The article On Wall Street, pride signals a fall by Victor Niederhoffer and Laurel Kenner is incredibly interesting. There is too much evidence in the numbers to blame it all on coincidence. It shows that following great achievements companies, more often that not, show significant decline. What does that mean? Is there some omnipotent figure that is responsible for regulating success? Or does having a big head cause leaders to make mistakes? I would lean more towards the latter option, because I have experienced this myself and observed others fall into such a trap. When I was younger I grew to be so confident about riding my bike that I stopped paying such close attention to the task at hand and just as the article would suggest I fell down and scraped my knees. This also happens in relationships; when two people get so confident in the love shared with one another the responsibility to nurture and care for the relationship often goes unmet. It follows that when companies get so confident in their inability to fail they often sustain devastating losses. The article uses the word “hubris” to describe such an egotistical manner. It would make sense that this theory would carry over into tragedy. Some element of hubris may be needed to cause a tragedy. I believe this because hubris causes the characters to become oblivious to what is going on around them and what they could do to stop it. Oedipus is so confident in his mission and righteous nature that he refuses to listen to Tireseas or Jacosta and stop before his horrific life is exposed. In Antigone, Kreon is completely convinced that he knows best how to govern a country and therefore ignores his closest advisors. In doing this he causes the death of the people closest to him.
Hubris causes people and companies to become reckless and because of that they become blind to the signs signaling an upcoming decline. Could tragedy be avoided? If some amount of hubris is present in most tragedies it would be reasonable to assume that people working to restrain their egos would be able to prevent some suffering. But is it possible to control our hubris, or is it an innate human characteristic? Perhaps we all have some hubris that is waiting to come out in response to any success. In either case this article has made me consider the many situations I have experienced that support the claim it made: be weary of hubris.
Hubris causes people and companies to become reckless and because of that they become blind to the signs signaling an upcoming decline. Could tragedy be avoided? If some amount of hubris is present in most tragedies it would be reasonable to assume that people working to restrain their egos would be able to prevent some suffering. But is it possible to control our hubris, or is it an innate human characteristic? Perhaps we all have some hubris that is waiting to come out in response to any success. In either case this article has made me consider the many situations I have experienced that support the claim it made: be weary of hubris.