The Mythic

Matrix
Philosophy involves formal thinking, and at the
dawn of history thinking grew of of stories—
out of narratives, out of reflections, out of
collected wisdom. You have read three
foundation myths that powerfully conditioned
the body of thinking that came to take the
form of the Western philosophical tradition.
The myth of creation from Genesis, Hesiod's
"Ages of Humanity" myth, and the myth of
Prometheus are not the only ones,but they
are certainly among the most important.

In addition, you've read selections from the

ancient African wisdom tradition, a tradition
that has much to contribute to the
emergence of a more globalized philosophical
outlook of the 21st century.

The commentaries offered here are offered

as provisional interpretations, not as
definitive readings. There is no single 'true'
understanding of myth; what follows is
intended as an invitation to develop your own
interpretations.

Like God
In addition to creating the world, we are told
that God created humanity— male and female
— in his "image and likeness." Commentators
have speculated as to what that might mean
for millennia. Surely, something more
significant that bipedalism is at issue; indeed,
there have been many who have claimed that
centering interpretation on any merely human
characteristic is an inappropriate
anthropomorphism (that is, conceiving God in
human form). Also, one feels that humanity is
ill-summarized by the capacity to walk
upright.

Reason is a more interesting candidate: God

and humanity might be said to share that, and
so it might be the factor indicated by "image
and likeness." Yet for many that too sounds
inadequate: for all that reason is important,
Aristotle’s definition of humanity as "the
rational animal" seems somehow incomplete.
There’s still too much left unaddressed. But
what of the paramount characteristic and
activity of God in the opening chapters of
Genesis— the suggestion that God is a
creator. "In the beginning, God created. . ."
God creates: this entails not just reason but
also spontaneity and innovation. God creates
and, characteristic of the creative process as
opposed to mere fabrication, takes pleasure
in his creation. God regularly pauses and
reflects that his creation is "good," and "very
good."

The intellect, the heart, and even the body is

involved in the myth we find in Genesis: God
fashions the man from clay. Keeping in mind
that there is no definitive or correct
interpretation of a metaphor or myth, and
that the best test of a given interpretation is
not its truth, but its effects. Using this
interpretative criterion, then, I propose a
useful way of thinking about "image and
likeness"— God created us humans in his
image and likeness; he created us to be
creative.

Creativity is at the heart of what we are. We

are the animal that uniquely acts on its
environment. We change our environment, we
mold it, improve it, and (the cautionary
element in this interpretation) sometimes
disrupt it. All disruptions notwithstanding, our
creative acting on our environment has
produced civilization; all missteps, even the
very ugly ones, acknowledged, we humans are
the species which from our metaphoric
beginning in the Garden of Eden, have vastly
improved our condition through our creative
agency on our environment. Our creativity has
enhanced our situation; at regular intervals,
our creativity has enhanced our
understanding of our situation.

This is what we, as a species, do. If you like,

it is what God created us to do. Speaking
metaphorically, God created us to be creative.
And so it is entirely appropriate to persist in
this activity, and to frankly acknowledge that
the time has come for yet another burst of
creativity.

Human creativity is unique in the animal

kingdom. Animals are not capable of
creativity, but only of variance. The
difference turns on spontaneity— on self-
initiation. Animals vary their behavior, and
over time that variance may be genetically
installed as instinct. But this non-human
variance is never more than a response to
changing conditions in the external
environment. Human creativity, by contrast, is
self-initiated, it is spontaneous. We change
things, we change the way we do things, just
for the simple joy of it. And sometimes, as we
know too well, we do it for the sheer hell of
it.

But let's go back— back to the Beginning.

Genesis begins, appropriately, "In the

beginning," with an account of the Creation. It
is significant that God speaks the world into
existence— "And God said. . . And God said. .
." The world is brought into being through
language, and language is the medium of
relationship.

In the view of Genesis, the highest hope of

the human self is a relationship to God. And
this has never been easy. For we humans have
a natural tendency, it seems, to allow this or
that aspect of the world to come between
God and us. That is, we tend to establish our
primary relationship to some aspect of the
world, rather than to the world’s Creator—
God.

The human task in life, as Genesis presents

it, is to be mindful of the fact that our
primary relationship is to God, and that our
relationship to the world and anything in the
world is always of a secondary order. We are
in the world, but not of the world; the world
is, as it were, a stage setting for the drama
of the relationship between God and
humanity.

But let’s think a bit more about relationships.

There are two general kinds of relationships,
personal and impersonal. That is, there are
relationships between persons, and there are
relationships between beings that are not
both persons. A can of beans and the counter
on which it sits are in relationship, but since
neither is a person, that relationship is not a
personal one. And for now such relationships
don’t interest us.
That the ultimate reality
is a Person is one of the
most important aspects of
the Genesis myth— in
fact, this point cannot be
overemphasized.
For a brief discussion of
this vital issue,
see this essay by Werner
Voss HERE.
Let’s consider another relationship, this time
between a person and a non-person. For
example: you have a relationship with the sun.
You are a person, but the sun is not, so your
relationship to the sun is an impersonal one.
The sun is not a person and does not care one
way or another for persons: the sun shines
equally on a vile Nazi and on a saint. Another
way of describing this is to say that there are
no conditions in a non-personal relationship.

