Seneca, Oedipus
Oedipus: No soft breeze with its cool breath relieves our breasts that pant with heat, no gentle Zephyrs blow; but Titan augments the scorching dog-stars’s fires, close-pressing upon the Nemean Lion’s back. Water has fled the streams, and from the herbage verdure. Dirce is dry, scant flows Ismenus’ stream, and with its meagre wave scarce wets the naked sands. With paling light glides Phoebus’ sister athwart the sky, and the gloomy heavens are wan in the lowering day. No star in clear nights glitters, but a heavy, black fog broods o’er the lands. The citadels of the heavenly gods and their homes on high are veiled in hellish aspect. The ripened corn withholds its fruitful harvest, and though the golden crop waves high its wheaten ears, the grain dies shrivelled on its parched stalk. No class is free from death; but every age and sex is smitten alike. Young men with old, fathers with sons, are joined by the deadly plague; husband and wife by a single fire are burned, and funerals lack bitter tears and lamentations. Nay, the persistent bane of our so great a woe hath of itself dried our eyes and, as oft in utmost misery, our tears have perished. Here to the final flames a stricken father bears his son; there a crazed mother carries her child and hastens back to bring another to the selfsame pyre. Nay more, in their very grief new grief arises and mist funeral rites their own rites befall. Anon, with others’ fires they burn the bodies of their own; yes, fire is stolen, for the wretched have no shame. No separate mounds cover the hallowed bones. Mere burning is enough; how small a part is turned to ashes! No ground is left for tombs; nor woods refuse more pyres. Neither prayers nor any skill avails the stricken. Healers fall victims; the disease drags down those who seek to aid.
(Translation: Frank Miller; https://www.theoi.com/Text/SenecaOedipus.html)
Oedipus is miasma incarnate, a sort of embodied receptacle of pollution, guilt, and immorality, whose very existence brings to realization a plague that devours the entire community of Thebes.
No matter of social control or bio-medical protocol can stop the contagion of Oedipal pestilence and death. Even a quarantined Oedipus spreads the disease. He is a walking, talking Wuhan Institute of Virology.
Masks, social distancing, vaccines, test and trace, vaccine passports, lockdowns, curfews, “two weeks to slow the spread,” fear, hysteria, discrimination, medical apartheid…when it comes to the festering blight of Oedipal noxiousness nothing is able to stop or mollify his devastating pestilence.
In Seneca’s Oedipus (let alone in Sophocles’) the plague signifies that society itself is afflicted by a culture of metaphorical contagion.
Patricide, incest, suicide, mental health crises, and self-harm reflect social, domestic, and cultural cancer and contamination. The community is infected with a disease far worse than physical plague.
Social Order gives way to Social Chaos.
The intertwining and admixture of bodies of family members on pyres emblematizes the intertwining and mixture of bodies in Oedipus’s family, in which mothers become wives, sons become husbands, daughters become sisters, and sons become brothers. And with the admixture of bodies comes fear, hysteria, anxiety, self harm and suicide. The family collapses into an orgy of social miasma.
Social Chaos is the New Normal.
“New Normal” was employed early on in the pandemic by various media outlets, which then saturated people’s social media accounts and entered into their consciousness. They started to use “New Normal” in conversations with their friends, family and colleagues. One must not fight the New Normal. It can only be embraced and accepted. It has become a fact.
The overt representations of the NN are ever-present: ubiquity of masks and wild eyes’ peering out from above them, vaccine passports (Gesundheitpass), medicalization of public spaces, discrimination—marginalization—apartheid, narrative repetition (vaccines, surge, stop the spread, lockdown, reopen, vaccines, surge, stop the spread, lockdown, reopen…), mass compliance, orthodoxy, the burgeoning pharmaceutical state, media complicity, and an increasing number of jabs. One jab, two jabs, three jabs, four jabs….
We are Thebes or the acceptance of dystopia with a smile.
