When Strife and Discord Crash Your Party
Because history happens in cycles, this one's about right now.
You know about the Trojan War and how it all started.
Something about a prince that looked like Orlando Bloom running off with a queen so hot that no Hollywood actress could adequately portray her onscreen.
Except, that’s not the real beginning.
The real beginning starts with a fancy wedding Zeus threw for one of his many daughters.
Everyone’s invited!
Only, when it came time to issue the invites, they decided it was probably best to leave Eris out.
Eris is the goddess of strife and discord. You invite strife and discord to a wedding… doesn’t bode well for the marriage. So they leave her out.
Too bad for the pre-Classical Mediterranean world, though, because shutting strife and discord out of your big social gatherings is worse than asking her to come.
So Eris sneaks into the party undetected and leaves with no more of a trace than a single golden apple on which is inscribed the words, “To the Fairest”.
Drama ensues as at least three other goddesses begin vying vainly for the prize.
They go ask Paris, aka the Orlando-Bloom-looking royal in Troy, who gets bribed with the hottest woman in history. He accepts. Turns out she’s married to the second-most-powerful man in the world, who complains to his brother, #1 most powerful.
Suddenly, it’s World War Zero in Ancient Europe.
But what if Homeric Greeks had it backward? What if they left Eris off the invite list of that particular wedding—as opposed to all the other festivities where she’s invited but doesn’t bother to show up—because they really couldn’t afford to have her start something at this gathering? Because the economy was worsening, crime was rising, and tensions between the Greeks and the great power on the other side of the sea, Troy, were already making everybody uneasy?
Indeed with so much strife and discord bubbling under the surface of everyday life, we could afford to leave Eris out of an evening of forced frivolity?
Well, they tried. Even with their best fake smiles and familiar anecdotes, the whole ritual felt… off. Instead of being old acquaintances, they started recalling their old grievances.
Somebody shifts eye contact, another laughs a little too hard at a mild joke, and another still takes it the wrong way…
And then you throw in some golden trinket that everyone only pretends is important at first. But because nobody wants to take seriously the horror show that’s about to go down outside, they start taking seriously the horror show that is already underway indoors.
Either way, it’s World War Zero in Ancient Europe.
And when the war is finally over, and the victors are standing in shock over the atrocities they committed, and even their historians can’t figure out exactly how to write them in as the good guys, they’ll say it was about a woman. And a guy who couldn’t fight. But really, it was the gods, which is another way of saying it was trends and forces bigger than all of us and thus nobody’s fault, which is what the victors say when even they have to admit the losers didn’t deserve it.
Really though, nobody knows. Just last year, everyone agreed that these dress-up affairs are ridiculous, and we’re all just here to see friends and support peers. This year, we’re all just a little closer to snapping, and we couldn’t tell you why any more than the grasshoppers who are about to turn into locusts.
One thing’s for sure: violence breaking out at one of the most mundane and routine of public rituals is never a good sign.
Whatever it is has started, time to start taking real life seriously.
And in real life, strife needs no invitation. In fact, it often presides.