The situation is very different in a personal

relationship. Persons inevitably, to a degree,
care about each other, and so there are
always conditions in a personal relationship.
Now God in Genesis is conceived as a person
— he is depicted as being pleased, or angry,
or regretful. And humans are persons. So the
human relationship to God will be different
than a relation to the sun: specifically, it will
be a personal relationship, and there will be
terms and conditions stipulated.

The terms and conditions between God and

humanity become quite complicated
throughout the development of the Bible, but
in the primal myth of Genesis an elegantly
simple portrayal of God’s relation to humanity
is presented:
And the LORD God commanded the man,
saying, "You may freely eat of every tree
 of the garden; but of the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil you shall not
eat, for in the day that you eat of it you
shall die." Ch.2:16-17
Elegantly simple; outrageously unfair. Why?
The man is the ultimate naïf: on the myth's
own terms, he knows neither good nor evil—
that would require his already having eaten of
the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
He wasn’t "born yesterday," but only because
he wasn’t born at all; "yesterday" is as far
back as his life-experience extends. No: it
isn't fair. Many have pointed out that the
situation is a set-up— God didn’t give his
creature a chance. But life is like that, isn't
it? And Genesis presents us with a myth
designed to evoke an understanding of what
life, the self, and the human situation is all
about. The myth is designed to represent life
as experienced— not as we'd like it to be.

We next read that a woman (so named

because she is "taken out of Man") is brought
into being. The text, like so much good myth,
is spare. All we are told is that the man and
woman lived together in nakedness, and felt
no shame. One interpretation of the situation
is that in their primordial state, the man and
woman had an uncomplicated relation to
sexuality— that, like non-human animals, they
were without self-consciousness or scruple in
regard to sex.

But not for long. In a masterful narrative of

seduction, Genesis depicts the subtle serpent
questioning the woman, and making a sweeping
over-statement of God’s command: "Did God
say, 'You shall not eat of any tree of the
garden'?" (Ch.3:1) And he slyly allows the
woman to correct him, which she promptly
does:
We may eat of the fruit of the trees of
the garden; but God said, 'You shall not
eat of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden, neither shall you
touch it, lest you die.' Ch.3:2-3
Just that one tree, only that one: the oh-so-
subtle serpent allows the woman’s own
thinking to center her mind on the tree, the
special tree, the tree in the center of the
garden. He offers reassurances. And he
recedes into the background. Again, the text
is spare. We see that the woman is audacious:
she is motivated by practicality, by a sense of
the beauty of the tree, and— note carefully—
by a desire for wisdom:
So when the woman saw that the tree was
good for food, and that it was a delight to
the eyes, and that the tree was to be
desired to make one wise, she took of its
fruit and ate. . . Ch.3:6
Chomp. Things are happening fast. She gives
the fruit to her husband. Chomp. The first
consequence of eating the forbidden fruit is
of overwhelming importance— and regularly
goes unnoticed in a reading of Genesis. We’re
in a rush to get to the sex part— the passage
when they suddenly notice that they’re !
naked!— and so we tend to miss the terse and
unasserted statement:
Then the eyes of both were opened. . .
(Ch.3:7)
Were they walking around earlier with their
eyes closed? Obviously not: the text states
that the woman saw that the tree was edible,
was beautiful, and a source of wisdom. Then
what? In myths throughout the world,
eyesight is typically used as a metaphor for
consciousness. In eating the fruit, the
forbidden fruit, in disobeying God, the man
and woman underwent a transition in
consciousness.

A different consciousness, a more complex

consciousness— a conflicted consciousness.
And this brings us to the sex part: their
revised consciousness was one in which, unlike
animals, they were aware of their sexuality.
They saw that they were naked. But this isn’t
a Greek myth, one in which sexuality is
celebrated as a divine Eros. The first
response of the newly sexually aware man and
woman was the impulse to hide: to hide their
genitals, to hide themselves.

God arrives. He is neither amused nor

affectionate. Like an irascible traffic-cop, he
dispenses penalties in all directions, to the
serpent, to the woman, to the man. But he is
also reflective:
"Behold, the man has become like one of
us, knowing good and evil; and now, lest he
put forth his hand and take also of the
tree of life, and eat, and live for ever"—
therefore the LORD God sent him forth
from the garden of Eden. . . Ch.3:22
God sees the changes that have been wrought
in the man and woman through their
disobedience, and judges that everlasting life
is no longer suitable for them. It is here that
we learn that there is another very important
tree in the garden— the tree of life, the tree
of everlasting life, for as God says, eating of
it will allow one to life for ever.
And note: it was only the tree of the
knowledge of good and evil that was
forbidden; all the other trees— including the
tree of life— were permitted. Damn.

