Could Pandora have made things any worse for herself (and us)?
Mythology – Pandora was the first woman on earth; she was really cool even though he was made to screw “man”kind. She could sing and persuade people and was pretty too. But she was also curious. (I wonder why it is that in these myths women are really awesome and stuff at first, then curiosity gets the better of them and they do something forbidden which ultimately leads to DOOOOM!) So anyway here’s what happened in brief: Prometheus stole fire and gave it to the man, Zeus got mad coz he wanted the fire for himself and other gods and divine peoples. So Zeus made Hephaestus create Pandora and set her up with Epimetheus, Prometheus’s brother, and gave her a box (yeah that’s right, Pandora’s box :P), in this box was all the evil of the world (duh, naturally) and she was told never to open it, but she did as Zeus knew she would. When she did, out flew all evils like sorrow, illness, misfortune... you get the flow. She was like Holy Shit and shut it quickly but by then everything had escaped except HOPE.
When this story is told, people say “all the evils in the world escaped, but there was one good thing in the bottom of the jar – Hope” (This itself is an example or ridiculous hope) which I think is just really stupid because hope is the biggest evil. Ignorance is bliss, right?
Look, all the sorrow and misfortune is out there and it’s bound to prey on you at some point or another. It’s bad enough without hope, cause you’ll be devastated as it is with the attacks of the evils and as hope is with you, you start thinking that it will get better; hoping it’ll get better, when actually the evils are gaining ground. Sometimes this hope grows and grows and becomes what your lives revolve around during times of trouble, and that’s when the gods decide to squish the hope under their feet, so when it finally crushes you, it’s a lot worse than it would have been if you hadn’t hoped.
Then you might say letting go of hope is like surrendering. So what? You’re gonna get gobbled up anyway, why make it more difficult for yourself? Thinking “Give up without a fight? How stupid/lame/cowardly!”.. Yeah, that is your hope-brainwashed head speaking. You know you’re going to lose anyway and still give it your all (and are treated as a hero by other oblivious naive people, ok good thing this.. but still) AND you end up getting screwed worse.
But here’s the worst part – even if you do agree with me about hope being horrible, you can’t do anything about it. You’ll still hope.
SEE! EVIL!
All that aside, the story is kinda flawed. The evils attack because they were released, hope was never let out. So humans shouldn’t be able to hope at all. But then maybe we hope, because it is still with us, but then there shouldn’t be misfortune, because it’s not with us anymore. OR, maybe when we have these things with us we can chose to employ them as we wish, but when it’s out there it gets to annoy whoever it wants and decides the intensity. Make what you want of it.
