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The three monotheistic religions have their Eve, who embodies the original fall of humanity, but equally represents its development and future. Theosophy has its Sophia who, according to the first German philosopher Jakob Böhme (as presented by Hegel himself), is the embodiment of purity and divine wisdom after which post-Adamite humanity yearns. And ancient Greece has its Pandora, with her famous box which the gods firmly instructed her never to open.
Yet, what box is this?
The story of this famed Pandora’s Box reaches us through Hesiod’s collection of epic poems, The Works and Days, dating back to the seventh century BC. Among other things, the poet narrates the way in which the Olympian gods created Pandora, as well as the reasons Zeus handed her a box as a wedding gift, instructing her to never open it. However, the king of the gods was well aware of Pandora’s irrepressible curiosity, on which he was heavily relying.
It all began when Prometheus, the most arrogant Titan, stole a portion of divine fire from the Olympians and brought it back to Earth, encapsulated in a fennel stalk, to gift to the humans. Zeus punished Prometheus for this by chaining him eternally to Mount Caucasus, where a vulture daily devoured his liver. However, his liver regrew every night, and the Titan, immortal son of the god Ouranos and the goddess Gaia, was forced to endure the torment each day, indefinitely.
Zeus’s wrath and resentment could not be quenched by this punishment alone, however gruesome. He summoned at least four of the most gifted Olympian gods to conceive and shape his invention: Pandora, whose name means “all-gifted.” Hephaestus molded a sublime body from clay and water; Athena dressed it in the finest fabrics and adorned it with jewels; Hermes put in her mouth the most abominable lies, and Hera sowed in her mind a malicious curiosity, a morbid jealousy, and a dreadful temperament. With a dazzling exterior and an undeniably dangerous interior, Zeus offered Pandora’s hand in marriage to Prometheus’s brother, the Titan Epimetheus, and as a wedding gift, a box encrusted with precious stones, which should under no circumstances be opened, according to the command given to the bride. However, the bride was quite curious and rebellious, as Zeus well knew. The moment she opened the lid of the forbidden box, calamities burst forth, descending upon humanity, hitherto happy and safe from all evil, in the following order: Old Age, Disease, War, Famine, Misery, Madness, Vice, Deception, Passion, Pride, and Hope. The latter being the last one, and at the point of escaping the box, it was impeded because Pandora, frightened, attempted – in vain – to close the lid again. It thus remained on the edge, weighed down, even too numb to take flight properly.
From a stylistic, semantic, and rhetorical perspective
On a stylistic level, the phrase “open Pandora’s box” is metaphorical, operating through analogy. The expression denotes a situation in which an individual recklessly and imprudently triggers a series of inevitable, unfortunate, even catastrophic consequences through speech or action. Pandora would then represent any person who acts, disregarding advice, leading to a chain of serious problems. The box represents any component recognized as dangerous, and should, therefore, be avoided with discretion.
Semantically, it should be noted that the last calamity attempting to escape from Pandora’s box is Hope, not Expectation. Even though many people tend to confuse the two words, they are not synonymous. Indeed, “expectation” has a human dimension; it is linked to thoughts, emotions, feelings, and to situations and circumstances that an individual encounters. It is also necessary for humans, as it allows them to transcend failure and move towards success. Therefore, expectation is time-limited and closely tied to the context within which it emerges. It can indeed be disappointed, and thus die due to disappointment. It knows how to renew itself with the advent of other circumstances. Hope, on the other hand, is more philosophical and seems to be connected to a transcendent, even metaphysical dimension. It is often associated with faith, whether religious or not, and pure trust in the perennial principle of life. In other words, it is a stance towards the world that involves belief in the timeless, unalterable. As such, it is not time-limited, not confined in space, and not dependent on any particular situation or circumstance. Conversely, if despair signifies a profound moral depression, it is not necessarily definitive, whereas hopelessness is radical and definitive.
Lastly, rhetorically, one might recall that, according to Aristotle, to ensure the interlocutor’s adherence to the idea that one exposes or defends, one should consider the arguments capable of persuading, and even better, present them in a highly suggestive order, always moving from least to most important. Memory generally attaches to what comes last in a list (a phenomenon nowadays termed by neuroscientists as the “recency bias”). Nonetheless, returning to Hesiod’s text, we see that out of the eleven evils escaped from Pandora’s Box to become humanity’s plagues, Hope arrives last. Therefore, it would be the most serious, the heaviest, and likely the only permanent affliction. Let’s recall, it is weighed down and numb, so much so that it remains on the edge of the open box, from where it burdens humans, numbs them, permanently inhabiting the meanders of their minds, preventing them from being clear-sighted, from acting, making them lifelong prisoners of chimeras and absurdities. In sum, if expectation is a waiting period, even if it ends in disappointment, then hope, according to the myth of Pandora, is stagnation and petrification.
Lebanese people grappling with hope
Examining our situation, it seems that we, the Lebanese people, are incorrigible in our hopefulness. Even while surrounded at all levels by tangible and undeniable proofs of our annihilation, we continue to believe in the imminence of a miracle. Even when the saints themselves have lost all faith!
From the depths of the abyss (noting that in language, the abyss is bottomless), we persist in our faith in the reversibility of our situation. Of all the evils escaped from Pandora’s Box, namely Old Age, Disease, War, Famine, Misery, Madness, Vice, Deception, Passion, Pride, not a single one has not gnawed us to the bone, nay, to the dregs! And Hope finally understood why it had remained on the edge of the box. Because Hope has a vocation, unsuspected until recently!
Its vocation has been to envelop our Lebanese spirits in the most impenetrable obscurity, to such an extent that we are compelled to perceive every atrocious, horrifying, and inhumane incident that befalls us as a stepping stone towards an improved situation, the necessary transition towards liberation and the elimination of all adversity.
Imbued with hope, obsessed with hope, becoming the embodiment of Hope itself, we incessantly recount to ourselves the genesis myth in which Eve is destined to experience childbirth in pain, and this agony will be the indispensable prerequisite for the advancement of humanity. However, it is glaringly apparent that we are profoundly amnesiac regarding the evolution of the world and the potential for painless childbirth, a reality for approximately seven decades now. No pain at all.
Hope. Or the most absurd of all absurdities.