I was waiting for inspiration to hit me before I started blogging, but I need 12 posts by next week; so much for that...
Did Oedipus commit his crimes against common decency because of some predestined fate? I think first we must consider what free will really is before we can understand what fate is and its relationship to decision making.
We supposedly live in a free society, but do we really have control over the course our life takes? We spend the first decades of our life in school ususally being told what to think, rather than how to think. By the time we reach our 20s, we are already indoctrinated with a certain sort of self fulfilling prophecy: Be a doctor, lawyer or whatever, have a family, buy a mansion etc... I've seen it happen to everyone I know: they develop a concept of how "successful" people are supposed to live, and assume that they themselves formed this concept, but in reality, there was no independent thought involved.
I think that Oedipus' situation is no different: he was raised by royalty, and especially in ancient times, it was common for kings to marry relatives, in order to keep bloodlines pure. In addition, violent overthrowing of kings has been a common theme throughout history. So by being raised in an environment where gaining power by any means necessary is the norm (remember Caligula?), he was following a fate determined by man, not gods. So then how did the soothsayer correctly predict his fate? The same way any television psychic does it today: make enough vague predictions of relatively common occurences that some of them always end of being true.
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