In ancient Greek tragedy, the audience knows the fate of the hero even if it ignores parts of the plot. Self-destruction awaits our protagonist at the end, and their actions, imbued with ignorance and powerlessness, enact and accelerate their moira (fate).

The audience is both gifted and cursed with this knowledge, and suffers for the protagonist, who knows less than they do. When the tragic moment finally arrives, and the hero meets their moira, this is the moment of purification or catharsis.

Aristotle writes, at the very definition of tragedy:

“A tragedy, then, is the imitation of an action that is serious and, as having magnitude, complete in itself; in language with pleasurable accessories, each kind brought in separately in the parts of the work; in a dramatic, not in a narrative form; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its catharsis of such emotions.”

The catharsis is the collective expression of what was already present, and its manifestation is its negation as an individual burden. It is the moment where the audience can finally unite with the hero, and stop witholding things from them. The salvation of the tragic hero does not come from a glorious victory, but from the fact that the end of every tragedy is the beginning of a new one. In the Oresteia, for example, the murder of Agamemnon sets the stage for the next play, where Orestes returns to avenge his father. Each episode in the drama, therefore, is a self-contained reality and part of a connected history.

The times we live in are, I think, akin to a tragedy with a not-yet catharsis. The fear and pity we feel—for our historical moment, for the planet, for each other, and for ourselves—is either suffered individually or exhausted in trivial conversations.We lack, to speak metaphorically, a magnificent theater, which through its design and acoustics would be able to concentrate and channel our fears into a powerful force.

Until we experience the liberating moment of self-awareness of the end of our historical period, not individually and cognitively, but collectively and affectively, we won’t be protagonists in a tragedy, but in something worse. And as long as this drama is not ending, the new cannot begin.