>>But something struck me in my reading the other day, this is quoted directly from the book, MYTHOLOGY Timeless Tales of Gods and Heroes, by Edith Hamilton:
"The fifth race is that which is now upon the earth: the iron race. They live in evil times and their nature too has much of evil, so that they never have rest from toil and sorrow. As the generations pass, they grow worse; sons are always inferior to their fathers. A time will come when they have grown so wicked that they will worship power; might will be right to them, and reverence for the good will cease to be. At last when no man is angry any more at wrongdoing or feels shame in the presence of the miserable, Zeus will destroy them too. And yet even then something might be done, if only the common people would arise and put down rulers that oppress them."
>>Thank you Edith! Thank you for such wonderful insight to the Greek mindset! Now, when it says the "fifth race", it's not talking about these races like "Well, white's over black, and black's over asian, and asian's over..." No. These are the original races which the Greek believed the Gods created, and we are the fifth race because we were the fifth attempt. Chronological. x] (First there were Gold, they rocked, then Silver, they were stupid and hurt each other they were so dumb, Brass, idgit war-lovers, then there were "godlike heroes", which were war-fighters for righteous causes and were a bit like a step up from the brass yet at the same time their physical components were weaker.)
>>Anyhow, what struck me so much about this piece of the myth which Edith so graciously passed onto printing presses for all to better understand, is that it says that this is the race that "is that which is now upon the earth". What does the book center around? Humans, Gods, Titans, Gaea, and Erebus, and what's the common factor to today, at least that's inferior and scattered all over the damn place? Humans. Plus, think about it. We have to be the iron race; we have iron in our blood. Thus, this is talking about current generations, and the generations from the past, oh, 21 centuries or so. That's only that we KNOW of.
>>Anyway, my point is what it talks about with all the "wicked" and power and how reverence never comes to the good anymore. Think about your own life. Think about the state of America today, where banks control the way things run instead of democracy. Think of the people in your life: don't the idgits get away with anything, while the good sit by and are annoyed? Don't the greedy get what they want because the kind have become pushovers, perhaps intimidated by the idea of going against their will? It's really sad, if you think about it.
>>On a lighter note, Edith gave us another creation myth to go by if that one seems too realistic and sorrowful.
>>Well you see, once there were these two brothers. Go figure, they were titans (wickeddd). Their names? Prometheus and Epimetheus. They were in charge of distributing what life forms get what, basically. Now Epimetheus was really scatter-brained, it wasn't that he wasn't meaning to do well, but he just couldn't help himself. So he gave animals all the cool shit like fur, fangs, hooves, claws, whiskers, shells, cunning, that sort of thing. So he realized he left nothing totally wicked for the humans, and thought, "Well shit. Better get Prometheus to fix it for me, what a responsible brother I have."
>>Prometheus looks upon the situations and ponders. He ponders and ponders, going back and forth between thinking "Wow, my brother is a complete idgit," and the solution for the problem. Epiphany strikes him: he mends their shape to that of like a God, and gives us the gift of fire, thus a great power of destruction. "There brother," he said. "All fixed."
>>Now obviously my quotes are all made up, Edith probably would either laugh at my summary or want to smack me, I never met her personally so I wouldn't know. However. You get my gist. Now, Prometheus was sort of an idgit for just giving us fire, for two reasons. One, we're morons and now have pyros, arsonists, and all sorts of technology that have so separate us from the animal life that we're always thinking we're superior just because. Hell, we call them animals! They are our fellow life forms! Survival of the fittest, they're here too! Give 'em props. Two, I'm sure you heard that poor Prometheus was put on that rock to have a giant eagle hawk whichever come and rip out and eat his guts everyday, just for them to painfully regrow overnight.
>>On that note, I have given description of the myths. I like them very much and it makes me feel like our current generation is foolish, because so long ago they were predicting our nature, and all we're concerned about it satisfying desires. It's sad. It's really sad. Just like how each son is inferior to his father, now, education, wisdom, and inference is now inferior to what it used to be. Oh Keats, your everlasting two words to my heart, ah, "woe betide!", it seems the world is such.
>>P.S.: Tomorrow's Valentine's Day!! Expect a review tomorrow. x]]
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