Against the Robots

Part 3: Destiny

Man descends from the tree. Man, like the tree, is defined as much by his roots as by his fruit. Man, like the tree, depends on external and internal elements to reach maturity. Man resembles that trunk sculpted by hardship, leaning on its roots and bearing fruit, more or less beautiful, more or less good… The similarities between the plant world and man are endless. From the water that nourishes the roots to the sun that waters the fruit, to the oxygen exuded by the leaves, all this life that rushes in and circulates reminds us irrevocably of the human condition. The tree is a metaphor for the family. From the seedling to the fruit and leaves, a metaphor for the history of man and family unfolds. What malevolent fairies presided over the birth of the Labdacid family from which Antigone descends? Any self-respecting person today would see this as a calamity and a pathological explanation for Antigone's decisions. How does this little Antigone become this heroic figure, born on a tree trunk so full of stigmata and bruises? Fate relentlessly and obtusely blows and guides this family, and suddenly, Antigone breaks free from this yoke, frees her entire family from this yoke, she undoes the straitjacket, and finally dismisses fate. What a marvel! From afar, clinging to their branch, two leaves always seem identical, yet one only needs to get closer to see how different they are.

What is the purpose of family? To create Antigones. Without family, there is no Antigone. If one had to find a reason for Sophocles' tragedy, it would be to illuminate origins. To understand, origins are paramount, but here, there's no need to examine Antigone's family history to dream of never encountering such a breed. One almost has to convince oneself that, as she develops as an individual, Antigone becomes Antigone without ever disowning her family for its faults or its ugliness; quite the contrary, she draws the strength for her individuation from her family ties. Contrary to what is often said or believed, it is not enough to proclaim, "Family, I hate you!" to become someone. This little Antigone could very well have thrown the burden of her family overboard. What a nuisance that origin was! Feigning an accident regarding its origin, hiding behind a false identity, accepting cowardice as an escape from ridicule… All this slander, all this story about identity, looks so much like a struggle of egos; envy as panache. To deny one's origins, it's possible to feign that the existence of past events is unproven, or better yet, that it was an accident—an accident amplified by gossip. This is where downplaying often proves an effective subterfuge, because it doesn't require denial and revels in relying on a degree of honesty. But while this deception allows one to break free from a lineage, to regain some strength to confront the ghosts of one's origins that one wants to hide from the public under a veil of ignorance, it only deceives the external world, the people around us; it offers no escape within, during an encounter with oneself. It often represents the cornerstone of a fear of intimacy. Because intimacy reveals. Because unacknowledged fear numbs and compartmentalizes a fear of oneself while simultaneously denying it. How many of our contemporaries live thus harnessed by their fear of exposure? This kind of pretense reveals cowardice in all its forms. A cowardice that sets the rhythm of silence, that creates balance and bases it on self-forgetfulness, therefore on a loss of self, then a negation of self. Fear that neither dies nor is reborn in bravery heralds the victory of the end of freedom. The reign of robots. Ismene hides from Creon's outrage. Ismene has already lost her freedom. She lost it willingly. She traded it for a little comfort. She is afraid to see herself, which would force her to take responsibility for everything, even and especially the worst. Ismene "goes her own way," as the popular saying goes, which means that she merges with her destiny; destiny exists when we abandon what liberates us and trade this lost freedom for what alienates us. Isn't this what most people desire through comfort? Not to mention comfort's younger sister: retribution. If Ismene were asked which law Creon enacted, she would say: "I'm not sure." "The king thought it was better for the city." "My brothers got what they deserved by killing each other. All for power, always power." She would evade the question. But evasion that isn't offensive opens the door to cowardice. Ismene shrinks at the enactment of the law because she wants only one thing: to not be asked the question, to be left alone. It's an understandable cowardice, a cowardice that gives the impression of being protected; cowardice based on forgetfulness proves to be a powerful remedy in the family of psychotropic drugs. Ismene is the object of her own empathy; she "feels" all the slander, all the disgrace her family receives. She wants to silence them. All those voices that gossip and slander and mock her, her father, her sister, her brothers… She hears them constantly; they swirl and turn in her head, they won't stop, they won't be silent. Oh! What wouldn't Ismene give for them to be quiet, to diminish a little… After all, she deserves it, she can ask for that, she has suffered so much, doesn't she deserve to be able to rest? Can't she find peace? "Fear is nothingness becoming ideal," as Ernest Hello so aptly put it. Concealment allows for silence by offering it up as if in a sordid game of cards where one gambles away their most precious possession with a nonchalant and arrogant air. Antigone rises up. She doesn't rise up