The gift of fire

Creation stories are rooted in mystery. The mechanics or materials may be clearly described, for example, human beings were molded of earth and water, but "why?" and "what next?" are matters for speculation.  The myth of Prometheus and the gift of fire raises many such questions. Why did the Titan god Prometheus care about human beings? The rest of the immortals didn't have much fondness for us. Why did he orchestrate the first sacrifice, a religious act of connection, commonality, and re-linking, only to scheme and cause serious division between the gods and the humans? If his name means "foresight," couldn't he know that Zeus would see through his trick?

The notion of fire also offers room for reflection and interpretation. Fire is something that only human beings use as far as we know, and can be thought of as the first tool. So the explicit explanation in the myth, that fire was given to separate humankind from the animals, makes sense. But the "gift of fire" can also be thought of as the gift of consciousness, like when Eve and Adam ate the apple in the Garden of Eden. With consciousness comes intelligence, will, and notions of fate and destiny and existential angst....all elements of the human experience.

Robert Mitchell, the Underground Grammarian, wrote a wonderful, funny piece about Prometheus and the gift of fire. Here is the opening....you can read the whole thing (it's not that long). Check out Mitchell's work if you like words.

"I WENT TO TALK TO THE MENSANS. The members of Mensa are the smartest people in America, and I was intimidated. I was afraid that they might catch me in a circular argument or a lexigraphical fallacy. I was afraid that they would rise up, right in the middle of the pathetic little lecture I had thought up for them, and demolish my silly little premises, and then go, not storming, but laughing, from the room, to hold high converse among themselves, not even offering me any coffee and doughnuts.

The speech was meant to be the opener of a small convention, and scheduled to take place right after breakfast. I got there early, and was sent to join the Mensans in a room on the fourth floor, in an upper room, where they were standing around having coffee and doughnuts. I was relieved of at least one of my fears. But they were all watching television, and no one said anything to me. I stood around for a while and went back downstairs, where the brisk young woman who had sent me upstairs told me that I would have to understand that Mensans never did anything on schedule, and that I would have to wait till they came down, Soon, maybe.

I sat in the lobby and read some of the Mensan handouts that I found on the floor near the sofa. One of them was a sample test. To become a Mensan, you have to get high grades on some tests, and what I was reading was a kind of prep for those tests. It had some very interesting questions. One of them asked which diagram of a group of six would be generated by taking diagram C and subjecting it to whatever operations had transformed diagram A into diagram B. Or maybe it was the other way around. There was a very good train question, whose details I can't recall, but it had all the classical attributes of train questions--train A and train B leaving at different times from points C and D, moving at rates E and F, and meeting, at last, at the mysterious point X where ships also, I suppose, pass in the night. It really took me back. But the question I liked best of all went something like this:

Bob and Carol and Alice and Ted all took the Mensa test. Bob scored higher than Alice, who scored ten points lower than Ted. Ted's score added to Carol's score and then divided by the difference between Bob's score and Alice's score was either twenty points more or twelve points less than the average of all four scores. Which of the four made it into Mensa?

Well, I may have forgotten some of the less important details. But it was a great question."