Pandora's box

[Nimrodel]

What do you people think about the story and the whole concept? I am collecting data for a future quest.

 

For those who don't know about it: Pandora's Box

[Rophs]

People have known about reverse psychology forever, and if you make a quest based off of that then it'll be a resounding success.

 

edit: maybe a DoF type thing :D

Edited June 18, 2014 by Rophs

[Nimrodel]

People have known about reverse psychology forever, and if you make a quest based off of that then it'll be a resounding success.

 

edit: maybe a DoF type thing :D

 

Nuh.. I wont be making a quest based on reverse psychology :))

 

Maybe a more elaborate set of questions would get this thread responses:

1. What do you think of the story and the 'gift'?

2. What would you do if you were pandora? (> :))

3. Do you think hope balances out all the evil that was led into this world?

4. Can you think of someone craftier than Zeus?

5. DO you know of any other similar myth which tests human curiosity?

6. Could you relate or remember a similar event in MD history?

 

Edit: I wont be making a quest based on reverse psychology because the handful of people who actually participate and stick till the end have a wide variation in psychologies... Kinda difficult to create a keel for a ship that has such varied requirements. :)

Edited June 18, 2014 by Nimrodel

[Rophs]

1. i don't think.
2. open it :D
3. hope doesn't balance out evil, it shields us from it
4. zeus was an idiot who caused 80% of the world's problems by not being able to keep it in his pants, he was the least craft one of the gods
5. at some point in a certain religious book people are instructed not to eat fruit form a certain tree and then they do and bad things happen
6. accepting or refusing the stranger's gift of a white cube...

[Ungod]

I am posting this just so people have an alternative view. Please dont argue in the next commentaries that hope is a good thing - I, for example, am better without it.

 

3.One interpretation of the myth that I have heard  is that Pandora, by closing the box before hope would get out, didnt bring the world to its end. The idea that hope brings one s demise comes from observing what happens to someone who goes on only by hope. Refusing to accept reality and having expectations that will probably never materialise  (isnt that what hope is, when not based on anything but itself?) leads one astray. 

[Ary Endleg]

 

1. i don't think.
2. open it :D
3. hope doesn't balance out evil, it shields us from it
4. zeus was an idiot who caused 80% of the world's problems by not being able to keep it in his pants, he was the least craft one of the gods
5. at some point in a certain religious book people are instructed not to eat fruit form a certain tree and then they do and bad things happen
6. accepting or refusing the stranger's gift of a white cube...

 

 

#5 they got explained why not to eat so curiosity element isn't exactly there

#6 game only makes you think that you have a choice, regardless of your decision at that point, outcome is still the same. Which means you aren't offered anything, you are forced to have it (or quit MD as soon as you see that scary dude who just happens to look like Fire Starter :D same hoodie, same robe).

[Assira the Black]

I am going to talk about a concept that has been discussed in a tv show but I do not wish to spoil the tv show so I will not name it.

 

The idea was that a great man's enemies gathered to put him in the box 'to protect the world from destruction' because the calculations of the enemies were that the great man would be the cause of the destruction. By putting him in the box it lead to the destruction of reality because he was unable to stop an event from happening. But this part does not matter much what matters, is the concept of good and evil in this.

 

His enemies saw him as evil but everyone else sees him as a beacon of hope. A path to a better future. So 'evil' was put in the box and so was 'hope'. To sides of the same coin, not separate but not the same.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

 

As far as Pandora's gifts... it might be that the idea of Pandora being wicked speaks to that side of every being, that everbody has that potiential. Craftiness, manipulation... The greek gods/goddesses build on human aspects and Pandora is a mixture of human characteristics.

 

For the curiousity part causing bad things to happen... if we did not push the boundaries of our knowledge then nothing would change.

 

It sort of reminds me of Schrödinger's cat, the cat is in a box with poison. You can only tell if it is dead or alive once openning the box and it becoming reality.

 

Maybe Pandora's box had always been opened, it just was not realized.