But let me call your attention to the beginning

of God’s reflections in the passage just cited,
the reflections in which he decides to expel
the man and woman from the garden. His
opening words were: "Behold, the man has
become like one of us." This invites reflection.
To begin, way back in Ch.1 we are told that
when God thought to create humanity—
God said, "Let us make man in our image,
after our likeness". . . Ch.1
The enigmatic phrase "in our image, after our
likeness" has haunted commentators for
millennia. Whatever the specific
interpretation, it is clear that there are, as it
were, two distinct phases through which we
humans are in the "image and likeness" of
God. When God booted the man and woman
from the garden, it was because, to cite it
again:
"the man has become like one of us,
knowing good and evil. . ." Ch.3:22
So: knowing good and evil is a second phase of
our "likeness" to God, a phase which, taking
the myth at face value as presented, God
didn’t intend for us. (For our purposes, I’m
avoiding psychoanalyzing God’s intentions
here.)

But prior to this second phase, which has

clearly displeased God, there was the human
resemblance to him alluded to in Ch.1. What
was that resemblance, that "image and
likeness"? In fact we have a clue. The clue is
found in the character of the only human
whose mind we are privy to— the woman’s.
While she is portrayed as easy prey to the
serpent’s seductions, important aspects of
her character are revealed in the process of
that seduction. I recall them from the
beginning of Ch.3:
 . . .the woman saw that the tree was good
for food, and that it was a delight to the
eyes, and that the tree was to be desired
to make one wise. . .
She is practical, she is moved by beauty, and
she desires wisdom. It was these aspects of
her character— hardly contemptible ones,
qualities that have been admired ever since
humans reflected on what it is to be human—
it was just these aspects of her character
that led the woman to precipitate what is
called "the Fall." How did she come to have
these character traits? Well, God made her
that way. And this, I propose, is the first
phase of the likeness of humanity to God.

The irony here is that the two phases of

humanity’s resemblance to God are in conflict
with each other. It is the very poignancy and
integrity of the woman’s psychological makeup
(phase one of the human likeness to God) that
led to her disobedience and consequent
knowledge of good and evil (phase two of the
human likeness to God).

The woman is led by her likeness (1) to God to

establish her likeness (2) to God. That is, she
is led by what God created her to be to
offend God. She’s in a trap. Again: it isn’t fair.
But again: that’s life— that’s what it is to be
human. Conflict and alienation come with the
territory. To be human is to be compromised,
to be human is to live in unresolvable
quandary.

Rather than think of this elegant myth as a

"Fall," it is more appropriate to think of it as
"the myth of the Garden." In doing so,
however, we are confronted with a problem.
What about obedience? Or more precisely,
what about disobedience? Most folks who
have encountered this myth have understood
the woman's disobedience to God as
humanity's primordial disaster. But recall
that we're talking about relationship here. In
their primal condition, the man and woman
may have been lovely and engaging. But they
were children. You've been with children―
delightful, to be sure, but one cannot
realistically expect to have a mature
relationship with them. And typically, children
grow to maturity through acts of
disobedience. This is not arcane
knowledge; it is all-too-familiar to any parent.
Indeed, a child that never disobeys is a child
in serious developmental trouble.

The sheer audacity of the woman in this myth

is underappreciated. Worse, that audacity has
been identified with evil. ("If only she hadn't.
. .") But such an attitude yields religious
dispositions that many, here at the beginning
of the 21st century, find repugnant. If the
woman's audacity, her growth into
individuality through disobedience, is
disparaged as contrary to God's will, then, so
goes the reasoning, perhaps God prizes human
obedience above all else. Too often, then, the
appropriate religious disposition is what might
be characterized as a spaniel fawning. An
uncharitable characterization, perhaps, but
you recognize the attitude: an abject spiritual
groveling before the divine Majesty.

It can be argued that if God had really prized

obedience so much, he’d have made his
covenant with a dog. Instead, God chose
relationship with a wayward biped, one
capable of both wonder and stupidity, of
baseness and nobility. More: if obedience was
so important, it is impossible that the mythic-
historical figure of David, as we find him
presented in the 1st and 2nd books of
Samuel, could hold his place as the special
favorite of God. But there's another passage
in Genesis, this time from Chapter 32, when
Jacob wrestles with a nocturnal visitor― a
visitor who turns out to be none other than
God himself. It's worth considering:
And Jacob was left alone; and a
man wrestled with him until the
 breaking of the day. When the
man saw that he did not prevail
against Jacob, he touched the
hollow of his thigh; and Jacob's
thigh was put out of joint as he
wrestled with him. Then he said,
"Let me go, for the day is
breaking." But Jacob said, "I will
not let you go, unless you bless
me." And he said to him, "What is
your name?" And he said, "Jacob."
Then he said, "Your name shall no
more be called Jacob, but Israel,
for you have striven with God
and with men, and have
prevailed."
Do you want a relationship with God? Then
get up on your hind legs and be a daughter of
Israel, a son of Israel. Be a "striver with
God." I know, I know— this isn't what you've
heard in church or temple. But many folks
here at the opening of the 21st century, many
folks like you, dear reader, are not finding
what they need in churches or temples. And
so, it would seem, a fresh reading of the
ancient myths is in order.

