I keep thinking about the concluding lines of Cynthia Anderson's wonderful poem about Prometheus on the Rebound (see the previous post); "We may be nature gods, but we're still here." What I hear is an assertion of the value of the elemental and the durability of the forces of the natural world, forces like wind and earthquakes and the subtle shifts inspired by the cycles of the moon that continue despite what we think about them, and despite our "knowledge" and concepts and desire to control them. Zeus is aligned with the mind and ideas and with a different kind of authority, more transitory I think the poem implies, then the authority of the primeval.
A lot of the discussion about Prometheus (on this blog anyway) focuses on the fire as consciousness, as intelligence and as self-awareness like the kind Eve and Adam gained when they ate the apple. But what about the other part of our Promethean legacy, the connection to the earth (we're made of mud) and the forces that precede consciousness---instincts and the body? Western history can be read as a romance with reason that requires the repression of the instinctual. Instincts are associated with the body and sensory awareness, they're primitive drives and not to be trusted. Reason, so the thinking goes, is what makes a human being human, reason is the saving grace, the facility that allows us to be fair, to be just, to understand and learn, to make tools and build cities and pass laws, to be objective, to self-actualize, and to discover spiritual truth.
As I noted in the post about mythopoesis and the two Shelleys interpretations of the myth of Prometheus, the primacy of reason has been questioned. But the insistence on the value of the heart in addition to the mind isn't necessarily a move towards the body, the instinctual self, or the physical world. These are still chained to the rock. Now we actually call demands for clean water and air and food a "special interest." Now looking up at a dark night sky full of stars is a luxury.
Our disconnect from the body and the instinctual self is a huge source of problems. As individuals, we tend to look for a sense of place and wholeness by moving further and further up and out into the realms of thought when both exist the moment we feel our feet firmly planted on the earth. We need both, are both. This is one way to imagine our place in the middle, a place we share with Prometheus.
