The Truth Behind the Myth of Prometheus
Hello everyone, this is my first official post, and I wanted to touch a topic that has always intrigued me, the subject of Prometheus. If you have reached this section, I am sure you already know the legend, however, I will give a short summary of the legend to be able to enter the subject.
Prometheus was a titan who was known as the "friend of humans", and according to some sources was nothing more and nothing less than the creator of humans. Well, the interesting thing about this story is that at the beginning of it, the gods had the man living in a state of extreme misery, passing cold hunger and needs, but Prometheus felt sorry and stole the fire to give it to the man, in the end The man like the Titan was punished by Zeus who was really offended by the actions of Prometheus.
Well, basically that's what the story says, very briefly, but that's not what I want to highlight. First I want us to talk about the symbology:
1.- Humanity was suffering from suffering hunger, cold and of course, the attacks of the DARKNESS. This is loaded with a great symbolism, here the sufferings of man are due to the "darkness", which can be understood as ignorance, this being the origin of the evils of humanity.
2 .- On the other hand we have the fire that represents the ILLUMINATION then symbolizes knowledge, which gives humanity some control over the environment that surrounds it, helping it to deal with cold hunger and other needs.
3.- Between these two elements, there are two characters that have all the weight of the plot, Zeus, the omnipotent Greek god, who is very reluctant to allow humanity to have the "fire", and Prometheus, who beyond just want to bother Zeus, he seems genuinely interested in helping humanity, however, the latter tends to portray himself as a villain, while the former is referred to as a kind and wise god.
So far I do nothing but mention things that may be obvious to most readers, who are surely familiar with this subject. However, I have always wanted to touch this topic in a forum, with the purpose of knowing the opinions of other people who surely are better understood of the subject than I am.
Continuing with the theme, I want to emphasize that there are numerous variants of this myth, where certain conditions and symbolism usually change, but at the end they have the same elements, a supreme controlling deity but that is good, a "hero" that in the end he is considered a villain or that he is at least thrown into oblivion and an object that always represents a treasure that man can not have by divine decision.
Among the stories similar to this story we have the Myth of the Garden of Eden in Genesis, the Legend of Adapa of the Sumerians, or even in the Bible itself the case of the watchers or fallen angels. The funny thing is that everyone is the god "good" and "fair" who punishes those who teach us something, and this is what leads me to the real reason of this writing: Why is knowledge condemned? Is there a human elite or not who wants us to remain ignorant?
The truth seems alarming, that is always condemned curiosity and desire to learn and know, we have said as "curiosity killed the cat", and I, whenever someone tells me that answer: "but died knowing" haha. Definitely it is the culture of ignorance, I remember that in primary school I had problems with a teacher who lived punishing me and calling my parents because I spent time reading about things that interested me more than classes, and the interesting thing is that what I read in classes helped me more in my adult stage than the classes.
Currently, I think the most we can do is educate our children to satisfy their curiosity, not to be repressed, to teach them the way to develop their intrinsic talents, the spirit is wise and most children come with certain vocations that we have to help them to develop, it is said that all children are potential geniuses, but that society itself, employing mainly the repressive educational system and the religious system, is slowly annihilating them until they have a square mind flat and without imagination, because it is that even imagine is sin!
This is a small summary of my ideas, I know there is a lot to say and I have stayed on the surface, but well this is just to start, I would like to read other people's opinions, to deepen the topic, since to achieve the liberation of the spirit from all the oppression in which we live, we must foster curiosity and knowledge in ourselves and in those around us, blessings to all!