Like Iron
The Greek poet Hesiod is believed to have
lived sometime around 700 BCE— no more
precise dates are available. His Works and
Days, from which your reading has been
selected, often centers attention on the lives
and hopes of ordinary people. For all this,
Hesiod doesn't much admire or even like the
humans with whom he shared the earth. He
traces a history of humanity that is a
trajectory of decline and degeneration.
Neither his message nor his disposition is a
sunny one.

As an aside, Hesiod's depiction of a

generational decline is also found in the myths
of India, in which successive ages, or yugas,
trace a course of decline. For both Hesiod
and Indian mythology, we are now living in the
lowest and most degenerate of times— the
Iron Age for Hesiod, the Kali Yuga in the
Indian reckoning.

In Hesiod's view, both gods and humans have

a single source— nature. And yet in the
context of nature, it was the gods who
brought humans into being. But "human," in
Hesiod's story, means something very
different at different times. The first and
best edition of humanity, a golden race,
differed very little from the gods who
created them. We are told that they lived
without sorrow, that they lived free from
grief— even the grief of aging. Yes, death
finally came to them, but, we read:

"When they died, it was as though they

were overcome with sleep. . ."

In time the golden race passed away and were

replace by another race— this one of silver.
Their nature was a steep decline from the
golden race: their lives were dishonorable and
offensive to the gods. And depressing to the
reader:

"A child was brought up at his good

mother's side an hundred years, an utter
simpleton, playing childishly in his own
home. But when they were full grown and
were come to the full measure of their
prime, they lived only a little time in
sorrow because of their foolishness, for
they could not keep from sinning and from
wronging one another, nor would they
serve the immortals. . ."

Not a dignified scenario, and we are told that

Zeus "was angry and put them away, because
they would not give honor to the blessed gods
who live on Olympus." Perhaps there were also
aesthetic reasons for Zeus's decision to "put
them away"— that is, exterminate them. In
any case, we will come back to the theme of
Zeus and his determination to terminate a
disgusting version of humanity later, when we
consider Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound.

For now we turn to the next edition of

humanity, the third, a bronze race. And again
the experiment was not a happy one. From the
vice of stupidity that characterized the silver
race, we now find a race given to the vice of
uncontrolled violence:

". . .it was in no way equal to the silver

age, but was terrible and strong. They
loved the lamentable works of Ares and
deeds of violence; they ate no bread, but
were hard of heart like adamant, fearful
men."

Their violence was their undoing: "These were

destroyed by their own hands and passed to
the dank house of chill Hades, and left no
name. . ." Their lives were, as the British
philosopher Thomas Hobbes would later say,
nasty, brutish, and short. And utterly without
merit.
But now a surprise: a relief from the
relentless decline that has marked the human
story. We find a fourth race not associated
with a metal, but with heroism. These are the
great heroes who populate the epics of
Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, the characters
that would come to fill the casts of the great
tragedies of Sophocles, Aeschylus, and
Euripides. They were, Hesiod tells us:

". . .nobler and more righteous, a god-like

race of hero-men who are called demi-
gods, the race before our own. . .Cadmus
at seven-gated Thebes when they fought
for the flocks of Oedipus, and some. . .in
ships over the great sea gulf to Troy for
rich-haired Helen's sake. . ."

One senses that the relief provided by this

fourth and heroic generation serves merely to
accentuate for Hesiod the hateful falling off
that we find in the next version of humanity—
the fifth generation, a race of iron. His own
words are telling:

". . .would that I were not among the men

of the fifth generation, but either had
died before or been born afterwards. For
now truly is a race of iron, and men never
rest from labor and sorrow by day, and
from perishing by night; and the gods
shall lay sore trouble upon them."

Bad times. And the calendar of ages— Gold,

Silver, Bronze, Iron— moves at a slow pace;
each age lasts thousands of years. That
means that the Iron Age that Hesiod so
laments includes not only his day but also
extends to ours. It is an age that we of the
21st century CE share with Hesiod of the 8th
century BCE. And to say it again: bad times.
But Hesiod says it best:

"The father will not agree with his

children, nor the children with their
father, nor guest with his host, nor
 comrade with comrade; nor will brother
be dear to brother as in times before.
Men will dishonor their parents as they
grow quickly old, and will carp at them,
chiding them with bitter words. . .There
will be no favor for the man who keeps his
oath or for the just or for the good; but
rather men will praise the evil-doer and
his violent dealing. . .Envy, foul-mouthed,
delighting in evil, with scowling face, will
go along with wretched men one and all."

