When the Furies Return: Aeschylus and the Age of Woke
I just revisited "The Eumenides", the third play of Aeschylus’ "Oresteia". You know the ending: Athens puts an end to the old cycle of blood-for-blood vengeance. Apollo and Athena turn the terrifying Furies, aka the embodiments of vengeance, rage, and ancestral curses into the “Eumenides,” the Kindly Ones. Law replaces vendetta, reason replaces passion, and democracy begins to breathe. It’s the triumph of rationality over chaos, of civic order over private grievance.
Now fast forward 2,500 years. Look around. Would the Greeks recognize us?
I think they’d see the Furies slipping back into their old costumes. Not with snakes in their hair this time, but with hashtags, tribunals of Twitter, and committees of outrage.What’s happening? In Aeschylus, the Furies are powerful because they speak to raw emotion: the pain of being wronged, the cry for vengeance. But they are dangerous because they never stop. They don’t forgive. They don’t calculate. They don’t balance. Their justice is endless pursuit. In the play, Athens civilizes them by saying: your energy is real, but it must serve the city, not consume it.
In our time, though, the Furies have escaped their leash. Woke politics, at least in its excesses, mirrors their logic: identity first, grievance absolute, no appeal beyond the emotional wound. It’s not enough to live together under a common law; everyone must recognize and submit to the private pain of each group. And like the Furies, it’s never satisfied. Each new recognition spawns another demand. The hunt never ends.
What’s ironic is that this revival calls itself “progress.” But Aeschylus would have shaken his head: no, this is regression. The whole point of "The Eumenides" was that civilization begins when vengeance stops dictating politics. Athens survived by taming its Furies. We seem eager to unleash ours.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying passion, wounds, or identity don’t matter. The Greeks didn’t erase the Furies. They gave them a place, honored them, turned them into guardians instead of hunters. But the balance is gone today. Emotion runs the courts of public opinion, and reason, law, and universals look like relics from a forgotten play.
Half-humor, half-truth: maybe social media is just the modern stage where the Furies rehearse. Stichwort: Shitstorm. And the very real question for us is the one Aeschylus posed: will we find an Athena to mediate or will we let the chorus of outrage write our laws?