to tell people to stop gossiping; she rises up because a boundary has been crossed. She loves her family, simply because they are her family, and one is not ashamed of those one loves. So she rises up, out of duty, therefore out of love. Duty and love are inextricably linked, for better or for worse. Does a branch of the tree decide to leave and live its own life? Antigone rejects the possibility of separating herself from her family and the possibility that her life could be a consolation prize, or that anyone could pity her. Antigone never wallows in self-pity; at most, she lets out a whisper in line 905 of the tragedy about her condition as a woman-daughter and about the truth of family ties, about these unbreakable and irrefutable bonds. Antigone acts differently. For a modern person, this is edifying. She doesn't reject her parents, she doesn't blame them. She doesn't use them as an excuse for the failure of her life. She doesn't reject where she comes from in the hope of "becoming who she dreams of becoming," or better yet, like an advertising slogan, "who she deserves to be," "who she is worth being." As Christopher Lasch reminds us, with the new lifestyles brought about by the Industrial Revolution, the cult of individualism was promoted and would sweep away all foundations like a cyclone, leaving only crumbs for the family. We understand the initial neglect, followed by disdain, and finally the hatred of the family that erupted in the 1960s: family prevents me from being myself, hinders my expression, my fulfillment; family is an obstacle to my self-expression … The family, shaped by centuries, a circumscription of the will to power, which had protected like a shield, was devalued, mocked, and even vilified. The strength that protects rests on humility. But humility became derisory, secondary, insignificant, even though it always proved docile to effort and refused to react. As soon as the scoundrels stormed the family, as soon as they held the family in their hands, as soon as they believed they possessed it, then, like any man intoxicated by envy, the will to power possessed them in turn and transformed them into beasts. Contrary to what is often said or believed, man descends from other men; he cannot invent himself. If he invents himself, he reverts to being an acorn. Contrary to what is often said or believed, inventing who we are is more a matter of individuation than individualism. Consider the sap flowing from the roots to the edges of the leaves… Who in the tree would even conceive of a break in this marvelous circuit? Only death intervenes to separate the branch from the trunk, and the source of death resides as much in a part of the trunk as in the branch or the leaf. Is self-knowledge man's worst enemy? The Greeks said it at Delphi; no one could ignore it, and everyone cultivated this prophecy in silence: Know thyself… But not too much… Like an iceberg guarding its secret, its submerged part, our weakness in understanding the ins and outs, and therefore in grasping the meaning of our lives, reflects and betrays our lack of depth. Family is the origin; it marks the gateway to our memory. The gateway of our memory defines us and sets a standard. The gateway of memory is lost in oblivion. When can I say, "Memory, open yourself and tell me"? Memory does as it pleases. Memory says nothing of value. If there is a way to make memory speak according to one's will, this means must be preternatural, linked to the lost genius of humankind. Have preternatural gifts, the lost gifts of earthly paradise, vanished forever? Do they remain within our reach, but veiled? Do these gifts appear as epiphanies within the family? Do they become accessible within the family through dazzling epiphanies, without our even realizing it? Antigone endured everything from her parents, and for them, and she did it because they were her parents and she had not chosen them. Life that takes shape after a tabula rasa resembles a life of ghosts; a life where revenants constantly spring up and torment, swirl and haunt, is not life, it is even the exact opposite of life, it is prison.

Sap connects the roots to the fruit, flowing through the trunk. It circulates, undulates, diffuses, giving itself entirely to all. The study of sap shows what a permanent and benevolent equality brings: not equality of consequence, but equality of cause. Giving the same to every child will never make every child the same. No tree is the same. No family is similar. What differentiates plant life from human life? Envy. Have we ever seen a leaf demand from another what is rightfully its own, or at least what it had not received and what it saw in the other? The human family does not prevent envy; it channels it. Sap circulates; sap is life; there is a sap within us that circulates ceaselessly. The Greeks called it pneuma , the breath of life that continually inseminates and animates us. In ancient Greece, there was only one kind of destiny: that dictated by the gods. Humans did not decide their own fate; they could not imprison themselves; the ideology of individualism had not yet corrupted their decisions. Antigone rises up because she has received no contrary directives from the gods. She interprets Creon's law as an affront to divine law. Antigone dons the cloak of humility, embracing the role of messenger. If divine law does not permit a man to refuse a funeral, then a man cannot condemn her for having performed it, and if he were to do so, he would damn himself. Antigone is the messenger of two kinds: of her family, from whom she learned respect, and of the gods, for she recognizes their authority and understands their silence.

