The original legend of Pandora's box dates back to the myths of ancient Greece. Pandora was an Eve-like being who was created as the first mortal woman on Earth. In one of his more petty moments, Zeus presented Pandora with the box of a gift that she was never to open, all the while knowing that one of her greatest gifts was an insatiable curiosity. Pandora opened the box and released all the known evils upon the world. Frightened, she quickly shut the box, trapping just one thing inside: hope. Contemporary usage suggests that engaging in something with the power to unleash evil is tantamount to opening Pandora's box, but since Pandora had no idea what was actually inside the box, this idea clearly misses the point.
Difficulty: Challenging
Instructions
- Understand that if you follow the myth strictly, then it is impossible to know that you have opened a Pandora's box until after it is too late. To fully apprehend the mythic meaning of opening Pandora's Box rather than the misinformed modern day concept, it is vital to realize that Pandora was completely in the dark about the contents of the box. For this reason, the idea that some sort of progress that contains the potential for unleashing evil upon the world is tantamount to open Pandora's box only makes sense before there is any recognition of this potential.
- Be ignorant of the full nature of the box since for Pandora the contents were entirely mysterious. This makes opening a Pandora's box in the contemporary sense more difficult than is commonly accepted. For instance, there are some who would say that splitting the atom opened a Pandora's box because the potential existed for the devastation of the world. Since it was known that nuclear fission had this potential, the metaphor is incorrect. A somewhat more accurate analogy would be the effort by the US to help the Mujahideen rebels to drive the Soviet Union out of Afghanistan. This directly led to the current state of Islamic terrorism so that can be termed opening a Pandora's box due to consequences that were apparently not foreseen.
- Shut tight any possibility for hope to beat back the evils that have been unleashed by opening Pandora's box. The fact that hope was trapped inside the box alongside all the evils of the world is perhaps a bit of a puzzle. The lesson to be learned is no matter what kind of malevolence may be introduced into the world at large by opening a Pandora's Box, each of us is capable of possessing individual hope that these things can be contained or even eventually controlled. An additional lesson is that Gods--who dole out human destiny capriciously and often for sport--are inclined to include a shot at redemption, an escape clause, in the worst of human fates.
- Go forward with the understanding that the conventional understanding of opening Pandora's box is not entirely accurate. It is only with hindsight that we realize today that the box Pandora opened contained not just evil but hope that those evils could be overcome. This is the reason that the metaphor of opening a Pandora's box is applied anything that contains the potential for unleashing confusion, chaos and uncertainty upon the world. Authentically opening a Pandora's box, however, contains no such expectations because Pandora herself possessed no understanding of whether the contents of the box were good, evil or indifferent. So, technically speaking, to open a Pandora's Box means merely to unwittingly unleash an unknown entity upon the world while keeping the possibility for hope closed inside ourselves.
Opening Pandora's Box
Read more: How to Open Pandora's Box | eHow.com http://www.ehow.com/how_4793247_open-pandoras-box.html#ixzz1FSNaKQGP
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