which_chick | Pandora, you fucking bitch. (Reply)

In sixth grade or junior high or whenever it is that you read the Myffs N Legens segment of your education, you get Pandora. She's always one of the Myffs what you get to read.

In case you somehow grew up without encountering her, here's the sitch. Because Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to humans, the gods were pissed. Prometheus got tied to a rock so that he could be iteratively eaten by an eagle (alliteratively iteratively eaten, see what I did there?) for his crimes but the gods were in full-on vindictive mode and so not only did they punish Prometheus for stealing fire, they also punished the entirety of mankind (they were all men, back then) by sending them Pandora, the first woman. Pandora was given to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus along with her 'dowry', a jar containing various and sundry gifts from the gods large and small.

You'd think that if there were only one woman in the entire world, the first one ever, and she was something men could fuck that perhaps you wouldn't have to bestow her with a thrice-damned dowry to make her worth taking because men would want to have her. (Also, for some reason I am reading Pandora as blue-skinned, with a white dress and yellow hair. Smurf it all!)

I am further confused about the necessity of a dowry for Pandora, I am. Men at that time wouldn't have any reason to expect a dowry, because they would not have a framework for relationships with women at all. Pandora could have just showed up ex nihilo and that would have been adjudged plenty good enough, especially when they figured out she was for fucking.

But anyway. The gods told Pandora (Pandora can be read as a precursor to Eve, kinda, because it is ALWAYS the woman's fault, ALWAYS. Men were perfect until women came along to RUIN EVERYTHING.) to never open the jar. "Inside this jar are the gifts of the gods but you must never, never open the jar." What the hell kind of gifts do you get that you can't ever open? That's bullshit.

So, as the story goes, curious little Pandora can't resist knowing what wonderful treasures the gods have given her to carry to mankind. And she opens the jar. All manner of bad things fly out, all the ills of the world. Pandora tries to slam the lid back on, but it is too late. The bad stuff has escaped. There's only one thing left in the jar and that thing is Hope.

You are supposed, oh sweet summer child, to feel like Hope is the only good gift in the jar, the sole salvation for humanity after all the ills have escaped. Like, that's the reading you might could get from this if you are still a child. "Ever since, humans have been able to hold onto this hope in order to survive the wickedness that Pandora had let out." says the online version of the myth that I found. I'm sure that it's a perfectly scholarly version of the original myth. You can believe everything you read on the internet -- it's all well-sourced or it wouldn't be allowed to be online.

But the gods are the gods and they don't play around. They packed the jar with ills and misery, clear full to the top. What are the odds that they'd put one nice thing in with all the shit? That is not how the gods work. The gods are pretty much assholes, all the time, in the Myffs.

I firmly believe that Hope was intended to stay in the jar, to remain behind, to be always with us and to whisper soft, enticing lies into our hearts and to bring us more and better pain by encouraging us to hold tight to the razor wire of life as it cuts ever deeper.

Hope is not the one good thing in the jar. It's the very worst of them all.