Pandora's box.
May. 26th, 2004 07:36 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
I went through a time where I was obsessed with Greek and Roman (And Norse) mythology. Actually had quite a good book on it... not very long, but very concise, and it covered the important ones very well. Anyway, I've just been thinking about the story of Pandora's Box Jar.
As we all know, Pandora (all gifts) was sent to humanity as payback for some crime (I think it was the theft of fire by Prometheus (foresight), but I could be wrong). And she was sent with a jar and told not to open it, but her curiosity got the better of her and she ended up releasing all the bad things from the jar into the world. In some versions, she manages to close the jar before the last monster, foreknowledge, escapes, and in others, the last thing out of the jar is hope.
For years, I thought the latter version made no sense. Why on earth would there be something good lurking at the bottom of this sea of monsters? And hope is a form of ignorance about the future, you don't know what bad things are happening, so you can feel good. It's almost the complete opposite of foreknowledge. But I've had a thought that maybe I've had it wrong the whole time. Hope wasn't a good thing, it's the worst monster. Because we're hopeful, we are knocked down harder by all the terrible things in this world. And then, even though we should just give up and go home we can't, because we've got that hope that things will be better. Just another cruel joke played on humanity.
As we all know, Pandora (all gifts) was sent to humanity as payback for some crime (I think it was the theft of fire by Prometheus (foresight), but I could be wrong). And she was sent with a jar and told not to open it, but her curiosity got the better of her and she ended up releasing all the bad things from the jar into the world. In some versions, she manages to close the jar before the last monster, foreknowledge, escapes, and in others, the last thing out of the jar is hope.
For years, I thought the latter version made no sense. Why on earth would there be something good lurking at the bottom of this sea of monsters? And hope is a form of ignorance about the future, you don't know what bad things are happening, so you can feel good. It's almost the complete opposite of foreknowledge. But I've had a thought that maybe I've had it wrong the whole time. Hope wasn't a good thing, it's the worst monster. Because we're hopeful, we are knocked down harder by all the terrible things in this world. And then, even though we should just give up and go home we can't, because we've got that hope that things will be better. Just another cruel joke played on humanity.
