The Prophet’s Predicament
on killing the Antichrist
As I was watching the horror movie The Omen, an ethical conundrum related to the phenomenon of prophecy occurred in my mind. Let me preface the conundrum by associating it with the plot of the movie—thus be warned for spoilers!
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The Omen
In the movie, the protagonist Robert Thorn’s young adopted son, Damien (Daemon—Demon), is the Antichrist—the son of Satan, a prophesied incarnation of Pure Evil. This fact remains as difficult to believe for the protagonist as it would to anyone else; but through a series of peculiar and extremely unfortunate occurrences—omens—he eventually cannot but believe it.
Thus, eventually Thorn finds himself in Jerusalem at a den where an initiate instructs him on the proper ritual way the Antichrist is to be killed if the spirit of pure evil is to be expelled from the earthly realm. He is at this point still gripped by doubts about the extreme unexpectedness of the whole situation, and particularly about the insane expectation placed on him—to ritualistically murder a young child he is raising as his own. He tries to refuse the task, and leaves his associate to do it; but soon the associate is decapitated by yet another peculiar occurrence. It is here when the protagonist is sufficiently convinced that his adopted son truly is the Antichrist, and thus accepts his fate as his slayer.
As he races to a church to murder his son, the Dark Lord incarnate, he is followed by the police for his reckless driving. He makes it to the altar, and right before he would pierce the child with one of the ritual daggers, a police officer shoots him dead—and the Antichrist gets to live. The movie ends with a scene from the protagonist’s funeral, to a shot of Damien smiling at the camera—now free to begin his reign of supernatural terror, having inherited his father’s fortune.
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Thorn’s Conundrum
Now, the conundrum is as follows:
The everyday observer, such as the police officer who fired Thorn dead, does not see in him the potential savior of mankind. The everyday observer sees only a profoundly twisted sicko attempting to brutally murder his helpless child, justified by some schizophrenic rambling about celestial evil. There was nothing in the child’s conduct that was allowed to the public eye that would by any means indicate that he was the culmination of all evil; nor even to anyone in close relations with the family; and even if there was, it would not have been by any means believable.
Imagine if he had succeeded in his attempt, and the Antichrist’s terrestrial reign would have been averted: nobody would have the faintest idea of the horrors they were just delivered from (it is hard to detect the absence of the Antichrist); and instead they’d only remember the guy as the lunatic, cold-blooded child-murderer! He most certainly would not be thanked for his effort and sacrifice that saved mankind from unfathomable suffering. He would be severely penalized for it.
If you’ve read Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s The Black Swan, you might see echoes here of what he said in the introduction to his book—indeed this conundrum is very much related to the phenomenon of Black Swans.1 He says if, in the morning of September 11th in 2001, someone had demanded the whole air traffic network to the US to be halted to prevent the calamity of 9/11, this person would have been met with ridicule. It’s practically certain he would not have been taken seriously; and if he would have been, what’d there be for him to show he was right? After all, if he were to prevent the attacks, nothing would have happened! Perhaps the public authorities could have unraveled the terrorists’ plot, but the common people would most likely just remember him as a source of inconvenience, as the guy who ruined their day by making the planes not fly on time. There is nothing sensational about heroism in practice.
This is indeed the perennially recognized prophet’s predicament, the curse of Cassandra. Ordinary people will never believe his warnings—and in their defense they hardly ever have any truly compelling reasons to. The Black Swan event (such as the sudden incarnation of the Antichrist) by definition is something completely unprecedented, entirely coming from the left field; and as such the probability for it happening, when calculated by conventional means which we rely on in our daily conduct, is laughably minuscule. But reality vastly exceeds our conventional means of observation or cogitation—and this means that from time to time things will come from the left field, which will carry considerable, sometimes cataclysmic consequences. And sometimes someone “blind to most of what others see”2 becomes aware of something like that happening, and has only a few options.
He can either try to warn the people around him of it, which means jeopardizing his social credibility with very little appreciation in return. This is a very poor tradeoff. He could also do his best to personally influence the situation he sees developing, which often, alas, is far beyond his individual means.
Or, if he’s smart and not risk-averse, he can do as the tweet below suggests: he can place a bet.
If you successfully predict something calamitous, you will only be remembered if you couldn’t do anything to prevent it—when it happens. You might as well figure out how to profit from it.
Thank you for reading.
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To the reader unfamiliar with the concept: a Black Swan is an unforeseen event or phenomenon, something which cannot be predicted by relying on priorly observed evidence. It is related to the problem of induction and the justification of knowledge.
“A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see.” — Nassim Nicholas Taleb in The Bed of Procrustes
Really enjoyed this. Great read.