[Azthor]

1. Per Hesiod's depiction, between the Theogony and Works an Days, it is a tale of divine scorn and man's fall from grace; however, if considered in the light of its presentation as the ending event of the Golden Age, one should, rather, deduce that, as man, created by Prometheus, a titan, during Cronus' reign, following Prometheus' defiance of Zeus' will, and Zeus portrayed omnipotent as he is in Hesiod's works, is punished with Pandora's coming, man is ultimately reviled by Zeus not by their actions, but by that of their creators, the titans. The age that follows, the Silver Age, is one where women rule over men, an exceedingly negative scenario per Hesiod's description, given Pandora's static nature as a divine punishment; more so, though Zeus would recreate man anew a number of times, only in the Heroic Age would man redeem itself, and only so to culminate in the pessimistic depiction of the Iron Age, of man bereft of the gods. 

 

Though Epimetheus is presented as a fool, accepting the dubious gift that is Pandora, as remains his role in Plato's later depiction, it must be noted that, unlike Plato, Hesiod places Prometheus in much more ambiguous a role, as he does the Olympians. That is to say, the gods themselves, and the titans, are both flawed, even as they remain much greater to man, and man, most of all, is flawed, deprived of the Olympian's potency while still damned to evil, as ensues with the Iron Age, per Hesiod. As it stands, however, it is difficult to find any hints of a transcendent morality in the Theogony or Works and Days, and so it may be more appropriate to say that, for Hesiod, the gods are not truly flawed, for they define right merely by being, and, hence, humanity is only moral when it follows the will of the gods willingly, though it cannot evade them.

 

Plato, on the other hand, being a philosopher of the ideal, would censor the Theogony in its depiction of the gods as dissonant to what man can deem good; for when man perceives good, man has merely glanced at transcendent concepts the likes of Justice; and as all that is transcendent, and thus True, is inherently right, the gods could, in Plato, be depicted in no other way than as purely benevolent. As, in the Republic, Plato holds that noble lies should be upheld for the good of all, as is the case with the ideal polis there proposed, it would not be a stretch to allege that said censorship could have been meant quite literally.

 

Given Pandora's supposed older role as a goddess of the earth and, more particularly, abundance, it is likely that Hesiod's writings are an adaptation on the depiction where the pithos bore all gifts, rather than all evils, the jar being a way to preserve them and the tragedy lying in their loss as the jar was opened, the element of hope (elpis) being present in the possibility of their retrieval, rather than the ruin of their spread. There, Hesiod's works may have served as support for the strengthening of patriarchal culture in ancient Greece, serving, then, as a theological argument towards the superiority of man.

 

2. The choice, in Hesiod's Theogony, lay with Epimetheus, not Pandora; per Hesiod's own conclusion, there was no choice to be made by man, for all such mortals were bound by the will of Zeus. More so, Pandora, most of all, is inherently evil, for, unlike man, in the Works and Days, she is, truly and inherently, vile by nature; a nature forged out of Olympian scorn against man and its creator.

 

4. Most remarkably, within Hesiod's presentation, Prometheus, when he tricks Zeus out of demanding the appropriate sacrifices from man; though he later suffers for it, that depiction is well-aligned with Prometheus' original role as a trickster deity.

 

5. Though the Genesis 2 Eve parallel may be tempting, double so given antagonistic role women have in Hesiod, ultimately, Genesis 19, whence Lot's wife looks back upon Sodom and Gomorrah and becomes a pillar of salt, seems like a better example. The primary differences in these is that, not only in Genesis 2 is Eve meant as a gift, in Genesis 19 Lot's wife, truly dotted of free will, unlike Eve, would've had the option not to gaze upon the alight twin cities.

 

6. Refusing a certain someone to the very end, only so that you may learn what follows.

Edited June 19, 2014 by Azthor

[Nimrodel]

interesting views folks.. thanks for the input.. it is appreciated. Now, if I were to organise a day of fear how many people would participate in it?

[Ungod]

 Now, if I were to organise a day of fear how many people would participate in it?

1

[dst]

2

[AmberRune]

possible 3 (depending on when)

 

Otherwise I would guess at about 5-8 total, depending on when it is held

[Azthor]

Four.

[Rophs]

Four.

5 if in good timezone for I

[Guest]

6 (depending on timing/date)

[Aeoshattr]

7?

[Sunfire]

8 depending on time and how it would go

[Assira the Black]

Same as posts before... It would depend on time and date. If I am free, I offer my services to help :)