There’s a recurring phenomenon that puzzles me. A smart, well-intentioned person makes an easily avoidable blunder with terrible consequences. Often, no convincing explanation presents itself. Consider, for example, Thomas Andrews, the designer of the RNS Titanic, a ship of brilliant design, but with a simple but fatal flaw. Neither arrogance nor stupidity seems to be the explanation for what went wrong. He simply failed to see a vulnerability that in retrospect is perfectly obvious.
Many years ago a student of mine told me he thought the plot of the Oedipus Tyrannos was implausible and Sophocles inept. : How could Oedipus fail to see that Jocasta was indeed old enough to be his mother and that the altercation where three roads met involved his predecessor as ruler of Thebes? The answer, I believe, is not that Sophocles was inept r Oedipus deliberately portrayed as obtuse or corroded by “overweening pride,” as classicists were once wont to say. Rather, a reasonable well intentioned person was afflicted by blindness, metaphorical at first, all too real at the end.
-- There’s a peculiar quirk inhuman psychology. In certain states of mind we don't see something potentially catastrophic, even though it’s right there, at the tip of the nose, hiding in plain sight’
Which brings us to Prime Minister Truss: ambitious, to be sure, but not stupid, ill-educated, or, as best I can make out, exceptionally arrogant - as politicians go. that “Overweening pride” is not the explanation. Nor is it a useful way to talk abut hybris. Instead it’s the old, recurring metaphorical blindness. Liz Truss could have avoided disaster by making a few phone calls t people who know how markets are likely to react when inflation is strong and the pound weak. She didn’t see the danger she was in, nor the need to make those phone calls. She certainly didn’t waste time thinking about hybris and other Greek entities that might help one avoid disaster. .
Hybris among the early Greeks is part of an Unholy Trinity. First, there is Koros, their closest Greek equivalent to our word “success, but it’s a banqueting term, turned int a personification. He’s the person who’s had enough but thinks one more won’t do any harm,. . Then, enter the second member f the Unholy Trinity, Hybris. She’s personified, too, . You can almosy hear her humming the tune “ … everything’s going my way.” - nd will keep going that way, no matter what -even if I d something without thinking it all through, a little silly, outrageous even , I’ll get away with it. It’s always worked out well in the past, hasn’t it?. Hybris, in other words, is the confidence that success will keep replicating itself.
Then comes Ate (pronounded Ah-tay, not like the past tense of the verb to eat). She’s the third member of the Unholy Trinity and she too knows about banquets and drinking parties. She’s two sided. One side is the mind set of the guest who after one or two drinks too many; is thinking a little fuzzy, a bit muddled, maybe; one might even say some brain fog has settled in. , Out of that fog the other side of Ate emerges, a disastrous decision followed by disastrous results. Ate is both the mind set and what follows from it,. You don’t have to be blind drunk for Ate to do her work.. You can be a teetotaler and get tripped up the same way. Drinking is just a metaphor for the intoxication that comes from success.
Is that what happened to Liz Truss? I leave that to more knowledgeable heads to decide. .But I know a bit about the Unholy Trinity. It hasn’t gone away.
Many years ago a student of mine told me he thought the plot of the Oedipus Tyrannos was implausible and Sophocles inept. : How could Oedipus fail to see that Jocasta was indeed old enough to be his mother and that the altercation where three roads met involved his predecessor as ruler of Thebes? The answer, I believe, is not that Sophocles was inept r Oedipus deliberately portrayed as obtuse or corroded by “overweening pride,” as classicists were once wont to say. Rather, a reasonable well intentioned person was afflicted by blindness, metaphorical at first, all too real at the end.
-- There’s a peculiar quirk inhuman psychology. In certain states of mind we don't see something potentially catastrophic, even though it’s right there, at the tip of the nose, hiding in plain sight’
Which brings us to Prime Minister Truss: ambitious, to be sure, but not stupid, ill-educated, or, as best I can make out, exceptionally arrogant - as politicians go. that “Overweening pride” is not the explanation. Nor is it a useful way to talk abut hybris. Instead it’s the old, recurring metaphorical blindness. Liz Truss could have avoided disaster by making a few phone calls t people who know how markets are likely to react when inflation is strong and the pound weak. She didn’t see the danger she was in, nor the need to make those phone calls. She certainly didn’t waste time thinking about hybris and other Greek entities that might help one avoid disaster. .
Hybris among the early Greeks is part of an Unholy Trinity. First, there is Koros, their closest Greek equivalent to our word “success, but it’s a banqueting term, turned int a personification. He’s the person who’s had enough but thinks one more won’t do any harm,. . Then, enter the second member f the Unholy Trinity, Hybris. She’s personified, too, . You can almosy hear her humming the tune “ … everything’s going my way.” - nd will keep going that way, no matter what -even if I d something without thinking it all through, a little silly, outrageous even , I’ll get away with it. It’s always worked out well in the past, hasn’t it?. Hybris, in other words, is the confidence that success will keep replicating itself.
Then comes Ate (pronounded Ah-tay, not like the past tense of the verb to eat). She’s the third member of the Unholy Trinity and she too knows about banquets and drinking parties. She’s two sided. One side is the mind set of the guest who after one or two drinks too many; is thinking a little fuzzy, a bit muddled, maybe; one might even say some brain fog has settled in. , Out of that fog the other side of Ate emerges, a disastrous decision followed by disastrous results. Ate is both the mind set and what follows from it,. You don’t have to be blind drunk for Ate to do her work.. You can be a teetotaler and get tripped up the same way. Drinking is just a metaphor for the intoxication that comes from success.
Is that what happened to Liz Truss? I leave that to more knowledgeable heads to decide. .But I know a bit about the Unholy Trinity. It hasn’t gone away.