The Descent of Man

“Then they sent her to Epimetheus, who took her gladly, although Prometheus had warned him never to accept anything from Zeus. He took her, and afterward when that dangerous thing, a woman, was his, he understood how good his brother’s advice had been. For Pandora, like all women, was possessed of a lively curiosity. She had to know what was in the box. One day, she opened the lid - and out flew plagues innumerable, sorrow and mischief for mankind. In terror, Pandora clapped the lid down, but too late. One good thing, however, was there - Hope. It was the only good the casket had held among many evils, and it remains to this day mankind’s sole comfort in misfortune.”

                      - Edith Hamilton, Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes.

How uncanny is the resemblance that this Greek myth bears to Genesis! Eve was cursed with a curious nature and tempted Adam to pluck the apple, despite having been strictly instructed to not do so by God. Her sin made Adam and her conscious, and led to their expulsion from Paradise and onto Earth. It is remarkably beautiful, how the consumption of the fruit from the Tree of Knowledge made them more conscious (knowledgeable of truth) as well as self-conscious (aware of their inadequacies). 

A few points the biblical narrative bears in common with the Greek myth of Pandora:

1. In both narratives, humans are given a choice to err. He is tempted by the Devil, but not plunged into it by him. In the case of the Greek myth, this “devil” is embodied by the God, Zeus. This is not at all strange; Jung observed this ironical phenomenon first in his work, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious:

“As can readily be seen, the common modern idea of spirit ill accords with the Christian view, which regards it as the sum-mum bonum, as God himself. To be sure, there is also the idea of an evil spirit. But the modern idea cannot be equated with that either, since for us spirit is not necessarily evil;  we would have to call it morally indifferent or neutral.  When the Bible says “God is spirit,” it sounds more like the definition of a substance, or like a qualification. But the devil too, it seems, is endowed with the same peculiar spiritual substance, albeit an evil and corrupt one. The original identity of the substance is still expressed in the idea of the fallen angel, as well as in the close connection between Jehovah and Satan in the Old Testament. There may be an echo of this primitive connection in the Lord’s Prayer, where we say “Lead us not into temptation”—for is not this really the business of the tempter, the devil himself?”

What is clear to me here, is the amalgamation of the good (God) and evil (Devil) spirits (the etymology is fascinating!). Man is given a choice to err, he takes up that path by volition, suggesting that free will operates within the confines of the temptations laid out before us. Not undermining the modern idea of free will, I would say, it exists entwined with our intrinsic tendency to create mayhem.

Dostoevsky has explored this idea in his work Notes from Underground as well, as evident by the following excerpt:

“Now I ask you:  what can be expected of man since he is a  being endowed with strange qualities?  Shower upon him every earthly blessing, drown him in a sea of happiness so that nothing but bubbles of bliss can be seen on the surface; give him economic prosperity, such that he should have nothing else to do but sleep, eat cakes and busy himself with the continuation of his species, and even then out of sheer ingratitude,  sheer spite,  man would play you some nasty trick. He would even risk his cakes and would deliberately desire the most fatal rubbish,  the most uneconomical absurdity, simply to introduce into all this positive good sense his fatal fantastic element. It is just his fantastic dreams, his vulgar folly that he will desire to retain, simply in order to prove to himself—as though that were so necessary—  that men still are men and not the keys of a  piano, which the laws of nature threaten to control so completely that soon one will be able to desire nothing but by the calendar. And that is not all: even if man really were nothing but a piano-key, even if this were proved to him by natural science and mathematics, even then he would not become reasonable, but would purposely do something perverse out of simple ingratitude,  simply to gain his point.  And if he does not find means he will contrive destruction and chaos, will contrive sufferings of all sorts,  only to gain his point! He will launch a  curse upon the world,  and as the only man can curse  (it is his privilege,  the primary distinction between him and other animals),  maybe by his curse alone he will attain his object—that is, convince himself that he is a  man and not a  piano-key!  If you say that all this,  too, can be calculated and tabulated—chaos and darkness and curses,  so that the mere possibility of calculating it all beforehand would stop it all, and reason would reassert itself, then man would purposely go mad in order to be rid of reason and gain his point! I believe in it, I answer for it, for the whole work of man really seems to consist in nothing but proving to himself every minute that he is a man and not a piano-key! It may be at the cost of his skin, it may be by cannibalism! And this being so, can one help being tempted to rejoice that it has not yet come off, and that desire still depends on something we don’t know?”

2. In both narratives, it is the woman who is plagued by her curiosity, which leads her to guide man onto the path of chaos. It is the woman who invokes in the man to strive towards heroism, (or disobedience, if you will), to explore the unknown and the chaotic if only to make order out of it. 

3. The idea of accountability for man’s misadventures - not only are his actions punished by God, but a curse is also laid upon all of his descendants, and humanity as a race, to follow.

Nietzsche's conception of obedience explored in one of his later works, Beyond Good and Evil comes to mind:

"The singular fact remains, however, that everything of the nature of freedom, elegance, boldness, dance, and masterly certainty, which exists or has existed, whether it be in thought itself, or in administration, or in speaking and persuading, in art just as in conduct, has only developed by means of the tyranny of such arbitrary law, and in all seriousness, it is not at all improbable that precisely this is "nature" and "natural"—and not laisser-aller (lack of restraint)! Every artist knows how different from the state of letting himself go, is his "most natural" condition, the free arranging, locating, disposing, and constructing in the moments of "inspiration"—and how strictly and delicately he then obeys a thousand laws, which, by their very rigidness and precision, defy all formulation by means of ideas (even the most stable idea has, in comparison therewith, something floating, manifold, and ambiguous in it). The essential thing "in heaven and in earth" is, apparently (to repeat it once more), that there should be long OBEDIENCE in the same direction, there thereby results, and has always resulted in the long run, something which has made life worth living; for instance, virtue, art, music, dancing, reason, spirituality—anything whatever that is transfiguring, refined, foolish, or divine. The long bondage of the spirit, the distrustful constraint in the communicability of ideas, the discipline which the thinker imposed on himself to think in accordance with the rules of a church or a court, or conformable to Aristotelian premises, the persistent spiritual will to interpret everything that happened according to a Christian scheme, and in every occurrence to rediscover and justify the Christian God...this tyranny, this arbitrariness, this severe and magnificent stupidity, has EDUCATED the spirit; slavery, both in the coarser and the finer sense, is apparently an indispensable means even of spiritual education and discipline. One may look at every system of morals in this light: it is "nature" therein which teaches to hate the laisser-aller, the too great freedom, and implants the need for limited horizons, for immediate duties—it teaches the NARROWING OF PERSPECTIVES, and thus, in a certain sense, that stupidity is a condition of life and development."

4. Even after his fatal error, man is given another chance at redemption. In the Greek myth of Pandora, Hope was strategically placed in the casket to give man solace for when he served his sentence. In the story of Genesis, when man and woman were flung onto Earth, they were given a chance for redemption for their sins by following the path of God. 

"That brain, alone, not loses hope, whose choice is

To stick in shallow trash forevermore,—

Which digs with eager hand for buried ore,

And, when it finds an angle–worm, rejoices!

Dare such a human voice disturb the flow?"

                    -Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust.

5. In both stories, the time when the woman’s curiosity takes centre stage seems to be preceded by a period of bliss where man’s ignorance ruled supreme. This is analogous to a child’s development prior to his attainment of puberty.

Explore more:

1. Mythology, Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes - Edith Hamilton

2. Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious - Carl Jung

3. Notes from Underground - Fyodor Dostoevsky

4. Beyond Good and Evil - Friedrich Nietzsche

5. Faust - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe