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Date Posted: 14:57:18 07/05/02 Fri
Author: mvd
Subject: Re: End of the World
In reply to: mt. healthy mountaineer 's message, "Re: End of the World" on 13:45:14 07/05/02 Fri

Your take on the frontiers is certainly interesting. It may very well have something to do with it. This might also be coupled with the idea of over-population.

What people do with the idea that the world may end tomorrow is not really important to me. If men choose to dump more toxic waste because there is no tomorrow, then that is just an outgrowth of the actual idea that the world is going to end, not the reason people think it is going to end. This take makes it out to be a self fulfilling prophecy, and it is justified to mention it, but it does not address the root of the problem.

Of course Christianity has influenced our thoughts as the Greeks and Romans have done. But there is something more to it than that.

I will use your Greek reference to give my own viewpoint:

The story of Prometheus stealing fire from the gods is, essentially, the same story as Adam and Eve eating of the tree of knowledge. In both stories we have a prize that is of divine origin and forbidden to man. With this prize, or power, men will make themselves like the gods. In both stories, man is punished for his act. Prometheus is chained to a rock and has his bowels eaten every day by an eagle. Adam and Eve are cast out of Eden.

In both instances we see a clear benefit and a clear detriment. So what am I getting at? It is this: Prometheus (which means forethought) symbolizes man's ability to reason. He symbolizes man's knowledge of things outside himself. That is, he becomes self aware. The detrimental realization of this, however, is that he discovers that he is going to die in the future, a thing unknown to him before. This idea is better symbolized in the story of Adam and Eve, but the two stories are still very similar. Even today, I feel that mankind still awaits the divine punishment for his blessing: awareness. He knows that it is awareness that essentially is his blessing--- making him different than the animals, but it is also his curse, with the punishment being death (or more precisely the knowledge of death).

And so, he begins to project this fundamental understanding onto all things--- even the world. This, too, is what Adilbrand was saying, only not quite so verbosely as me.


(As an aside, did you know that there was an offering dispute in Greek mythology that followed the stealing of fire? Prometheus made it so that men only had to give the gods the worst part of the animals he killed, angering Zeus greatly. It is very similar to the Cain and Abel story, minus the murder.)

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