply entrenched in analysis of the tragedy. Quibbling about one instance is a low-leverage activity.

There is a notion that the difference between a strength and a tragic flaw is situational, but I'm not sure how widespread that actually is.

The "tragic flaw" is a more useful frame for analysis of subsequent Western tragedy, which was obviously heavily influenced by Aristotle's Poetics. However, Aristotle's analysis of tragedy in Poetics is almost solely an analysis of Oedipus: if he was wrong about Oedipus, then his argument for the "tragic flaw" doesn't have much else support. Indeed, it's not a very useful analytical tool when applied to ancient Greek literature, as opposed to subsequent Western literature. What is Achilles' tragic flaw? That he was jealous of his honor, a completely admirable and noble thing for a bronze age warrior?

In contrast, Walter White does indeed have a tragic flaw: he is prideful. His ordinary, stable life as a high school chemistry teacher was less than he felt he deserved, and when his cancer diagnosis disrupts that status quo, he is set on a path that ultimately destroys him and everything he cared about. But here we have an instance of tragedy written after literally millenia of Aristotle's mistaken analysis of Oedipus defining expectations for tragedy.

There's plenty else in Poetics that is very useful, and obviously its influence on literary criticism and analysis is profound. But one of its most famous findings is, well, tragically flawed.

Did Aristotle say that Achilles had a tragic flaw? Or even that The Iliad was a tragedy?

I'm not saying he didn't; just asking.

He classifies it as epic poetry, although I don't recall off hand the details of discussion of Achilles, if there even was any. But the Iliad is most certainly a tragedy in its dramatic elements; indeed you simply would not have Athenian tragic drama if Homer and the Iliad were not central to ancient Greek culture. The "Greek Tragic Vision" is Iliadic, and it extends it reach throughout Greek literature, not just the theatrical genre called tragedy: for example, Thucydides' history cannot be fully understood without reference to the tragic vision.

I think you're walking it back a bit there. You say "What is Achilles' tragic flaw?" in a paragraph about Aristotle. So you did say it.

No question about the centrality of The Iliad though.

The point is that Aristotle's views about Oedipus both misread Sophocles' text and fail to generalize across the literary corpus Aristotle was analyzing. Achilles is the quintessential and paradigmatic tragic figure in ancient Greek literature: if Aristotle's insight about tragic character doesn't apply to Achilles, then it certainly makes sense that Aristotle would omit discussing him because such a counterexample so discredits his idea!

>What is Achilles' tragic flaw? That he was jealous of his honor, a completely admirable and noble thing for a bronze age warrior?

Wrath?

Sing, o Muse, of the rage of Achilles.

Achilles' flaw is that he is driven entirely by Thumos, far beyond what is appropriate. The fact that he spends a dozen chapters sulking over the insult of Agamemnon taking away Briseis costs him Patroclus, which is a far greater loss.

The obvious foil is Odysseus, who is calculating to a fault, and even attempts to pull the wool over the eyes of Athena herself.

Often tragic flaws aren't necessarily bad characteristics, it's just that they are exaggerated to a point where they become bad.

> Achilles' flaw is that he is driven entirely by Thumos, far beyond what is appropriate.

I disagree completely. If it was beyond what was appropriate, much of the meaning of the poem simply does not work. There was a story in the tradition that the suitors of Helen, after she was betrothed to Menelaus, all swore an oath to come to the aid of Menelaus if anyone harmed the sanctity of their marriage: this story appears no where in the Iliad. Homer explicitly doesn't mention it, because his characters are at Troy to win honor and glory, actions which in bronze age warrior culture were admirable and noble. For moderns, who are not part of a bronze age warrior culture, it can be difficult to contemplate just how thoroughly Agamemnon humiliates Achilles in front of the entire army in Book I. War prizes were awarded as a measure of esteem in which a warrior was held by his peers: the greater the esteem the greater the prize. Strip a man of his prize, and you strip him of his esteem, his honor, his entire reason for being. If there was no oath by the suitors, which Homer explicitly omits, then not only does Achilles lose his honor, he loses all purpose for being at Troy: he's not bound by an oath so why even fight if the fruits of that fighting will be taken from him in the most humiliating fashion possible? So of course Achilles goes back to his tent and sulks for over a dozen books of the poem. Had Achilles submitted to the humiliation Agamemnon inflicted upon him he would have added cowardice and unmanliness to his dishonor: he would have lost all respect by his peers and the social expectation would have been to commit suicide. So by withdrawing to his tent and sulking, Achilles was doing the appropriate and praise-worthy thing within the context of his (alien to ours) culture. And that choice ultimately destroys him.

Which is not uncommon in tragic flaws. It may often be a fundamentally good trait, just dialed up a notch or two. It's why tragedies have such power, it's not bad things happening to good people, neither is it bad people getting what they had coming; but good (but flawed) people making mistakes and only realizing it too late.

Achilles' blind rage makes him not even consider what might happen if the greatest warrior of the Acheans sits on the sidelines, who among his friends and allies might get killed.

Even Creon in Antigone, while fairly difficult to like, does what he does with fundamentally noble intentions.

The "tragic flaw" is an imprecise translation from the Greek word, which can also mean a "tragic error". Oedipus tragic error is of course that he unknowingly kills his father and marries his mother. It is not a character flaw as such.

No one has anything to say about this?

