#Tragedy_Fate_And_Hamartia:

One major element of tragic fate is hamartia. One major element of hamartia is often hubris.

#Hamartia

The most common definition of tragic hamartia is "tragic flaw", but we need to be careful with this term and understand what the Greeks meant by "flaw" and how it relates to a broadly defined sense of "fate":  Through hamartia, the tragic hero visits his own fate upon him or herself.  In this way, "fate" is transformed from some metaphysical concept -- "the will of the gods," "the divine order of the cosmos" etc. -- to one in which we see our fates as tied to inherent elements of our selves, of our psyches, our own personal characteristics, that ordain our destinies.

To put it in a simplistic way, hamartia means "no matter where you go, there you are";  you cannot escape your own personality; there are elements of our selves from which we simply cannot escape, and, for the Greeks, these elements are "inherited" and will sometimes determine the course of our lives.

This suggests we might see hamartia as "layered", like an onion:  on the surface, fate seems beyond one's control and "the will of the gods", but dig deeper and we find we will our own fates through our own personalities and character traits, but dig deeper still and we find our character traits were in turn formed largely by luck or inherited via the choices others made:  you did not choose your parents; you did not choose your DNA; you did not choose what continent you were born on or in what century you found yourself....  You did not choose your skin color or how others perceive that color;  you did not choose to be born, say, to a parent who would be killed in war or to be born to one who inherited tens of millions of dollars and sent you to the best private schools....  In short, fate determines your character, and your character then determines your fate.

Consider how much of your own life was determined by:

i) #Genetics_and_Personality:  Most obviously your gender was determined by your genetics, not some choice you made, and the fact of you genetics will have a profound influence on how your life unfolds and what kinds of choices are available to you. Increasingly psychologists believe that deep elements of our characters/personalities are coded in our DNA, including things such as intelligence, disposition, alcoholism, diabetes, cancer….

ii) #Cultural_Context: Did you choose, before you were born, to be born in the USA in the 20th century?  Did Clytemnestra choose to be born in Mycenaean Greece?  Of course not, so how we are treated (based on our gender, or race, or body size) is determined by culture, not choice. A child born in Saudi Arabia is highly unlikely to be raised a Christian, and a child born in Alabama is highly unlikely to be raised a Muslim.  A white man born in the USA 18 years ago faces an entirely different set of contexts from a black woman born in the USA the same year, not to mention 50 years ago.  So our genetics combines with cultural influence to make us who we are.
iii) Choices:  who your father and mother chose to marry, or who your grandparents chose to marry, what church they chose to attend, where they chose to live, whether or not your ancestors chose to immigrate to America…which side of 110th st or Central Park you were born in, whether you were born North or South of the Mexico-United States border….
iv) Behavioral Conditioning: Of course whatever elements are not coded into your DNA must be given to you by your experiences, the way you were raised and what you observed in your parents.  As they say, you will marry your parents; you will raise your children the way you were raised; your reactions to stressful situations were taught you by observing your parents etc....

#Oedipus

Oedipus has long offered the classic example of hamartia.  At first glance the story seems to argue that we are all bound to an inescapable fate, a destiny beyond our control, and that it is folly to try to escape