Prometheus and the Plane

Today, my bellringer activity concerned the myth of Prometheus. Even now that I’m teaching Seniors, they still sit wide-eyed for these tales out of the distant past. I like to think that maybe they’ll remember the stories even if they don’t remember the grammar.

I told them about how Prometheus believed in humanity’s potential, petitioned Zeus to share the gods’ gifts with them, and was denied. I told them how Prometheus, the forward thinker, stole the sacred fire from the hearth of Olympus and brought it to man. I told them how he was bound to the rock and daily suffers unspeakable agony for his actions.

Yesterday, my AP kids and I went through Owen’s “Dulce et Decorum Est”. We looked at the timeline of the last century, and talked about what the major events were. I am not surprised, but somewhat ashamed to be a part of the society that allowed it, but my kids have very dim knowledge of those earth shattering times. World War I, World War II, the Great Depression, these are barely realities. They’re more like impositions, a mosquito buzzing in the ear, nothing that truly has to be considered but merely waved away to maintain a pleasant atmosphere.

This evening, I read my email and my CNN alerts and became aware of the full scope of the British plane plot. Men have sunk to the level that they have devised ways to kill masses of other men with sports drinks. Is this what Prometheus stole the holy fire from Olympus to create?

When I look down at my hands and I see their miraculous design, when I think of the almost unimaginable complexity of how our brains work and create reality from imagination, I am sickened right down to my soul by the uses to which we put these tools. If we can engineer ways to kill one another with household cleaners and fruit-flavored beverages, why can’t we devote the same fervor and unwavering perseverance to something worth a tinker’s damn?

It seems sometimes as if all we get better at is killing one another. When I was going through the Twentieth Century timeline with my kids, it struck me afresh how horribly fast we advanced from close combat to weapons of mass destruction. Will we ever grow beyond this, or are we doomed to selfish self-destruction? How can we fight this? How can we ever reclaim those wonderful gifts stolen from Olympus for good?

Tonight, my optimism is mostly done out. The eagles of hatred and extremism have torn the flesh, and I don’t know when Hercules is going to free the poor, shredded body of innovation, but I pray it happens soon.