OK, I'll try: a character from an ancient tragedy with hubris would now be psychologized as "narcissistic." Or something.

Or even just called "very self-confident" as though that's a good thing.

Suppose our "tragic hero" is a Director of Engineering or Marketing, and they decide to become an entrepreneur. They fail spectacularly. A modern audience wouldn't say they were a victim of hubris. Maybe they really were.

On the other hand: Walter White could be one, as Gioia suggests. But Vince Gilligan has actually said that Ikiru was his inspiration (a character who "broke good"), rather than any classical tragedy.

So I don't think it's really that we're in a "digital age," it's just that we have a lot more explanations for things than the classicists did.

>So I don't think it's really that we're in a "digital age," it's just that we have a lot more explanations for things than the classicists did.

s/explanations/rationalizations

I wouldn't argue with that. Maybe "hubris" really is a better explanation than all the pop psychology.

maybe the millenia old concept that's been culturally relevant enough to stay in our lexicon all that time is a better explanation than pop psychology, yeah.

for all the miracles of modern social science and statistics, the ancients' theories have a critical advantage over ours. they've had time for their hypotheses to be borne out.

The criteria for what makes a tragedy have shifted quite a bit over time. In ancient Greece, Aristotle wrote that in order to have the desired cathartic impact on the audience, a tragic figure should be a king or other elite figure afflicted by a wrathful or vengeful god. Shakespearean tragedies still feature nobles, but the basis of the tragedy is human conflict (between individuals, as well as psychologically within a single individual), not divine. Many modern tragic figures (e.g., Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman) are ordinary people, beaten down by everyday problems. The Walter White story arc is interesting because he starts at the bottom and works his way up, becoming tragic by virtue of his "success." As many have noted, tragic figures like Heisenberg and Rorshach seem to attract a lot of misplaced enthusiasm, but this isn't a new phenomenon - Hamlet, Faust and the Lucifer of Paradise Lost have always had many admirers despite their tragic nature. Maybe the next phase in tragic nareative structure will entail stories that are intended by their authors to serve as a warning, but which tragically get reinterpreted by audiences as celebrating the character flaws they were written to caution about.

Flawed characters are simpler more interesting to read about than people who aren't flawed. Stories of the lives of saints tend to be didactic and boring; those of flawed sinners are much more interesting and varied. See also the Mary/Marty Sue problem.

Put another way: many people read Dante's Inferno, few are interested in the Paradiso.

> The leading digital age entertainments are almost immune to tragedy.

A prominent category of "digital age entertainment" that appeared recently is true crime documentaries. Those inevitably deal with tragedy: how the murderer is responsible for their own demise, how the victim didn't stand a chance, how, sometimes, the world isn't fair and the justice system fails all of us.

The author seems to take confidence as being hubris even though he quotes the definition as 'excessive self-confidence and pride'. They are not the same thing but he writes as if they are. Just because you have the confidence to start a business does not mean you are hubristic, this is a weird piece, probably because it is downright sloppy.

Ah, the link at the top gets you

"The Honest Broker / trustworthy guide to music, books, arts, and culture"

Sounds like... what's the word I'm looking for?

Tragic figures may be lacking in contemporary fiction, but there's no shortage of them in contemporary real life. Michael Jackson. Julian Assange. Donald Trump. Richard Stallman. Diego Maradona. All exceptional people whose undoing was of their own accord.

We may be failing to confront tragedy as a society, but tragedy is part of the human condition, there can be no escaping it.

Edward Snowden.

Isn’t it that a great achievement can only be followed by mundane life management?

The tragic narrative, like a lot of things, was fatally poisoned by World War 2. Amidst the countless tragic stories there, the most classically ‘tragic’ figure was Hitler.

Hitler was certainly undone by his flaws. I'm not sure most dramaturges would say he was a tragic figure, though. More of a pure evil one. There was never anything hopeful about him.

Reading biographies of him and his table talk, Hitler's a very bent character but not without small virtues and a (very bent) love of virtue. Vegetarian, non-smoker, brave and unselfish in war and crazy for the arts (without especially good taste.) His life course could have gone differently but his profound lack of empathy didn't make a good outcome likely.

He was a detail-man, and arguably on the spectrum. Had he set his sights on being an engineer, like my rather vicious but not unuseful father; he'd probably have been a very ordinary engineer who's kids kinda hated him rather than a paragon of evil.

There are a lot of taxpayers around with similar potential - for mediority or viciousness.

Plus, he was the expression of much German opinion that wanted revenge for WWI, not a one-off.

WWII, consistent with what you're saying, I think, also gave rise to noir fiction and movies, in which it's all flaws all the time.

The modern tragic figures cited in the article are in this vein, few if any redeeming qualities.

You know, the world has been quiet and pleasant for so long that people are happy to watch horrors on TV. I doubt Game of Thrones would have been very popular in 1949.

Hubris has become the ante. As community breaks down, maybe that's inevitable in a mass society.

Seems like for tragedy you need both sympathy for the protagonist and a feeling that the punishment is deserved or at least an inevitable consequence. In modern times, how often are there such mixed feelings about the people being punished? There's often a story arc where a celebrity is discovered to have committed an appalling crime, but then they're not a hero anymore, they're a villain.

The matching exercise is beautiful. I would match Elon Musk to Doctor Faustus; the fires he wants to ride on his way to heaven would definitely be considered a manifestation of hell by the ancients.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com