Oedipus Rex, Area 51, and Birthers among the X Files

You can never overestimate the capacity of Americans to embrace conspiracy theories. Like Fox Mulder, we all want to believe. The problem is, none of us is ever certain about his own origins. We have to take it on faith that we were born, but to whom? This was the dilemma poor old Oedipus faced, and wouldn't rest until he'd proven to himself that he was indeed a monster who had murdered his father at some lonely crossroads and gone on to marry his own mother. He also had some pretty serious political legitimacy issues that wouldn't go away no matter how many experts he consulted. Moral: never bet against the blind seer in a Greek tragedy.

Sophocles was trying to teach his fellow Athenians something about the role of fate, faith, and the gods in their lives, but his tragedy has resonated all the way down the centuries to our own time because we all have those same gnawing doubts about who we are and what our fate is. And anyway how can we know the king is really the king, especially when he shows up suddenly claiming the throne on the basis of his ability to solve some rather perplexing riddles that have been plaguing us? Oddly enough, it was Oedipus himself who was most determined to get to the bottom of his birther dilemma. He wanted to know who his parents were, and that was his undoing. Still, it was all mostly hearsay wasn't it? There was no official document, no DNA testing, just some curious scars on his ankles, oh, and the fact that his wife (mother?) hanged herself.

The question of our own origin is the one we can never answer for ourselves. We have to take it on faith. What proof will hold up? Who can we trust? As any conspiracy theorist worthy of the name will confirm, official documents can be altered. My own official birth certificate has quite obviously been altered and recorded two years after my birth, ostensibly to conceal the fact that I was adopted -- which is proof you can't trust official government documents. Maybe they really are hiding something in Area 51 out there in the Nevada desert. Maybe there are aliens walking among us. Maybe I'm one of them. Maybe that adoption story was altered to throw me off the trail of the real story. I was born just about the time the first UFOs were arriving. And I've never really felt completely at home here among the humans.