The Promethean Bargain

The myth of Prometheus explores the ambiguities of fire power.
from The Sacred Balance by
David Suzuki & Amanda McConnell

Zeus had reserved the divine fire for the gods alone, but a cunning trickster in the Greek pantheon, Prometheus, stole it from the gods and brought it to men (there were apparently no women in those cold, suffering times). Later myths said that he had actually created humans with that gift.

Such audacity could not go unpunished. Prometheus was chained to a mountainside where daily an eagle tore out his immortal liver. But the human race suffered even more severely. Zeus could not remove the gift of fire, but he could craft another double-edged present. He created Pandora, the first woman, whose name means "all gifts", and sent her down to Earth carrying a sealed jar. Like fire, she was enchantingly beautiful, but she was also uncontrollably curious, unpredictable and deceptive. Inevitablty she opened her vase; out swarmed Zeus's gifts--a horde of miseries to plague all humans for all time--disease, despair, rage, envy and old age were just a few of them.

This is the Ancient Greek equivalent of the story of the Garden of Eden: human beings reached out recklessly, daringly for knowledge and power and got more than they bargained for. And if we think of fire as the first true technology with which we began to change Earth, we can see the force of the story for our time.

we are stardust, we are golden
and we've got to get ourselves back to the Garden

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