A dog-eat-dog world, filled with barking and

biting. Will this never stop? Yes, according to
Hesiod, it will; and shifting from the role of
historian to that of prophet he tells us that
"Zeus will destroy this race of mortal men
also when they come to have gray hair on the
temples at their birth." We Iron wretches
will meet a similar fate as the degenerate
Silver humans: Zeus will destroy us and put an
end to the indignity. As to the timing— I
trust that someone is fretfully monitoring
human births, looking for the onset of babies
born with gray hair on their temples.

Now: why have I assigned you to read this

grouchy myth? It is important, I think,
because it represents a recurring disposition
among us humans to look at our fellows with a
cynical squint. Are you familiar with the term
"curmudgeon"? Dictionary definitions are
seldom adequate for academic work, but in
this case the Merriam-Webster offers a good
one: "Curmudgeon = a crusty, ill-tempered
person, usually an old man."

Yes: an old man, but old women can play too.

All Hesiod's talk about "Men will dishonor
their parents as they grow old," that "they
will not repay their aged parents"— a lot of
this is the resentment that all too often
attends old age. Damn kids. They appreciate
nothing. Why when I was their age. . .but
never mind.
But again: why have I burdened you with this
kvetching? What is to be learned here? I
propose the Hesiod's myth of humanity as
being in an Iron Age, that we are Iron people,
is a harmful one. Myths, too, can be
dangerous.

Remember, the Iron Age is not something we

all voted for in a misguided moment, it is
something we are born to— the hateful
tendencies that characterize the Iron Age
are taken to be innate to the human condition.
That's just how we are, and we might as well
face it.

Such a disparaging view of humanity, of the

human self, if widely accepted, can subvert
the possibility of the broad social cooperation
that is necessary for a healthy community.
More, it serves to make people uniquely
susceptible to manipulation. In his book
Information Inequality, social critic Herbert
Schiller reflects on the tacit view of human
nature being promoted in the
news/entertainment media:

". . .a growing number of radio and

television broadcasters, reviewers, and
writers for the most influential papers,
magazines, and novels selected for big
promotions, films given the blockbuster
production budgets, and social theories
popularized in the media exhibit a marked
preference for detailing the flaws,
imperfections, and antisocial behavior of
human beings. . .A mean and dark view of
human nature, one that emphasizes its
rigidity and inherent defects, underpins a
current unwillingness to entertain even
minimally the prospect of social
cooperation and human solidarity."

It is entirely plausible to argue that, however

inadvertently, our image-mediated culture is
generating a myth, a myth that is the
psychological descendant of Hesiod's myth, a
myth that powerfully conditions our sense of
who we are and what our potentials are. A
sullen view of human nature, one that
emphasizes corruption, serves to subvert the
capacity to call existing social patterns to
account. It undermines the capacity for trust.
It generates a view of life alluded to above: a
dog-eat-dog world, filled with barking and
biting.

In such a psychological ambience, individuals

are rendered eminently manageable. Personal
opinions and feelings are expertly and
scientifically manipulated— through desires
that are commercially induced, through
alarms engineered by political action
committees, through assuagements of
loneliness and alienation by corporate public
relations campaigns that assure us that, after
all, we are family.

But perhaps I'm getting carried away. Is

there really nothing that can be done?
Certainly: we can engage myths like those
posed overtly by Hesiod, and covertly by our
late 20th century media culture. And we
engage disturbing myths like those of Hesiod
by thinking them through, by critically
assessing for ourselves what (if anything) is
right and what (if anything) is wrong about
them. Note that taking myths seriously does
not require being grim: we humans are often
most serious when we are at play. Yes, the
myth raises serious issues— but let yourself
play with it.

Like Wow
Aeschylus lived from 525 to 456 BCE. He is
believed to have fought in the decisive naval
battle at Salamis in 480 BCE, a battle in
which Athenian forces defeated, through
superior strategy, a much larger Persian fleet
under the command of Xerxes. Aeschylus was
in many ways a lucky man: he lived in happy
times, at the zenith of Athenian culture, at a
time when Athens was an acknowledged
wonder of the world. In addition, Aeschylus
himself was a genius and was publicly
recognized as such.

Prometheus Bound was written in 462 BCE. It

was a revolutionary work, a broadside assault
on traditional Greek religion. The hero— and
Aeschylus means us to see him as the good
guy— is Prometheus. The villain is the
personification of the traditional Greek
religion that is under attack in the play: the
king of the gods— Zeus. Zeus is portrayed in
the drama as having power, but neither virtue
nor insight.

Throughout the dialogue, that is, throughout

all the lines of Prometheus that you've read,
he's chained to a rock in punishment for his
defiance of Zeus. He is doomed to stay
chained there for ages. It won't be boring for
him, however, because at irregular intervals a
giant eagle descends to eat out his liver— a
liver which then miraculously regrows itself,
so that the ritual can occur again. And again,
etc. But why is this happening? That brings us
to the reason I assigned this myth.

Recall in Hesiod's myth of the various ages of

humanity that Zeus destroyed the feeble-
minded Silver race. Recall further that he
had plans in the works to do the same to our
contemptible version of humanity: the Iron
race will be destroyed by Zeus, Hesiod tells
us with dark satisfaction, when babies are
born with gray hair on their temples.

