Chained to the Mountain

After turning in my midterm paper for my process class I had a few more insights about Prometheus. Prometheus is the giver of the sacred fire, this can be interpreted as development of new consciousness or new technology, or both. This Promethean spirit is at work in our culture today. Stem cell research is a great example of the Promethean drive. Those scientists and supporters of this sort of research are not confining themselves with the mythology of today, they are only interested in the results. Many fear that the results of stem cell technology will be a Pandora’s box, bringing the good with the bad.

In my paper I argued that technology and mythology should seek to synthesize their motives and work together in the future, but the case of stem cell research is a sketchy one. This sort of research has been greatly censored by people’s mythologies. Going along the lines of my paper I could find a mythology like the Prometheus myth that supports these technological advances but then I would run into another problem.

How can we choose which mythology should be actualized in the determination of any given event. If we choose to embrace the Prometheus myth then we would brave the results good or bad and set forth into the world of stem cell research. If we accept modern mythologies and find stem cell research as an assault on divinity then we will most certainly not move ahead with it. In the latter case we are left in a world where people continue to suffer over diseases that stem cell research could prevent or eradicate all together.

This is the question that my paper must address in order to hand together as a whole, but I am not sure that I can provide an answer to this predicament. If anyone out there has any thoughts on the matter I would be happy to read through some replies to this issue. Thanks.