Ascent

During the course of this week I have spent a good deal of time skimming Internet databases for articles related to Prometheus. As I set out I assumed it would actually be fairly difficult to find a varied amount of information about Prometheus, but I was wrong. The fire stealer came up in almost every topic I could think of, education, philosophy, science and technology among them.

During my residential session at Pacifica we discussed the dichotomy that exists between mythology and technology and if the two really have anything to do with each other. I had a tough time coming up with any significant ways in which these two disciplines interact. Mythology can be seen as providing explanations for how certain aspects of technology function. For instance, I have had actual conversations with people who claim that aliens gave us microwave technology. The technology is too complicated to understand so a myth rises up to meet it. I wasn't contented with this example so I kept the dichotomy in mind as I prepared this week's research for my upcoming paper on Prometheus.

The manner in which myth and technology influence each other became very apparent as I read the article titles which came up in my searches. "Health, healing, and the Myth of the hero journey", "Truth in myth and science", "Neuromythology: Brains and stories" were just a few of the returns that I received. All of these titles tell us something about how myth is still significant in the modern world. People tend to think of myths as mere allegories, as I outlined in my example above. When a myth is labeled as such, it becomes a thing rather than a function. The articles that have shown up to me as well as my readings of Carl G. Jung and his understudies have opened my eyes to the function of myth. Myth is a container of eternal human truths. If the hero myth was mere allegory then it would have little to do with health and healing. It is a function, it has something to offer us beyond explanation.

That said, I have had a few thoughts about how to move into Prometheus as a researcher. There is the allegorical/ historical account which would seek to explain why and how historically Prometheus is significant. I will probably avoid this method for the reasons I mentioned above.

Prometheus can also be understood as Edinger points out, as a function of our break between ego and self. In this case the Prometheus story arises out of necessity as it establishes the ego as a thing in the presence of the self, a subject in the objective world. Prometheus provides a connection between the ego, the hero, and the self, the gods.

Prometheus could also be seen as symbol of our birth from childhood into adulthood. Prometheus takes great risk in order to provide fire to humankind and he receives great punishment for it. The same is true when we move from childhood innocence to the adult world of responsibility. We begin life in the presence of the gods (our parents) and are eventually, in most cases, exiled into the world of work and earning. Just as Prometheus has his liver pecked out each day, we too must provide a days sacrifice before our evening relaxation. In a childlike state the eagle is the least of our worries.

Lastly, I can approach Prometheus as the bearer of technology. He is responsible for providing man with fire, just as we are responsible for bringing more technology to bear in the world. Fire is a powerful element that helps shape human endeavors in a beneficent way, yet it can also burn flesh and annihilate the environment. The same can be said of every new invention that comes along, cellular phones are suspected to cause cancer, IPODs harm hearing levels, cars destroy the ozone layer. Pandora's box has been opened and we can never close it.