I often write about the Titans, primeval giants of Greek mythology. I think the American image of "freedom," as unlimited and personal, a sacrosanct right of the individual, is Titanic ---violent, undisciplined, and hubristic. But maybe you don't know what happens to the Titans in the Greek myths.
The Olympians, the Greek pantheon led by Zeus, challenged the rule of the Titans. The two groups fought a war and the Olympians won, aided, interestingly, by the six sisters of the Titans, one of whom was Themis, goddess of law and the natural order. The Hours and the Fates, or Time and Destiny, were among her children. After the war, Themis helped Zeus establish a new order for the gods and humankind.
The defeated Titans are banished to Tartarus, a fearful place far from the living, deep in the dark bowels of the universe below even the Underworld. Tartarus is prison for the enemies of the Olympians, and a place of torture. Over time, this Greek hell became a place where the impious suffered endless, repetitive pains designed to mimic the nature of their transgressions. (Dante draws on this idea in The Inferno.) Every day in Tartarus was a new day, and yet the same. Kind of like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, but without the prospect of progress.
The Titan Tantalus for example, suffers endless hunger and thirst as punishment for his last dinner party, where he fooled his guests into eating the roasted body of his son. Tantalus is forced to stand up to his neck in a pool of water that recedes whenever he bends to take a drink. Above his head sways a branch laden with fruit that always bounces out of reach. The word tantalize comes from Tantalus, which means "the sufferer."
The canniblism and infanticide sounds gruesome I know, a barbarism that couldn't have a parallel in American culture today. But I wonder about the cows in our factory farms, forced to eat the ground bodies of other cattle, the meat they produce, what we call food, full of chemicals and lacking nutrients. Check out Fast Food Nation or Supersize Me to understand some of the results of our addiction to this poison meat. I have links to trailers below.
Tantalus was not the only tortured Titan. Prometheus is chained to a rock so an eagle can eat his liver every day. Atlas bears the world on his shoulders. Sisyphus rolls his heavy stone up the hill and follows it back down again, and again, and again, and again, and again. I don't know about you, but I often feel like Atlas and Sisyphus in my daily life. Too much rests on me. SOS. Maybe I want a different kind of freedom, or a different set of rules.
The Titans represent brute force, but their problem is not their strength, it is a lack of humility and respect for limits. They are scary, and awesome, and they do a lot of damage. But they are always defeated.