Contrary to what is often said or believed, lifeblood is not destiny, but life itself. Destiny is the confinement of life. Freedom is the instrument with which life best expresses itself, but it is not the easiest. Antigone heard, supported, and defended destiny from her father. She has been immersed in destiny since birth. She knows no other environment. Oedipus had locked himself into a logic of fatalism. Let's go back in time: Laius, Oedipus's biological father, having taken refuge with Pelops after the capture of Thebes by Amphion and Zethus, abducts his host's son, Chrysippus. For this crime, Apollo punishes Laius: if he has a son, that son will kill him. Do we ever hear Oedipus curse his father? What causes destiny to guide Oedipus? His reaction. Oedipus's reactions never end. Because the other children his age mocked him, he goes to Delphi and consults the oracle to learn the identity of his parents. What does he care? He was raised comfortably by his adoptive parents; he had a pleasant childhood, were it not for these children who mocked him because he didn't know his biological parents. Envy guides him by the nose. By his actions, he sets destiny in motion. Hearing that he was going to kill his father terrifies him; he gives in to his fear and decides not to return home. The reaction is born of fear, a fear whose challenge has not been met. The oracle is a plague. She speaks the truth, nothing but the truth, but hidden beneath a veil. It is never the truth face to face, but the truth in a mirror; otherwise, it would involve the intimacy of intuition. By deciding not to return home, Oedipus fulfills his destiny, as we commonly say these days; even and especially if it means nothing. One doesn't fulfill one's destiny, one's duty perhaps, but one's destiny; one submits to it, slams the door in the face of freedom. There are acts of consent that are tantamount to revolutions. Oedipus gives up, believing he is taking control of his destiny. Besides, one doesn't take control of one's destiny, but rather one's freedom. Oedipus has a destiny ordained by the gods: to be separated from his biological family and raised by an adoptive one. Through his reaction, he reconnects with his biological family, with the consequences we know. Oedipus at Colonus perfectly recounts this disenchantment. Oedipus no longer wants to see; he has seen like a blind man, yet he continues to react, blinding himself with his own hands in the hope of finally seeing again. The imprisonment is his doing, but he has his daughter Antigone by his side, who affirms her loyalty to her father and demonstrates remarkable foresight. Oedipus's destiny is earthly; his faith remains untarnished, and the gods offer him apotheosis. Loyalty forges precious bonds with freedom. Antigone refuses the fate Creon proposes, even though she will ultimately fulfill it. She acquires her freedom by remaining faithful to the gods, the only ones with true authority. She breaks free from the ties of society, the bonds of submission, to affirm what she believes. Antigone must break free from the bonds of society. She could resign herself to this lineage marked by failures and disgrace and let the boat drift with the current, like Ismene. She could accept Creon's edict without a word. Breaking free from social bonds, on the one hand, avoids raising her head, but rather blends into the group and her family (neither Ismene nor Eurydice stands up to her). Antigone is free, and it is precisely in this freedom that she proves so elusive. Antigone defies fate. She slows down time and sets a new rhythm for it. She immortalizes every moment of the end of her life.

Antigone's profound awareness of her life stems from death. The death of her father and the deaths of her brothers. The gods willed these deaths. Outrage is the gods' prerogative. Humans accept it willingly or unwillingly. Edmond Jabès wrote: "To compare one suffering to another, even if both are caused by a common evil, is arbitrary; for one cannot prejudge a being's capacity to suffer. We see them suffer, but what we see is not the suffering itself, but rather the person struggling with it." And again: "At the height of pain, the cries of the tortured are also the cries of children." A person wears a grotesque expression when confronted with the suffering of another; suffering is a solitude, all the more so when it resembles another suffering already experienced, as is the case with all suffering. Every suffering is grounded, asserts itself, believes in its singularity. “I know, it hurts” or “I know what you’re feeling” express nothing. The verb “to know,” which recurs constantly, seems to demonstrate, out of envy, that nothing is new. Is there nothing left to learn? This person doesn’t suffer, or if they do, it’s their own pain that recurs, echoing back to them. They have neither empathy nor compassion, except perhaps for themselves. They believe their pain surpasses other pains, or that the pain of others cannot wait, much less erase, the pain presented to them. They are driven by envy, because they are satisfied with this suffering that they are no longer alone in experiencing or having experienced. Antigone, after all her suffering, has a profound awareness of the singularity of suffering. Faced with her brother’s body, Antigone finally understands that life is like a