Tragedy of King Midas carries moral message

Tragedi Raja Midas: Moralitas Agama dan Krisis Modernitas (The Tragedy of King Midas: Morality of Religion and Crisis of Modernity

Author: Dr. Komaruddin Hidayat

Editor: Ahmad Gaus AF

Paramadina, Jakarta, September 1998

xxv and 337 pages

Rp 30,000

YOGYAKARTA (JP): Tragic. That was perhaps King Midas' experience. But King Midas was only a figure of Greek mythology. It was due to his greed that Midas finally abdicated. That is the ending of an episode in Greek mythology that is still recounted in the Anatolian community in the Ankara region, Turkey. This kind of tale is also often found in Greek philosophy as a heritage of the wisdom of life.

The people knew King Midas as a greedy man. He accumulated wealth for himself and his family. He would not be satisfied if somebody else was richer than him. So, he went to live as a hermit to ask Dionysus to confer magic power to his hand so that whatever he touched became gold.

He touched the trees in his garden one by one with the palm of his magic-laden hand and the trees changed into gold. Still unsatisfied, he touched the river flowing behind his palace and the water changed into hunks of gold. But when Midas felt hungry and thirsty, he could not eat nor drink because everything changed into gold. When in great confusion he embraced his wife and children, he was startled because all of them became gold. After that he became crazy as a result of his greed.

Like other tragic stories from Greek tradition -- which recurred in Shakespeare's works and in Romanticism, we are presented with contrasts in values, paradoxes but also heroism.

Midas is indeed just a figure from Greek mythology. However, from time to time a myth returns symbolically carrying an eternal moral message. If in Greek mythology we witness a struggle between gods of goodness and gods of evil, in Shakespeare's drama Hamlet we see a fight of forces that ends tragically with the death of the main figures. On the stage of real life we also see a struggle between good and evil, justice versus digression, that continues until the end of life.

In the Midas legend the message is clear, i.e. the end of life due to man's greed, but the subject and the form can vary. Therefore, if it is linked with real life, the Midas tragedy is no longer seen as a legend but it is rather a reality or a social fact. For example, the abdication of Soeharto, Ferdinand Marcos, Reza Pahlevi is part of the portrait of people in power who because of greed do not differ from King Midas.

Ziauddin Sardar, the author of The Touch of Midas: Science, Values and Environment in Islam and the West (1988), for example, says that Midas' hand is the aggressivity of science and technology which have developed very rapidly without moral control so that the harmony and beauty of ecology are destroyed. In the absence of control, both in the form of religious norms and state norms, man tends to behave like a machine that operates mechanically without fear of being limited by other people's rights.

Thus, the Midas syndrome or the phenomenon of Midasism, shows its face everywhere, from the power elite who are far from religion to the mentality shown by the people as an expression of the ritual organized by the power holders.

This book reactualizes the moral messages and the heroism value that have been launched as the main theme of the struggle in the history of mankind, both on the stage of practical politics and in the world of discourse. Through ethical expression and religious morality, we are invited to look at the ruins of the modernism project and those of its myth with regard to the bright future of mankind free from oppression. Nevertheless we are not asked to take a pessimistic stance toward the future and history. Our religion teaches us that real -- authentic and true -- life is not a series of tragedies like in Greek mythology but a life that must be lived with hopes.

Starting from a tragedy, both in mythology and in the real world full of social and political conflicts, Komaruddin thinks that the Midasism mentality that has penetrated into nearly all aspects of our community is caused by an erosion of our religiousness and understanding of religion. Religion with sacred values is rather misunderstood and not rarely made into a legitimation to attain certain objectives. Or even religion is only made into a place of escape from disappointment and sad feelings so that religion loses its role to increase the quality of life of its believers. Thus, the religious institution changes its function into a kind of instant repair shop containing a lot of worn-out articles.

It is not surprising that the function of religion will be criticized. The morality of religious people will be questioned in keeping with the many violations of human rights, interreligious conflicts, international wars -- not excepting the sides with a high degree of religiosity, etc..

Perhaps these phenomena are referred to by Gilles Kepel as a crisis of modernity. A crisis that has descended on modern man with all its derivatives which will give birth to new Midases which will no longer be seen as legends but as social facts.

And if we are not careful, says Komaruddin, perhaps these Midases are ourselves who never cease to exploit natural resources and who are never grateful. It is here that religion is important, i.e. as an ideology of criticism toward vanity, greed and the denial of human rights.

-- Imro'atul Azizah

The writer is a member of a Yogyakarta-based socioreligious study group.