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Just because — Tom Lehrer singing “Oedipus Rex”

Bookworm on Sep 21 2009 at 10:35 pm | Filed under: Just Because Music

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Tags: Oedipus Rex, Tom Lehrer

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3 Comments »

3 Responses to “Just because — Tom Lehrer singing “Oedipus Rex””

1. on 22 Sep 2009 at 7:47 am 1Gringo

   When I was a lad, my parents would always skip over this song when they put Tom Lehrer on the record player. My guess is that they didn’t want to be bothered with my asking questions about it, as they must have been aware that I would listen to the song when they weren’t around.

2. on 22 Sep 2009 at 10:57 am 2Ymarsakar

   He tried to avert his destiny from the Oracle of Delphi. But he ended up in a self-fulfilling prophecy.

   This connects to Neo’s previous posts about Cassandra. Regardless of how many people of what sorts warned against Obama, those warnings will either be unheard or they will be listened to but not used. How can people use prophecy when they don’t understand how such information came about? Whatever decisions they may make, it would always be erroneous or pure guesswork.

   It wouldn’t be enough for a Cassandra to know what will happen. She has to know how it will happen. It is not enough to say that humanity will build a weapon powerful enough to destroy an entire city in one shot. She has to know how that came about, the context, political, social, and economical, that brought this invention about and justified its use.

   If she doesn’t know that, she cannot give people what they need to steer clear of it. If she just said that the nuclear bomb came from nuclear energy, people would automatically avoid nuclear energy thinking they can avoid such a weapon. Instead, they’ll just replace that weapon development with something equally as horrendous, if not more so.

   That is the human condition. You can’t tell people what to do or what not to do, because they’ll still do it come hell or high water. You have to teach them how to make the right decisions, not what decisions they should make.

3. on 22 Sep 2009 at 12:06 pm 3socratease

   Gringo, you’re lucky your parents let you listen to Lehrer at all. Mine had a copy of his first 10-inch disc release, and we were forbidden to play it. Of course, that just made it all the more desirable.

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