As the plague (which was accompanied by a global, yearly population increase of 81,000,000 people) raged over the globe, the dark shadow of the NN continually grew and elongated behind the overt image of the COVID State.
We are all Oedipal now.
The great tragedy of Oedipus is the problem of self-perceived wisdom and intelligence, concomitant with one’s inability to assess accurately the limitations of one’s knowledge or understanding of the nature of things in their totality. We are always blind even when we pretend to see.
While Oedipus can solve the riddle of the Sphinx ("A thing there is whose voice is one;/ Whose feet are four and two and three./ So mutable a thing is none/ That moves in earth or sky or sea./ When on most feet this thing doth go,/Its strength is weakest and its pace most slow." [Athenaeus, Deipnosophists: 10.83]), he cannot solve the riddle of himself as the true cause of the plague.
There is a simple question you must ask yourself, and your response means everything.
Is it in your capacity to entertain the idea that you are wrong, that you have been wrong and that your compliance with the narrative is simply a mistaken act of self-inflicted ignorance?
I am wholly prepared to admit that I could be or have been wrong. I am fully prepared to accept that the 11 caveats listed below were simply the musings of a misinformed madman. Can you say the same?
This is the great tragedy of the New Normal: perfectly intelligent people have embraced a new social reality—the outcomes of which are culturally cataclysmic and toxic—and these people have no sense that perhaps everything they have come to believe or understand is, simply put, wrong.
The myth of Oedipus is a sign that during periods of contagion cascading institutional failure is to be expected, and that a society that is already beset by social ills will see those ills augmented during these periods of contagion. The most catastrophic institution which could fail in society is the system of stability within the domestic sphere. If this system fails, the detriment to social cohesion is cataclysmic.
Let us look behind the overt symbols of the New Normal—the masks and vaccine passports and medical apartheid—and shine a light on its darker implications. Let us look at how we have normalized Thebes.
*COVID LOCKDOWN POLICY-INCEST-RAPE-SEXUAL VIOLENCE
or
The Jocasta Effect
The COVID Lockdown Policy (part of the NN) resulted in skyrocketing numbers of rape, sexual violence, and incest across the globe. Not only did the lockdowns result in placing victims in close contact with their predators, but they also resulted in atomizing social programs and institutions that were established to mitigate sexual violence.
Peer into the shadows. Your embrace and promotion of lockdown policy is complicit in incest, rape and sexual violence.
Peer into the New Normal. Take a few minutes and read these studies and stories. None of the horrors discussed below ought to be understood as acceptable outcomes of the COVID policy. They are outcomes which INDICT the COVID policy. The crimes and horrors of Incest, Rape, and Sexual Violence are STATE sponsored.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8426986/
https://www.albawaba.com/opinion/double-plague-sexual-violence-age-lockdowns-1406275
https://fee.org/articles/domestic-violence-more-than-doubled-under-lockdowns-new-study-finds/
*COVID LOCKDOWN POLICY-SUICIDE-SELF HARM
or
Jocasta’s Suicide and Oedipus’ Blinding
The data is emphatic and clear. COVID policy increased rates of mental health crises. In addition to the advent of a new disease, the outcomes of which are age and comorbid stratified, the media created an environment of equitable fear and hysteria. Babies are at risk. Children are at risk. Teenagers are at risk. Everyone is at risk. Everyone must be afraid. You are all going to die. There is no other option than death. The damage was done. The mind was infected with the irrational and the fictional. COVID policy was then overlaid upon the psychological damage catalyzed by the STATE. The Policy increased anxiety, depression, and suicidality. While it was initially thought that rates of suicide would be catastrophic, this turned out to be an unfounded fear. What did increase were thoughts of suicidality and attempts at suicide. Self Harm (broadly conceived: over-eating, alcohol and drug abuse, consumption of social media, lack of exercise or self care) became normalized. The outcomes of the COVID policy on mental health will be generational. By every rubric of analysis the STATE instantiated the normative conditions of abuse on its populations. Every parent has recognized the harm done to their children by COVID policy. Many parents actively participated in that harm by unapologetically accepting as valid the COVID policy. If you are under 40, you are more likely to have died from suicide during COVID than from COVID itself, especially if you have zero comorbidities.
