Why did Prometheus give fire to humans?
Thoughts on civilization
Why did Prometheus give fire to humans?
No, it’s not some sort of riddle, though it may sound like one.
A long time ago, I got into a discussion which concerned the fate of homo sapiens; that discussion caused me to start contemplating the aforementioned question. (Of course, reading Jared Diamond’s Collapse didn’t help, either, but that’s a story for another day.) The focus of all this thinking centers around the question of whether we are doomed- doomed to destroy ourselves, doomed to repeat the same mistakes ad nauseam, doomed to never reach our potential, whatever that may be.
The short answer is, “I don’t know.”
The long answer follows.
One question that someone familiar with anti-matter and its known characteristics might ask is, “Why is the universe filled with matter rather than anti-matter?” One of the most reasonable theories that accounts for this discrepancy simply states that the ratio of anti-matter to matter was skewed in favor of matter. When the fact that collision of matter with anti-matter results in the annihilation of both particles and the release of energy in the form of a photon is taken into account, the effect of such an imbalance in the ratio of the two types of matter becomes clear: most of the anti-matter was annihilated, leaving matter to constitute the vast majority of “stuff” in the universe. If the ratio were skewed towards anti-matter, it would have dominated. If the ratio were equal, well, I wouldn’t be sitting at my computer typing this.
For some reason, I started to consider society in a similar light. While I certainly won’t try to answer conclusively the question of whether or not we are doomed in the long run, I think that, oftentimes, the presence of that which we take for granted (civilizations) speaks very loudly in answer to the question of whether we are doomed on a somewhat shorter timescale. We’re still here, after all, and, depending on whose clock you happen to be using, we’ve been here for a long bloody time or a blink of an eye.
Looking at history, it seems to me that we demonstrate a consistent bent towards the creative. We learn, we create homes and families, we farm, we build. We also definitely have destructive tendencies, but, rather than being indiscriminate, they tend to be directed towards “others”, those outside the group that we consider ourselves as belonging to. Yes, we kill, destroy, and make war, but we inflict those on “others” more often than we do upon those within our own group. (One could argue that, even when we visit such things upon those within the group, we tend to make distinctions between that group we still feel loyalty to and the ones we’ve come to consider the enemy. In such a case, the same rules apply.) When I consider these tendencies within the framework of human history, I come to the conclusion that, while we have both creative and destructive tendencies, the creative seems to hold sway strongly enough to keep us together as societies and prevent us from erasing the “progress” we make. After all, we’re still here, aren’t we?
[NOTE: Keep in mind that this discussion occurs at the macro level and does not contradict individual variance from this description!]
The largest problem I have with such a conceptualization of our history is that it doesn’t take into account the occasions in history characterized by lack of progress (the Dark Ages in Europe, or Greece after the fall of the Mycenaeans, for example). It does account for the actions of conquerors and emperors in the sense that such behaviour is an exaggerated case of looking out for the welfare of your group at the expense of everyone else (or occasionally just an attachment to destruction with no real moderating influence). Such individuals can seem benevolent or well-meaning to their “subjects”, depending on what perspective you happen to be viewing events from.
The best response I can make to that charge is that the conservative is definitely a force in societies as well; in some ways, it may be the major cohesive force in a society, the glue that future principles, traditions, and mores accrete to. Society relies to some degree on such similarities connecting the generation before to the one that comes after. Once you’ve established such a connection, you may be able to rely on mutual (political, economic, social, ideological, geographic, or other) interests to maintain the bonds, but that initial connection tends to strongly depend on similarities or a very strong common interest such as an external aggressor or circumstance that cannot be successfully weathered alone. Within such a system, too much change can unravel the bonds that hold the society together, and too little can cause it to become “uncompetitive” and unable to defend itself from outside influences or those introduced from outside, or even changing conditions within the civilization.
(Perhaps that, combined with individual tendencies, is why innovators and change agents tend to be comparatively rare as a percentage of population. Few have the combination of drive, scope, range, and power to drive extensive change- otherwise, we’d see a lot more extensive change. An individual unhappy with their workplace might develop the drive, range, and power to change their life and those of their fellow employees, but unless they feel the necessity to carry the change beyond their world’s borders, the most they are likely to accomplish in the world beyond is readjustment of other companies to remain competitive with theirs. Another factor is that the ability to change an organization depends on the amount of order already present, the persuasive abilities of the individual or group trying to effect the change, and the differential between its current “velocity vector” or direction of travel and the desired one.) And of course, the comparative brevity of human life also affects the magnitude of change that can be effected by an individual or organization.
Change is a process that will occur, whether drift or intentional movement. However, attachment to the ways that have worked in the past is a survival trait if, in a dangerous environment, any given change is far more likely to kill you than actually improve upon anything you do. “Change slowly in a dangerous environment.” If that slow rate of change is a intrinsic characteristic of the system rather than a volitional one, that might explain the length of time required for “civilization” to emerge; the farther back you go, the more dangerous our environment was, at least in terms of megafauna, predators, and the precariousness of food sources. Perhaps it was the transient nature of our environment that was responsible, at least in part, for our development of language.
Plugging these thoughts on change and conservation into the framework, periods of stagnation or slow growth could be explained as situations where the environment (in its wider sense) constrained the rate of growth. Societies could arrive at such a state through natural progression or be thrust back into such a state by destruction of the underpinnings that make “civilization” as we know it possible: specialization of labor, education, population size and demographics, and technology are but a few.
How does all of this pertain to Prometheus? Because he chose to disobey Zeus in order to aid humans. In the version I have read, there was no clear motivation given beyond that desire to aid us, but I consider it reasonable to presume that he saw some virtue, some potential for a bright or, at the very least, stable future.
The link is the implicit question, “Why would you give a people something that you know can be misused?” Of course, some would argue that the question is totally irrelevant either because there’s no conclusive proof that anyone chose to give us civilization or its component parts (and what would such proof consist of?), or because we’re already here and are what we are. Both issues have merit, but I would argue that the first takes me too literally and the second, when taken too far, negates the motivation for contemplation of the issue.
My own re-phrasing of that question would be, “What characteristics do we possess that might be cause for optimism?”
On the best of days, I think that our creativity, capacity for love and caring, technology, and ability to communicate ideas across boundaries could win out, if enough of us can cooperate long enough to fix the problems we face as a species. On the worst of days, well…
