Prometheus, who helped Zeus defeat the Titans, was happy in with the state of the world composed of solely male beings, so happy in fact that he actually began to play with the idea of hoodwinking the most powerful Zeus. One day the men of the world decided to butcher a cow taking all the good meat for themselves and leaving only the fat for Zeus. As the powerful God, Zeus decided to avenge the deceit by creating the first woman whose name Pandora as a punishment to all the men of the world. Pandora, like all women, was very curious and she simply could not resist opening the box that Zeus had given to her and told her never to open. When she opened the box all the evils of the world came flying out and she could not resist the box's power when she tried to close it, yet one good came out of the box as well: hope. As a part of Zeus's larger scheme to get revenge on humanity, the world was now filled with sadness and evil, but also filled with hope.
The story of Pandora's box is an interesting one because I had never heard of Pandora and the female gender actually being a punishment to the male gender because of their deceit. For me, this draws parallels of sexism to the Bible's story of creation where Eve was ordered to be subservient to her husband. However, there are also positive messages in the story of Pandora's box because like in the Garden of Eden, temptation is once again presented to the new humans and taken full advantage of in the end much to the world's detriment signifying a new moral compass for humanity.
One evil I would like to squelch is prescription/hard drug abuse because I can see the harm it is has done to many families particularly across parts of Kentucky where kids who may even attend school with us have lost parents to an overdose or reckless behavior as a result of being under the influence of another substance.
John William Waterhouse
: Pandora, 1896
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pandora
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