Peer into the shadows. Your embrace and promotion of lockdown policy is complicit in depression, self harm, and suicidality.
Peer into the New Normal. Take a few minutes and read these studies and stories. None of the horrors discussed below ought to be understood as acceptable outcomes of the COVID policy. They are outcomes which INDICT the COVID policy. .
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8110323/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32539153/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32487275/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32370984/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7519695/
https://www.aier.org/article/more-covid-suicides-than-covid-deaths-in-kids/
https://www.psycom.net/covid-19-suicide-rates
*COVID LOCKDOWN POLICY and the BREAKDOWN of the FAMILY
or
Democratizing the House of Laius
The COVID lockdown policy had a catastrophic impact on the family. After a period of an intense rise of divorce across the globe, there was then a decline in divorce as COVID policies extended into a second year. This decline was not due to the COVID policy suddenly becoming conducive to healthy and loving relationships. Instead, the extreme financial pressures imposed by lockdowns and the annihilation of communal society resulted in couples deciding to delay divorce and separation. The outcomes of COVID policy on families are and will be profoundly destructive. An entire generation of children will suffer through the wide array of negative outcomes which are concomitant in growing up in single family households and broken homes.
Peer into the shadows. Your embrace and promotion of lockdown policy is complicit in the breakdown of the family.
Peer into the New Normal. Take a few moments and read these studies and stories. None of the horrors discussed below ought to be understood as acceptable outcomes of the COVID policy. They are outcomes which INDICT the COVID policy.
https://www.natlawreview.com/article/divorce-rates-and-covid-19
https://vancouverisland.ctvnews.ca/divorce-rates-up-30-due-to-covid-19-pandemic-b-c-group-1.5273859
https://www.romania-insider.com/divorce-rates-during-covid-europe-press-release
The New Normal simply has augmented and increased the latent evils and horrors of society. Thebes lurks beneath and behind every social system. It is a failure of policy to enact measures, which unintentionally promote and increase evils such as rape, incest, sexual violence, depression, suicide, self harm, mental distress, and domestic atomization.
By every measure COVID policy was an assault on the family and the domestic sphere.
This was not unforeseen. It was obvious. But the New Normal required its omission.
The New Normal required debates over masks, vaccine passports, and medical apartheid.
The New Normal required the implementation of the “Culture War,” which could drive the narrative of the policy makers.
But in the dark shadows of the New Normal—where no narrative is allowed to enter, where our media betters and governmental officials turn a blind eye—there is a veritable House of Horrors.
Oedipus’ Thebes has nothing on our current state. As History unfolds—and the separation between the present moment and the objective gaze of researchers allows for honest analysis of data and policy—there will be no doubt that the New Normal resulted in communal complicity of some of the worst forms of social and domestic violence.
There is no virtue in embracing the overt symbols of the New Normal, and there is certainly moral and ethical hazard in ignoring the dark aftermath of COVID policy.
COVID is the new Sphinx. There is no easy solution. There is no easy answer.
Even Oedipus recognized eventually that everything he thought he knew was wrong. He was not a little wrong. He was cataclysmically wrong.
You may feel safe with your three shots, your double mask, your lockdown, your work from home, your zoom meeting, your vaccine passport.
But your feeling of safety is a lie. You were never safe. And you are far less safe now than you ever have been in the past.
You were always in danger of diseases and death. This is the zero-grade reality of life. Now you are in danger of the New Normal. You are in danger of the overt outcomes of it, and the dark horror lurking behind it—that dystopian pall—it has enveloped you already and, like Oedipus, you simply will not see it until it is too late.
So smile.
There is nothing to see.
Everything is normal.
Everything is good.
Everything makes total and complete sense.
Everything is always as it should have been.
There is no dystopia.
So smile.