Hubris and its dark humour

Daedalus warned his son Icarus not to fly so high, or the sun would melt his waxen wings, but the boy, intoxicated with flying, soared above his cautious father. He flew so high that he got perilously close to the sun. Just as his father warned him would happen, the wax on his wings melted into a useless liquid. The false wings came apart and Icarus fell from the sky and plunged into the deep blue sea below. The myth of Icarus illustrates the ancient Greek word, hubris. The term describes the over­weening human pride and vanity that often result in tragedy.

Hubris flies on false wings. And for some inexplicable reasons, it would seem that it most often finds coziness with the rich, the famous and the powerful. It has to. The rich and the powerful have the world around them and the people under their spell. Things move or don’t move according to their whims and fancies. Lesser mortals waltz around them like celestial nymphs, or as moths around light. They are different; their world is different. To the rest of the less-fortunate, the rich and the powerful is a human deity. So it does not take him effort to prime to pride. And the Good Book says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”


And the best of man is still a man. It is only God, perhaps that can claim and achieve invincibility. But Hubris, or what Plato called Icarus Complex, would not allow man be himself; his immortal self with all his powerlessness and vulnerabilities. Often, the man of power and wealth believes in his own ability to do, to be and to have. Master Lucifer started it, according to The Book. The old, man of guile and charmer, so intoxicated by his power and glory, decided to take control of the celestial throne. But his creator and enabler sent just one leader-angel to throw him down. And Lucifer fell with all his beauty, power and dominion.

Many millennia after that epic fall, one maniac called Adolf Hitler one day was stung by hubris. He looked around and sensed that every other race but his own Arian race was inferior and so those others ought to be controlled. His attempt to live his ambition, plunged the world into a war that human history has recorded and christened the Second World War. Ambition pushes a man to challenge his chi. And pride, as often the case, wouldn’t let him to see the redline.

So, if a man is so embossed, so differently elevated and therefore revered by the mass of the people, it is easy to cross the line. Nay, it is always easy to be intoxicated with his sense of the possible and therefore defy, like Icarus, the wisdom in Daedalus’ warning. And not just the warning, but also the ancient lessons in self-control and moderation, guided by knowl­edge and balance.

Because of the height of their elevation and glory, when nature then visits with dark humour, as it often does, it is always not only the world that grieves, even “the heavens themselves (will) blaze forth…” as Mr. William Shakespeare would put it. When they are tormented, harassed and harangued by the cruel hand of fate, there’s this emotional brew of fear, anger and pity. Fear because here is once a superhuman, whose one little act of intemperance (or so) has brought down. Which, in interpretation, would mean that, in spite of a man’s stature, fate has some queer way of dealing nastily with him. “As flies to wanton boys,” Thomas Hardy writes in Tess of the d’Urbervilles, “are we to the gods. They kill us for their sport.” Their tragedy evokes anger because here is a man or women whom we had held with so much deified reverence. And pity because this queer fate has, in its mindlessness, brought him down to his ordinariness.

All of this ought to have given man enough life lessons. A good, life lesson that riches, power and fame are a poor defence to Lady Nemesis when she visits with her brutal impartiality. However, in spite of what the victim might or might not have done wrong, his tragedy should be a reminder that the rest of us can possibly not be immune to the justice of fate. In every man, there is at least an area of vulnerability – our Achilles’ Heels. And because there is this Manichean contest, between right and wrong; between light and darkness, man will continue to be prize-object for the gods.

It is turning out to be the same with Mrs. Diezani Allison- Madueke, our now damsel in distress. Until recently, she was the country’s oil minister and perhaps the most powerful and influential minster in the government she served. Now in far away London, she is expected to have her day with justice. And it is the desire of Nigerians and indeed humanity that justice is served in her case. For one, it will reassure us that those who work evil on the nation and bring odium and pain on the people will get their just reward. And those wrongly accused will get their just dessert. “Nothing is more repugnant than an innocent man in prison,” writes Jean Genet. And nothing is as vile as having the un­just roam the field. We know that in this country are those who ought to be in the maximum side of the Kirikiri Prisons. However today, they are in maximum side of high and respected place, deciding the fate of the country. Yes, “life is unfair,” as J. F. Kennedy would say, but we humans, thank God, have learnt to give nature a helping hand so that life will be easier and tolerable for the greatest number. Justice and injustice are conscious acts of men. And we can choose which side to fall.

SUN NEWSPAPER