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I think Stallman is more of a Tiresias


How so? I had to look Tiresias up on Wikipedia, a blind prophet, but I still don't see the connection. Would it be possible for you to please explain?


Tiresas' prophecies come true because of a poetic or literary recursion built into the Oedipus cycle or the Oresteia or whatever. (I'm AFK, where K means "my library.") So when the guy to whom Tiresias prophecies that said guy will commit patricide in fact kills his father, he does so because he tried to not kill his father, and in attempting to escape his destiny, inflicted it upon himself. Stallman's apocalyptic ravings have had their basic gist "come to pass," in this interpretation, because of the actions of the developer community or tech community or whatever, in the struggle to develop software, which software has spiraled beyond all reasonable control, even as the guy killed his father by trying not to do so. Thus this wise guy is hella Greek. And this parent poster is also a wise guy. And this patricide is about to become all-too-ironic, because throwing out one-liners of the parent's (post's) sort is a bleak literacy, which I have now killed. And literacy rises like a phoenix in my child post, and the guy who kills his father is blinded as punishment, and becomes a wandering seer himself. So there.

TLDR is that prophecies are self-fulfilling. Tiresias is the OG self-fulfilling prophet.


The analogy of Cassandra is inferior because:

1. Cassandra is usually at the center of attention, an object of desire to Agamemnon and his troops, an object of hatred and jealousy to Clytemnestra and Aegisthus. Tiresias isn't nearly as ostentatious, and mostly exists passively in the background, waiting until someone else asks his opinion on something. Tiresias gives off a kind of awkward vibe, much like Stallman, compared to Cassandra, who's totally a social butterfly.

2. Cassandra is cool and sexy, Tiresias is a blind old dude. Richard Stallman eats stuff off his foot and often looks like he hasn't showered since the last emacs release.

3. Cassandra's prophecies are very straightforward, Agamemnon and his buddies understand what she says and even listen to her to some degree, they just don't care enough to do anything. Tiresias is much more cryptic and is always derided until the denouement when it is revealed that he was right all along, just in a way that nobody else could have foreseen. Likewise, Stallman's insights into the future of our technological dystopia seem absurd and maniacal until they inevitably come true a few years later.

I like your comment though =)


I rather enjoyed this exchange between you folks; thanks.




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