river that no dam can stop. Life flows and enters wherever it pleases; life cannot be contained. Antigone buried her brother after her father, sorrow following sorrow, Creon's outrage sealing her decision to no longer submit to the power of the law, which runs counter to life. Life could fade away gently if death no longer received the respect it deserves. Each death recalls another death. Each death recalls a life. Faced with death, life tells its story; life tells its story, but no longer pretends to be a dialogue. Only knowledge creates dialogue. Parents know their children, but children know things about their parents of which the latter are not necessarily aware. Knowledge and awareness feed off each other and are mutually reinforcing. Antigone accompanies her father to Colonus. She witnesses his decline, becomes his sole support, his eyes, his walking stick, his rhythm, his pulse. From one generation to the next, tested beyond all measure, this family, through the father-daughter relationship, will be constantly humiliated without ever losing its tenderness or dignity. Father and daughter remain inseparable, and Antigone never passes the slightest judgment on her father. Far from the revolutionary figure who, unable or unwilling to improve her family relationships, believes she will change the world through her reaction, Antigone embraces freedom within her family. Tell me how and from whom you descend, and I will tell you who you are. Generations follow one another; traits, meaning, and lineage flow in the veins of each family member; this lifeblood takes on multiple characteristics, numerous qualities, each carving its own path in the diversity of its bloodline. Some would kill each other if they knew of the other's existence, others annihilate themselves and are resurrected a little further away, a little later… Meaning, lineage, race, ancestry—so many words to describe the character and qualities of each individual, stirred in the cauldron of constant experimentation. Imagine what Antigone would answer if asked about her identity? Who are you, Antigone? Who do you think you are? What constitutes you? What are the parts of your whole? Would she answer, “I am Antigone, daughter of Oedipus”? Antigone would not answer; she would not understand the question. Identity? An overvalued modern concept. Identity results from a will to power that dare not speak its name. It foreshadows amnesia because it tries to contain life like a dam. Antigone gives us a glimpse, a beginning of understanding of what life is; And life suffocates within identity. Antigone illuminates human relationships. All the currents that constitute us, whether we like it or not, also flow out of us to create relationships between each of us. How can we follow all these currents? How can we identify them? Here we touch directly on intelligence: not the ability to absorb additional data, but rather the capacity to see their path, their origin and direction, and to truly be part of them. The difficulty in the education we pass on after having received it is to guide and distribute it along a path faithful to this origin and direction. The notions of nature and culture are turned upside down! Understanding the life that arrives (always from behind) and the life that comes (always without a word) cannot be solely defined by our being and our education. We are much more than a simple sum; we are alchemy. Antigone, standing before Polynices' body, realizes this; she sees the cosmogony of her family, she feels the weight of the past and projects this strength into the future. Nothing can stop her now. How can one stop memory? Every gesture speaks of the past and recalls abjection, every gesture speaks of the future with its share of chance and uncertainty. Should one stop at one or the other? Life does not stop. If there is one thing life cannot do, it is stop. So it continues. And in every life, every gesture can become a surge of sorrow. Every gesture, the most innocuous, attacks our good nature and undermines it. Life is composed of moments of grace and more innocuous moments. What would moments of grace be without innocuous moments? A refrain. The surge is never a refrain. No wave is like another… Life flows through us. To believe that we own it is an illusion; we are not even its custodians. What a lesson in humility! Antigone embraces this understanding very early on. One must be oneself, respect oneself. We are the electrical conductor of life; we enable its transition. The key to dignity comes at this price. Oneself: the root, the leaf, the trunk, and the sap. Facing Polynices' corpse during the funeral rite, Antigone understands this. Antigone is never overcome by dereliction, or at least Sophocles doesn't show it, doesn't say so; dereliction is presented as a synonym for misery: what greater misery is there than to be alone, absolutely alone, alone for eternity; and life lasts an eternity when one is alone. With Polynices' death, Antigone confronts this solitude. Line 905 is explained here. We must pass things on; little Antigone would have so loved to pass them on, she who benefited so much from passing them on, but what if there is no one to pass them on to? Faced with death, faced with absence, faced with suffering, what remains? Loneliness gnaws at the bones. What remains when nothing remains?

