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When Oedipus returned from the hell where he consulted Tiresias, he knew he had fucked up. Tiresias revealed to him the truth about his history and the consequences it had on his destiny and humanity. He was torn between two feelings. First, the guilt of having committed the worst sin that the living can commit. For that he deserved worse than death. Secondly, the confused feeling that there was no way to make him aware of this while there was still time, and that what had happened was inevitable. For this, he deserved a second chance.
He returned to Colone and saw the city of Athens consumed by fire and storms of heat. Most perished in the flames, others from starvation. As befits a leader, the local authorities took Oedipus into a bunker. But Oedipus felt like the most miserable of humans. He was responsible for what was happening, or rather, he was the one who was designated as responsible, the one who is in each of us. We can say today, in 2022, that all of us, soon to be eight billion human beings, have eyes and we do not see. We have ears and we do not hear.
Alone in a room with concrete walls, overwhelmed by pain, guilt and powerlessness, Oedipus gouged out his eyes with a knife. He stood before his guards, his face bloodied, and they stood aside in terror to let him pass. He walked towards the exit of the bunker and faced the burning city of Athens. A military radio was broadcasting, in a nasal voice, the cities that were suffering the same fate: “New Delhi, Islamabad, Baghdad, Teheran, Alep, Mekka, Jerusalem, Cairo, Rome, Moscow, Kiev, Berlin, Paris, Madrid, London, Montreal, New York, Washington, Dallas, San Francisco, Rio de Janeiro, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, Chongqing…”. The heat of the fire was drying the blood on Oedipus' face.
Oedipus said : "I saw in front of me, instead of a burning city, a forest that protects all living species, and thousand-year-old trees that stretch their branches towards the sun as a sign of thanks. I heard the gentle rustling of the chaos of life. I saw Athena's face again and I heard children's laughter. Our walls are too straight, our time is too short, our tools are too sharp, our appetite is perverted by the lies we tell ourselves. All our novels, all our stories, all our history, all our books and even the most sacred ones are read with liars' eyes. There is no work of evil, there are only evil eyes. May we all gouge our eyes out to see, at last ! May we all be deaf and enthused for an inspiring myth! Then and only then, we can become, each of us, the heroes of our own revolution!"
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