So last week I told a wildly slanted version of the story of Oedipus, the man who had a complex named for him long before we started naming complexes for banks and telecomms.
As you’ve guessed if you’ve read my blistering attack on the tale of the man who killed his father and married his mother, I don’t go looking for reasons to talk about Oedipus. I try not to think about him, because, “Eew.” But I recently read a book called The Wisdom of the Myths by a philosopher named Luc Ferry. Mr. Ferry’s goal was nothing less than to bring us better living through mythology. He dug into the philosophical underpinnings of the stories that, to the rest of us, are fodder for Disney movies and Ray Harryhausen films; and he came up with some advice for living.
His main point was that the ancient Greeks accepted man’s mortality in a way no cultures did. They didn’t really believe in an afterlife. People just died. Oh, yeah, their shades (ghosts) went to the Underworld, ruled by Hades. But as soon as Charon the ferryman rowed them across the River Styx, they drank from the River Lethe and they forgot who they were. And then they just sort of… milled about down there. Like the opening chapter of The Wizard of Oz, everything was just gray. (I in no way mean to imply that Kansas is Hell. Superman comes from Kansas, and I refuse to insult Superman.)
A few special souls got to live in the Elysian Fields. Sort of the upper floors of Hades, where you have to have a room key to make the elevators go there. Presumably these souls remember their lives, and thus achieve immortality. But they are special. The world of the Greek myths was elitist above all. There were also other special souls who remembered very well who they were: Sisyphus, Tantalus, Ixion… The people–kings all–who pissed off the gods and were tortured for eternity.
Oh, and one or two mortals got made into gods. And a few got plastered into the heavens as constellations. The stories never weighed in on whether, as constellations, they were self-aware and had memories. I sense not.
Mostly, though, the ancient Greeks believed you got one life, you died, and that was that. No mystical path to immortality. Mr. Ferry finds in this advice for us all: stop trying to bribe the gods into letting you have more life. Accept that one life is what you get, and make the most of it.
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