prophecies - by vincent huang - a slice of my mind

my favorite part of ancient greek literature is its treatment of self-fulfilling prophecies. oedipus’s parents learn that he will kill his father and marry his mother, so they abandon him, enabling a future where he doesn’t recognize his parents and therefore kills his father and marries his mother by accident. cronos learns one of his sons will overthrow him, so he eats his children, causing his son zeus to hate him and eventually overthrow him. these narratives are interesting from a storytelling perspective because they reveal their own endings early on and yet somehow the act of spoilage makes them more engaging, not less there are no oracles in real life, but self-fulfilling prophecies certainly exist. the classical example is learned helplessness: in the original experiment, dogs in the control group were placed in an environment where they were shocked repeatedly and the shocking would only stop if they jumped over a hoop. in such a scenario, all the dogs quickly learned to jump

my favorite part of ancient greek literature is its treatment of self-fulfilling prophecies. oedipus’s parents learn that he will kill his father and marry his mother, so they abandon him, enabling a future where he doesn’t recognize his parents and therefore kills his father and marries his mother by accident. cronos learns one of his sons will overthrow him, so he eats his children, causing his son zeus to hate him and eventually overthrow him. these narratives are interesting from a storytelling perspective because they reveal their own endings early on and yet somehow the act of spoilage m