In the variant of the myth told by Aeschylus,

Zeus had already attempted our
extermination. As in Hesiod, Zeus, the king of
the gods, is not our friend. Prometheus
speaks to the Chorus— a Chorus, you might
like to know, comprised not of humans or gods
but rational and kindly sea-birds. And
Prometheus tells them:
 But to the unhappy breed of humanity he
gave no heed, intending to exterminate
the race and create a new version.
Against these plans none stood save I: I
dared to oppose Zeus. I rescued men
from shattering destruction that would
have carried them to the house of Hades;
and therefore I am tortured on this rock.
..

Got it? Prometheus is our friend, Zeus is our

enemy. But now we learn that Prometheus did
far more than save us from extermination.
Indeed, he made us what we are. More
pointedly, it was Prometheus that
transformed the beasts that Zeus want to
destroy into. . .into Athenians!— the wonder
of the ancient world.

What's fascinating from the standpoint of

the history of ideas is that Aeschylus gives us
a proto- evolutionary account of the
emergence of humanity. Let's use the word
"evolution" carefully. In popular discourse,
evolution means ascent— a movement from
lower to higher, from worse to better, etc. In
our present discussion, this is fine: it's
obviously the course of development that
Aeschylus had in mind when he mythically
portrays human origins. You should be aware,
however, that not every evolutionist sees
evolution as an ascent: most prominently,
Darwin stoutly denied that evolution has a
"direction." He said famously "If an amoeba is
as well-adapted as we are, who is to say we
are 'higher' creatures?"

Fine. Let's put Darwin back in his box now,

and return to Aeschylus and his myth of
human ascent. When we hear Prometheus's
account of the original state of humanity, we
can almost sympathize with Zeus's
uncharitable designs for them:

". . .hear what troubles there were among

men, how I found them witless and gave
 them the use of their wits and made them
masters of their minds. . .For men at first
had eyes but saw to no purpose; they had
ears but did not hear. Like the shapes of
dreams they dragged through their long
lives and handled all things in
bewilderment and confusion. They did not
know of building houses with bricks to
face the sun; they did not know how to
work in wood. They lived like swarming
ants in holes in the ground, in the sunless
caves of the earth."

If folks know anything at all of Prometheus,

it's that he defied the gods by giving ancient
humanity the gift of fire. And Aeschylus
includes that in his telling of the myth; but
it's clear that in his version Prometheus did
far more than hand us a torch. In Prometheus
Bound, fire is a metaphor that carries several
meanings.

Fire is, on the most obvious level, the basis of

material technology: it is how warm ourselves,
cook food, and develop the means to build
machinery for work and transportation. The
fire of Prometheus is also the basis of
medicine:

". . .in the former times if a man fell sick

he had no defense against the sickness,
neither healing food nor drink, nor
unguent; but through the lack of drugs
men wasted away, until I showed them the
blending of mild simples wherewith they
drive out all manner of diseases."

Promethean fire also provided humanity with

the arts of astronomy and prophecy. But most
important, Prometheus's gift was the means
by which the dismal wretches who "like the
shapes of dreams...dragged through their long
lives and handled all things in bewilderment
and confusion"— it was the means by which
these were transformed into Athenians.

And this last is most significant: Promethean

fire, like the opened eyes of the Genesis
myth, signals the emergence of a new kind of
consciousness. And, as in Genesis, this new
consciousness is a consequence of
disobedience and offense. This new
consciousness is a consciousness governed by
reason— and reason is another way to
understand what Promethean fire is. In
Aeschylus's view, reason gave human beings
the capacity to take their destiny into their
own hands. To have reason, to be rational, was
to no longer need the gods, to be rational was
to follow Prometheus in being an affront to
the gods.

In Genesis the development of human

consciousness as we know it remains a "Fall"—
a disconnection from a good God practicing
what might today be called "tough love." In
Prometheus Bound, by contrast, the ruler god
Zeus is portrayed as a dishonorable despot;
the disobedience of Prometheus is not a
"Fall," but a righteous rebellion.
More: where in the Genesis myth, the new
humans were expelled in disgrace, we might
say for Aeschylus the new humans— now
empowered with fire— were launched. Not
expelled, but freed. The gift of Prometheus
is the capacity for humans to make
themselves. It is a mandate for a "can-do"
optimism. We can solve every problem, attain
to any height. Wow! It's great to be human.
Let me repeat myself: Wow!

Yes!! Yes. Ok, fine. But there's another side

to this coin. The good times for Aeschylus's
Athens, alas, were transitory. In the
generation after he lived, Athens saw defeat
and humiliation: there was a disastrous war
against Sparta, the Peloponnesian War, that
was waged and lost; there was a plague that
ravaged the city during the war; there was
political intrigue that sapped the elan from
any remaining civic spirit.