“Who is calling? No one. Who is still calling? His own voice, which he doesn’t recognize and mistakes for the one that has fallen silent.”  ¹ From where are you speaking? I stand by your side, and nothing, no one, can ever deny me this or force me to move. There is a twofold movement in Antigone; nothing is fixed, there is a constant movement, for she is perpetually filled with life, the sap that irrigates, seeps in, bypasses, and prolongs. I am by your side, I am here, in my place, and nothing and no one can tell me: “You are not in your place” or “You shouldn’t be here.” Antigone embodies the figures of mother and sister for Polynices. I stand by your side because I find legitimacy in being here and nowhere else. Antigone’s entire approach could be summarized by this formula. She defies Creon, she honors her deceased brother, and she stands before the king, repeating the same phrase, a concept in itself. "I am by your side," she says to Polynices. "Do not be afraid, do not fear the darkness that envelops you, do not dwell on what you have done wrong or not done. Every life holds unfulfilled promises, reproaches… Do not be afraid, do not be afraid anymore. Let life flow through you, let it transform you. You are a conduit; life came into you, you absorbed it, and it continues its journey now that you are dead. Let us mark with a white stone the end of your life on earth, the beginning of another life, the beginning of something else. Fear nothing. I am here…" Thus the heart contracts and expands. Letting go of this life, breathing life into its character and qualities, cannot come from a reaction; a reaction would block the fires of life. How can one receive and transmit without wanting to receive and transmit? How can one live in this constant otherness? This perpetual shaping where undoing is as important as doing. Polynices' death orchestrates in Antigone an absence of self and an understanding of self. Every death provokes otherness; it forces one to step outside oneself in order to be oneself again, but someone else. Everything has shifted, nothing quite means the same thing anymore, everything has changed, and yet, everything is the same. The family secretes this otherness and tends to train its members to live with and accept it. No cause of rebellion is foreign to the family. Antigone does not complain about having an immature, angry, or simple-minded father. Antigone does not pity her father; we do not see her wallowing in incest, scandal, or outrage. After attending her brother's funeral rites, Antigone stands by his side, whatever her brother may have been, whatever he may have done, whatever his faults, whatever reproach he may have received. Love does not impose such conditions. From her place and her time, Antigone gathers and embodies the entirety of her lineage. One must accept having discovered a treasure, having understood it, and accept recognizing that it does not belong to oneself. This is what Antigone does. She stands beside her brother, and while she has accepted life's hardships, she rejects the outrage of a man. Let us understand clearly: for Antigone, as for the Greeks of her time, life's hardships bear the signature of the gods. It is possible to revolt against these outrages, but if the gods will it, these outrages will be carried out. Human means are limited in the face of the gods, and all effort proves futile. On the other hand, it is unthinkable that any man, whoever he may be, king or beggar, should be able to say what is or is not, what is done or not done. It is unthinkable not to rise up against a man's outrage, for the outrage is not of man. Or he demands redress. Antigone rejects Creon's law because this law adds outrage upon outrage, and its nature surpasses Creon's power. It transcends his power. Antigone has endured the authority of the gods through the stigmas of her family; she stands up against someone who interferes in life, someone who does not live, who only appears to live. Creon, clinging to power, has transformed into a kind of automaton. Creon has lost touch with his lineage; he should remember that he became king after Oedipus, that without Oedipus, he would likely never have held this position; he should remember where he comes from, for he is descended from Oedipus, and even if lineage was often shared at that time, he emerges from a common ancestor of Polynices and Antigone. From this same lineage, two branches are born: Creon, who believes in his destiny, who does what he says, who dictates and strengthens society, puts a brake on decadence, and compels everyone in good conscience to obey the new rules, but who, in a way, halts life, who believes he can fix it, make it what he wants through the sole act of his will. Creon refuses to acknowledge the different currents of life by centralizing it. From the moment he takes charge, he abandons discernment, because, thinking of it as an act of will, he horizontalizes the role of leader, believing himself master of everything and everyone. Creon disrupts the flow of life by deciding to control it; he enters a tunnel of his own making, his prison, his self-imposed confinement, and he convinces himself that he has a destiny… Destiny so easily takes on the features of identity, and the quest for identity those of a deceptive illusion, a search for self in the face of others. Both are imprisoning. It is so easy to succumb to the temptation of destiny, to feel at ease, comfortable within it. Individualism brings about a death of the soul. Prison and freedom reveal themselves as the life choices of humankind. Antigone chooses freedom, and that it leads to her death is merely anecdotal, for she has chosen freedom, duty, and love. She has not resigned herself to her fate, and as soon as she understands her calling, she terrifies Creon and freezes him in his destiny. When he has the opportunity to escape, he will no longer know the feeling of freedom. He will create his own misery, which will imprison him alive until the end of time. Antigone, frail yet formidable, conquering yet humble, standing beside the remains of her brother, her father, her family, stops time. She stands tall. She abolishes the mechanical motion that life can sometimes adopt. Antigone is free as freedom is constantly won; it would be more accurate to say that Antigone liberates herself, for one never ceases to liberate oneself, and to learn how to liberate oneself. Freedom is the most repressed gift, for freedom is truth; it is the best interpreter of life. It tames destiny and calls us to become more than ourselves.