Monday, January 21, 2013

Prometheus: both creation myth and god

This past weekend, my boyfriend and I were watching a movie that came out recently called Prometheus. It is suppose to be a prequel to the movie series Alien. Prometheus is about this group of scientists that follow a star map to a distant planet in search of the origins of humanity. They find these life forces, which they call Engineers. These Engineers created human kind and all that persists in their world. After a period of time, the Engineers believe that the humans have defied them and are all around not perfect. So, they set out to destroy their creation and start anew. The scientists who set out to find the Engineers are focused on finding their creator and learning all that they can. They insist that there has to be a reason why the human race was created. Their curosity is their downfall. Humans having to learn about everything they can. This clip from the movie helps explain this.


Watching this movie reminded of the Greek god and Titan, Prometheus. He is known for the creation of man from clay. He also is known for the stealing of fire from the gods and giving it down to man. He represents human kind striving for survival and for knowledge of all things possible. His punishment was to be bound to a rock and have his liver eaten by an eagle every day for eternity.


These two stories connect in such a way the groups of humans are constantly wanting to know everything about anything and everything. We have such a need to know about the things we don't know that sometimes we go too far and end up worse than we orginally started. Knowledge is power, but at times, it gives up too much power than we know what to do with.

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