A trio that acts as a multitude

Is a huge change, a mega-shift in values and consciousness underway? The collapsing economy sure seems significant; we might nationalize the banks, we’ve got CEO’s asking employees to give back their fat bonuses and people in Congress making speeches about corporate greed and incompetence. (I’m honestly glad, but I do hope we get to their role in all of this before we choke on the self-righteous indignation). Global warming is an admitted reality and Chevron places full page ads in The New Yorker calling on us to join them in a sustainable, energy efficient future. We have a brand new, young, black president, a president with plans to make the country more fair, more green, healthier, and better educated. A president who talks about patiently rebuilding and hard work ahead that won’t get done in a day. No more in and out, one week of shock and awe and a few handshakes and back to the corral type rhetoric.

It’s thrilling, but hard to tell if this is paradigm busting or just somewhat new means to essentially the same old ends: the United States stays at the top of the global heap because we somehow deserve to be there. We show a new level of restraint but still consume 1000 times what the average African manages, and go “green” by sacrificing habitat, views and solitude so private concerns can make money on our public lands. Despite the United Nations and conventions and treaties and alliances, we continue to independently assess our (best) national interest and wonder why the rest of the global community isn’t grateful when we pursue it. The American Way of Life, an inviolate standard for those who already enjoy it.

I don’t know how our current situation will play out. In search of a precedent or a model or something to ponder, I turn to the Titanomachia, an ancient story about one of the biggest shifts in world order imaginable, one with some parallels to our current situation. In Theogony, his account of the origins of the world, the Greek poet Hesiod tells the story of the Titanomachia, the war between the Titans and the Olympians. My apologies Hesiod, for the rough paraphrase…

In the very beginning there was Heaven and Earth. Heaven and Earth had many children; the Titans, some other divine forces, the Cyclopes and creatures, including three sons who were misshapen and not to be spoken of- Kottos, Briareros, and Gyges. Earth got tired. She was forced to give birth too often, to produce too much, and she wanted a rest. So Earth went to her children to ask for help. She had made a sickle. They were all afraid of their father but the oldest son Kronos was a big schemer and hated his dad so he volunteered. He cuts off his father’s testicles and the age of the Titans begins.

The Titans are excessive in every way, arrogant, greedy, lawless, and jealous of power. They lock the trio of misshapen brothers up in the underworld as a security measure. Then Kronos weds his sister Rhea. They have twelve children, the Olympians. The last child born is Zeus, also called the resourceful.

Kronos had been told that one of his son’s would overthrow him. Anxious to avoid the prophecy, he swallows each child as soon as it is born, much to the distress of mother Rhea. So before Zeus’s birth, Rhea plots to save him. She gives Kronos a stone to swallow and he doesn’t notice the difference (details, details). Zeus is spirited off to the island of Crete to be raised by his grandmother.

When Zeus grows up he challenges Kronos, who vomits up Zeus’s siblings. Zeus frees his brothers and sisters, the Olympians, with the idea of establishing a new world, a new order. He is after all, one more step removed from the chthonic powers, the inhuman powers of heaven and earth, and he wants to be free.

Let’s pause to note two things. One, the impetus for this huge transformation, the call for a new order, originates in the pleas of the earth, answered by forces that we can only imagine as winds, storm, fire, drought, tsunamis, earthquakes, hurricanes, heat waves and cold snaps. The plight of the overtaxed earth puts everything into motion.

Two, the Titanomachia begins with the arrival of Zeus and the Olympians as worthy challengers. Where are we in our version of this story? The signs of the Titanic are all around, in the excess that colors almost every aspect of our culture. As the only organized opposition, as government (which is Zeus-ian) President Obama and the forces he catalyzes seem to be the Olympians. Assuming this is true, President Obama as Zeus has just stepped onto the field, just begun to rally forces for change. Nothing lasting has been won.

The Titans and the Olympians fight for ten years, evenly matched, even though Zeus is given lightening and thunder by the Cyclops, even though the Titan sisters side with him. Zeus has the other Olympians and most of the powers in heaven and earth on his side and he still can’t win.

There is one group excluded from the fighting, excluded from everything, from all the cosmic affairs. The three misshapen brothers living in misery in the underworld. In the ancient Titanomachia, Earth urges Zeus to go to these terrible, frightening guys, free them, and ask for help.  Zeus takes this advice.  “If you will fight with me,” Zeus tells them, “you’ll have permanent freedom. I’ll give you your proper place in society.”

Kottos, Briareros, and Gyges are game and they fight furiously. Because they each have fifty heads and 100 arms they fight like many more than three. The misshapen brothers pelt the Titans with stones and very quickly, with the help of the Olympians (whose morale is definitely improved) the battle is won. Zeus is head of the Olympians and a new cosmic order.

Something powerful and hideous but also trustworthy decides the war. Something previously rejected, hidden, buried. A trio that acts as multitude. Who or what are Kottos, Briareros, and Gyges today?