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Humans are error-compounding machines
This unfortunate reality provides the locomotive energy that makes Shakespeare’s great tragedies — Macbeth, Othello, Lear, Romeo & Juliet — so compelling. This, then that, then this. Sideshow Bob on the rakes, one, two, three, four…
When we decided these plays were “high art” we decided they told us something profound about the “human condition”, and when people say that what they usually mean is how goddamn special we are. Insofar as a “human condition” can be said to exist (problematic!), and is readable through these plays, it is probably something close to: humans are weak, oblivious, self-destructive and totally unable to get out of their heads until it’s too late. They are dumb, dumb little want engines.
Lear cuts off his only good daughter because she doesn’t praise him quite enough. Macbeth doesn’t want to share. Othello is every gaslighting jealous husband. Romeo and Juliet really, really want to fuck.
In his book The Antidote, Oliver Burkeman’s sturdy counter-argument to the emotional totalitarianism of “positive thinking”, The Guardian columnist brings up Oedipus’ plight as an example of how by avoiding things, we bring them into fruition. Oedipus flees his palace to escape the prophecy (kill his father / marry his mother), and in doing so runs into, and kills, his birth father…then meets his birth mother yada yada…