The original Whiz-kids of the world found

themselves in a position from which, no doubt,
Hesiod's myth of decline made far more
sense than the Promethean optimism of
Aeschylus. The lesson here might be this: we
human are all-too-prone to the facile and
dangerous inference that, because we have
done so much, we can therefore do anything.

We hear the word "Promethean" used as a

disapproving epithet in connection with recent
disasters like the Chernobyl meltdown and
the Challenger explosion. We hear the term
invoked as a cautionary note in the face of
plans for DNA research, cloning, and eugenics.

For many, the name of Prometheus is a

byword for incautious over-reaching; and they
soberly point out that the prospect of liver
surgery implemented by an eagle is not an
attractive one. For others, "Prometheus!" is a
clarion-call to, as the announcer says, "boldly
go where no man has gone before."
Where, then, lies the appropriate disposition
to being human?— You aren't going to look to
me for an answer to that, are you?

THE AFRICAN
WISDOM TRADITIONS
Thinking about the self is often just that—
thinking. That's why the discipline of
philosophy is often seen as the appropriate
mode for approaching the big, vital issues of
life. Philosophy is fine, thinking is fine. But
there are liabilities: thinking can become
bound up with theory. And again, there's
nothing wrong with theory. But we think, we
philosophize, we theorize, only with part of
ourselves. When we philosophize, when we
think and theorize, we have access to
understanding only a part of life. So it follows
that there's more to the self than can be
accessed through theory— through
philosophy. Before we theorize, we live.

Next week we will turn to Plato, arguably the

most influential philosopher in the Western
tradition. As we'll see, Plato thought his way
to theories whereby he rejected his own body
as alien to his true self, in which he likened
life as we experience it to an existence of
dingy imprisonment. Such theories would have
been unthinkable to the African mind. It isn't
that African sages didn't develop theories,
they did. But their theories were always
rigorously subordinated to life— African
wisdom is organically embedded, embedded in
culture, embedded in nature.

African culture did not produce a formal

philosophical tradition in the way that Europe,
India, and China did. This does not mean that
a sophisticated understanding of the self did
not evolve. In his book African Philosophy:
Myth and Reality, the African philosopher
Paulin J. Hountondji insists that it is a
mistake to try to force African wisdom
thought into non-African molds. He says:

"...today's African philosophers must

reorient their discourse. They must
write first and foremost for an
African public, no longer for a non-
African public. That will be enough to
stop them from purring on about Luba
ontology, Dogon metaphysics, etc,
simply because such themes do not
interest their fellow countrymen but
were aimed formerly at satisfying the
Western craving for exoticism."
(p.52)

Hountondji continues by saying that the

teaching transmitted through poignant tales
and wisdom sayings of tribal shamanic figures
possess a dignity independent of the religious
and philosophical traditions of Europe and
India. Their primal wisdom teaching, he says,

"...is infinitely closer to poetry than to

philosophy....Every thinker is not a
philosopher. This point must be made
clearly so that we can rid ourselves of
the common illusion once and for all..."
(p.82)

Now the wisdom tradition of Africa is not

merely a bush phenomenon; it is not
restricted to villages and backwaters— you
know, how farm-folk think. Organically
grounded wisdom thinking is evident in the
most ancient and exalted manifestations of
African culture. I refer now to Egypt, one of
the so-called "cradles of civilization".

The earliest Egyptian dynasty is called the

"Old Kingdom." Indeed, very old: it dates
from 2575 BCE to 2130 BCE. Those of you
with calculators handy will see that this
dynasty began some 4,500 years ago. We can
say words like "four thousand five hundred
years ago," but I suggest that we are
psychologically incapable of authentically
conceiving such a span of time. But speak of it
we must, and here we go.

His name was Ptah-hotep. He was not

himself a pharaoh but was, the story has it,
an advisor to the pharaoh Izezi, who reigned
from 2388 - 2356 BCE. It is noteworthy that
we know his name: ancient Egyptian history
typically records only the names of pharaohs.
In addition to his name, a collection of his
sayings have survived over the millennia. Ptah-
hotep is considered one of the great sages of
early antiquity. Isn't it odd that (in all
probability, dear reader) you haven't heard of
him?

The text ascribed to him, The Instruction of

Ptah-hotep, includes passages that some
scholars believe were included at a later date.
For our purposes: we don't care precise date.
We are interested in the fact that this stuff
is really old.

The Instructions have been treasured over

the millennia because they are much more
than official counsel to the throne. Ptah-
hotep's advice can be read as that, yes, but it
can equally be read as a father's advice to a
child— any father, aristocratic or commoner,
wealthy or poor.

These are wisdom sayings. Yet in them wisdom

is seated squarely in the context of life;
wisdom is valued not as a fancy hat to strut
about in, but for its practical (always
practical) applications in life. Look at the
first saying:

"Don't be proud of your knowledge,

Consult the ignorant and the wise; the
limits of art are not reached, no
artist's skills are perfect..."

