Three people told Oedipus that he really wouldn't want to know the truth,even his wife, and that it was horrible. But of course he got the old man to tell him the truth. This led to disaster. Oedipus made the poor choice of gouging his eyes out which was a decision where "two days later he would regret it"(Willy). He had the right to be insanely mad, most people probably would if they found out they were sleeping with their own mother. I am guessing that most people would want to know who their parents where. Especially if they knew a certain person knew. If you knew someone knew a secret about you, and when you confronted them they told you that it was a secret that was so bad that you wouldn't want to know. You would probably want to know what it was more than before.
Humans always want to know everything, and some things are better left unknown. I think that it is human nature to be curious, and that it is a characteristics about humans that leads to trouble, or great discovery. For example, I heard a story on the Jay Leno show about some guy who had been doing an online dating website, and he had been chatting/dating with a girl for a while and he really wanted to meet her in person. But the girl resisted because she didn't want to date in public and she thought she was unattractive. So the guy kept insisting that it didn't matter what she looked like because he liked her personality and he thought that she was a girl that he could really connect to, and wanted to start dating her in real life. So when they met it turned out that it was really his mom(she was divorced). Which was of course the most awkward thing in the world and they probably will never look at each other the same way again.
This guy was curious about who she really was and wanted to see her. But that led to disaster. Just like Oedipus wanted to know who his parents were, and that lead to disaster. These stories are on a completely different scale, but it shows the point that being curious can be disastrous, or great(if he fell in love with her if it wasn't his mom).
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Sometimes the knowing the truth can do more harm than not knowing at all. In Oedipus I believe that the truth of knowing that he killed his actual father leaves him worse off than if he hadn't had figured out at all. His ignorance lead to his downfall and if he had stopped pushing for the truth he wouldn't have to be stuck with the grief that would follow him for killing his father. People sometimes say that the truth is worth knowing because it bring destruction once that person finds out, yet i think that if that person never knows there will be no cause for grief. There are however exceptions to this, such as if some one is cheating in a relationship. Last week i was watching TV. on the show a man had been completely betrayed. This ended up with him having a better life than he had before. After the council had seen that thier actions had given him a better life they were determined to destroy him. He was slowly leaked the truth and when he finally learned the true reason of why he had become he went insane. He went on a rampage and killed people. He was finally taken down by the police before he could get any more shots off and he died from the wounds. if he had never learned of the reason of why he was suddenly better off hey might not have gone insane.
ReplyDeleteAlso another point kind of off the topic is another show that i watched. A grandmother had led her son into thinking he had to sleep with her or else she would hurt herself. upon trying to do it to her grandson, her son saw himself in the same situation and how it destroyed him and he became angry. he killed his mother out of rage for destroying his life and trying to do it to his son.