the house of asterion or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the labyrinth

a short piece in the wake of bigger writing

The House of Asterion is a 1947 short story by Jorge Luis Borges which retells the classic myth of Theseus through the eyes of its infamous antagonist - the minotaur (Asterion). In Borge's’ version, Asterion is a monstrous being, shunned by the world and forced into a solitude which deludes his perception of reality. He laments past attempts to leave the labyrinth and join the people of Crete, only to be met with judgement, disgust, contempt, and even violence. To Asterion, the only place of true safety is to remain within the labyrinth, accompanied only by its seemingly infinite bedrooms, pools, hallways, courtyards, gardens, and closets.

Every 9 years Minos sends for sacrificial virgins from Athens whom are excitedly slaughtered by Asterion in a process he calls “delivering them from evil”. Their corpses become road-signs to help Asterion keep rooms and hallways straight. To avoid the pain and discomfort of having to live as a monster in this world, he finds sanctity in solitude, even to the detriment of those unfortunate few who happen to find themselves within his house. He is a prisoner of his own design, held captive by his apprehensions and misanthropy.

The escapism present in The House of Asterion is perhaps even more poignant 80 years later. Asterion’s labyrinth is highly evocative of the modern internet, with its seemingly infinite entertainment experiences. Websites, games, books, movies — an incalculable infinitum of information available for us to peruse as we please. One could get lost within the synthetic hallways of the internet as easily as Asterion could show off his home to imaginary visitors.

The internet, as a digital labyrinth, has made it all too easy to become lost within its confines. The nigh infinite stream of information notwithstanding, its architecture is now designed to be as confusing and self-referential as possible. The chief goal now is to maintain the subject’s presence within the labyrinth. Closed loops feed back and recurse into one another to create a dysfunctional array of connected systems, too vast and incomprehensible to truly dissect as an individual partaker. You are left to marvel at its glory without seeing the chaos brimming underneath.

Yet visages of the real present themselves even in the labyrinth. In reality, the labyrinth attempts to recreate the real, but only in a limited, repetitive, and disorganized fashion. Asterion described the labyrinth in a similarly repetitive nature, whereby nothing truly new is created within the labyrinth, but rather sections, rooms, hallways, and corners are repeated to create infinity. The internet functions much in the same way — artificial intelligence exemplifying this best. New content is not the true goal of creation, rather, by giving people something all-to-familiar, the mask of comfort and understanding is not lifted. AI cannot truly create anything new, it simply repurposes older things into newer modes. It is the tool that makes the labyrinth even more effective. Its’ inability to innovate demonstrates its purpose.

To live in the world is to be subject to unbearable torment. Although we can hide our ugliness, to a degree, unlike Asterion, to live authentically invites criticism, disgust, and pain. Contempt thrown unto you becomes contempt digested and reflected back into the world. It becomes all to easy to retreat into our own digital labyrinths — free to leave whenever we please, but too fearful of the world to ever want to. We prioritize safety over authenticity. Isolation becomes a shield by which we deny the need to reinforce our own existence in the eye of the other. One one hand, it is liberation. On the other, alienation.

Asterion spends his days within the labyrinth awaiting a prodigal “redeemer” who will come and take away his pain. This is, of course, Theseus, who will kill him as it is laid out in the legend. In a sad way, it is this exact outcome Asterion desires. To be free. Asterion did not long for companionship - he longed to be free from longing for it. Unable to make amends with the world that rejected him, and unable to free himself from needing its approval. The dialectic presents itself tragically.

"Would you believe it, Ariadne?" said Theseus "The Minotaur scarcely defended himself."

---