Prometheus

Prometheus

   

  I learned that Greek myth in HS, and remain impressed by its profundity.

  Prometheus  "stole the gift of fire" from the gods and gave it to mankind. His punishment was being chained to a rock for all eternity. 

  Buzzards (or eagles maybe) eat his liver every day, and every night it grows back. This routine continues forever.

  It's a more gory version of The Garden of Eden Apple of Knowledge. Similar myths surely exist.

  I'm struck by an interesting bit of Garden Expulsion.   "Adam & Eve realized they were naked, and covered themselves".

 

  Ordinary animals don't wear clothes. Amazonian & Papuan natives don't wear many.  But, piquantly, the men wear

"penis sheaths" 2 feet long in some cases. 

  The myths' meaning, to me, is a parable of the emergence of Human Consciousness.  Knowledge.  Terrible Knowledge.

  At some point in the past - 200K or 1 M or whatever - years ago, evolution spewed forth Homo Sapiens.  Us.  Human Beings.

  Not "ordinary animals" anymore.  People capable of looking up to the sky, and wondering what the hell it is.

  Wondering what Everything is. Knowing the full meaning of Death.  Knowing Cosmic Fear.

  Where did I come from?  Where am I?  Who am I?  Where am I going?  What will become of me?

  Knowing the full meaning of the inevitability of Pain, Suffering, and all the other Woes that plague them.

  "Animals" don't have such knowledge.  Oh, elephants and other animals convincingly display grief and knowledge of the Death of kin and loved companions.

  There's the touching story of "Blackfriars Bobby", a dog in 19th C England who kept vigil at the grave of his owner every day for years.  I recently read an article attempting to debunk it.

  And yet, other animals don't have myths.  They don't look at the sky and wonder.  They don't, as far as we know, live in mortal fear of omnipresent Pain, Death and the fragility of Life.

  They don't torture themselves and each other - psychologically, physically, and emotionally.  Altho our primate cousins display unnerving rudimentary sociopathy.

  Some guys in VN had monkey pets.  The beasts freaked me out.

  So, as the myths tell us, "the gift of fire" and the "Fruit of Knowledge" come at a terrible price for progenitors and descendants.  Eternal torture.  Expulsion from Eden. Cosmic fear. Cosmic Absurdity.

  It’s surely no Accident that Homo Sapiens has always tried to escape normal Consciousness. Through means as varied as Religion, Mysticism, Drugs, Self Slaughter, Sex, Sleep, Extreme Exercise, and many others.

  The ancient sages may have been bitter about losing the heedless innocence of animals.

  Until the 20th C, random Death was all around.  Every Victorian family lost children.  Mark Twain lost 3 of 4.  Lincoln, 3 of 4.  Queen Maria Theresa of Austria lost 6 or 8 or 10.

  That's still true in many parts of the world.  Such random tragedies could return to the First World.  The entire World.  Our residence here is laughably brief and contingent.

  These Deep Thoughts come from many sources.  Reading and watching TV shows about small particle physics, cosmology, & the Universe.  I'm re-watching Stephen Hawking's series.

  Pondering my own existence.  From several perspectives. 

  For instance, the odds against ONE of my Pa's Trillions of sperm produced in his life fertilizing ONE of Ma's eggs to make Me. How many Zeros do I need to calculate the Odds Against That?

  A tiny wrong wiring of the brain, DNA, a pinch of chemical. And we have Hawking's affliction, schizophrenia, and a host of other awful maladies.

  We still don't know what 90% of the Universe is.  Scientists call it Dark Matter, Dark Energy, and other Mystery Terms that Alchemists were fond of.

  We have learned enough about observable Matter to know ... we don't know what it is.

 

The latest explanation is String Theory.  Infinitesimal, almost infinitely long and looped "vibrating strings" of ... something.  In 9 Dimensions, no less.

 

  On paper, in abstruse mathematics only a select few High Priests of Science can decipher.

 

   There is no immediate, or presently conceivable, way to prove String Theory.

   

  Hawking says there is an Infinite Number of Universes.  We may never be able to Prove that, either.

  As the King of Siam said to Anna - "Is a Puzzlement".