Wisdom is not a place where one "arrives", it

is an art, a never-ending quest and discipline
in which a person engages throughout life.
Indeed, the thought that you have "arrived"
is dangerous; it betokens arrogance and a
serious lack of perceptiveness.

Ptah-hotep uses a word that is important for

our discussion of the self, the word ka. Ka is a
complex concept, and I won't be able to do it
justice here.

Aside: The hieroglyph for ka is

unforgettable: a stylized representation
of human upper arms extended straight
out from the body and parallel to the
ground, the lower arms at a 90° angle
upward— it always reminds me of a
football official signaling a touchdown.
Here it is:
Ka is an essential aspect of the self; it is a
unique vital force that makes the individual
what she or he is; the ka is the core reality of
a person that can, in times of danger, act as a
protecting spirit. And lots more. How does
one discover the nature of one's own ka?
Thinking is useful, of course. But more
important, we read in saying #11:

"Follow your heart as long as you live,

do no more than is required, do not
shorten the time of "follow-the-
heart." Trimming its moment offends
the ka."

Ka, then, is realized more through the heart

than through the head. You will know that you
are in touch with your ka not through this or
that theory, but through results the develop
in your life. Ptah-hotep tells us:

"One plans the morrow but knows not

what will be, the [right] ka is the ka
by which one is sustained. If
praiseworthy deeds are done, friends
will say, Welcome!" #22

An important key to wisdom, for Ptah-hotep,

is restraint and self-control. Above all,
restrain that unattractive human tendency to
swagger and gloat during times of good
fortune. The problem with such behavior isn't
that it's not nice, but that it's not smart.

"If you plow and there's growth in the

field, and god lets it prosper in your
hand, do not boast at your neighbors'
side, one has great respect for the
silent man: man of character is man of
wealth." #9

Likewise with quarreling:

 "A quarreler is a mindless person, if
he is known as an aggressor the
hostile man will have trouble in the
neighborhood." #31

To repeat: being irascible isn't not nice, it's

not smart. Who wants trouble with the
neighbors? That's no way to live well. And
living well is the entire point of life; that’s
the "wisdom" of the African wisdom tradition.

Recall that I suggested above that the

enduring appeal of Ptah-hotep turns on the
fact that what he says is addressed to people
at all stations. Are you a pharaoh, a ruler?

"Punish firmly, chastise soundly, Then

repression of crime becomes an
example; punishment except for crime
turns the complainer into an enemy."
#36

No sentimentality here: to slack on

punishment encourages crime; to punish
unjustly is to create dangerous enemies.
That's for rulers.

But are you at the other end of the social

spectrum— are you poor?

"If you are poor, serve a man of

worth, that all your conduct may be
well with the god. Do not recall if he
once was poor, don't be arrogant
toward him for knowing his former
state; respect him for what has
accrued to him, for wealth does not
come by itself." #9

"Hell, I remember that creep from our high-

school days. Drunken skirt-chaser. Damn. He
gets a little luck, and look at him take on
airs." Almost invariably this is a stupid
assessment, one that ascribes to "luck" the
prominent position of a former school-mate.
"Wealth does not come by itself." Those who
luck into fortune usually don't keep it very
long; maintaining prominence demands
discipline and hard work.

Turning now to the collection of Swahili

proverbs, we find the same canny
perceptiveness so prized by Ptah-hotep. I
won't say much about the proverbs— most
are as accessible as they are enjoyable. I will
invite your attention to one set, however:

Ancestry
He who leaves his ancestry is rash.
One who leaves his ancestry is never a
hero.
He who leaves his own people is a liar.

No doubt that, in its time, this was sound

advice. One's ancestry is one's people, those
to whom one belongs. Certainly, keeping to
one's own was a survival strategy that was
effective for thousands of years.

But conditions of survival change, and a

behavior that in one age confers a survival
advantage may, in other age, constitute a
survival liability. Uncritical loyalty to
ancestry in the modern world is one way in
which tribalism manifests itself.

And tribalism is a particularly dangerous form

of loyalty. Such loyalty can be practiced upon
by propagandists to precipitate disasters like
the genocides in Rwanda and the former
Yugoslavia. Ancestry is backward looking;
however useful such cultural loyalties were in
the past, a consideration of prospects for the
future suggests that they may have outlived
their usefulness.

A commentator from Ghana recently

lamented the price of tribalism in 21st
century Africa— read it HERE.

But what do you think?

The Book of the Philosophers is a collection

of wisdom sayings, probably dating from the
5th century CE. The sayings were assembled
around the year 1515 by a Christian monk
known as Abba Mika'el (Father Michael).
Although seated in the Christian tradition,
these rich sayings clearly represent the
African disposition toward an organic
approach to wisdom.

There is, for example, this exquisite

psychological insight:

"If I tell lies, I fear God; if I tell the

truth, I fear you."

And a canny insight into the eccentricities of

class distinctions:

"If a wealthy man eats a snake, people

will think it is for medical reasons. If
a poor man eats a snake, people will
think it is because of hunger."