Timothy wrote on 03/02/10 at 20:00:31:


There we are--looking at things radically differently.

I look at rebellions in terms of action, particularly personal and collective action in the face of dilemmas which, if we do not change them, we can't resolve in our own favor.  Rejection of the dilemma is "rebellion."

Nyx revolts against Ophiucius who has claimed to be the author of the universe.  That's an impossible claim to accept.  If it is accepted, Night has no alternative but to be the powerless creation of another.  If it is not accepted, and Ophiucius maintains the claim, then Nyx has no alternative--if she is to retain her autonomous divine status granted her at creation--but to rebel against Ophiucius whatever the risk.  She does.  She crushes his head under her heel.  She has a choice of unpleasantries, to be made powerless at no risk or to risk being made powerless by her own exercise of power in rebellion.

Ophiucius, if his claim is taken as true, has to become a self-created creator, an impossibility, and, if his claim is false, he has to accept a position somewhat less than the all-creator.  Since he won't accept the latter position, he has to impose his views on all creation and risk that creation denying his claim, hence inevitable rebellion and his destruction.

He's made an "error" and entered into the domain of hybris which is inevitably punished because he's made the error of considering himself more than the universe and requiring the universe to accept his untruth as truth.  Others either face absolute submission or absolute rebellion.

Gaia who creates a son who will be her husband and the creator of her offspring creates another oppressive ruler against whom, with her offspring, she must rebel, otherwise she will never have power over that which she of her own power created.  The creation will be greater than the creator.  Of her own will she will have created something that allows her no exercise of her own will at all.  That's unbearable.

Then it becomes the turn of Rhea and her offspring to rebel against Chronos.  Chronos creates and undoes his own creation that he may not be undone by his own creative deeds.  Rhea has to live with that or not live with it.  She is made a mother who can not be a mother.  What she bears is consumed but she's forced to bear nonetheless, an unacceptable situation.

The basic theme is that something profoundly irrational is being imposed on someone else, and, if it succeeds, then the other will have his will, creation and created both, procreation that may cause change and prevention of change that invalidates the original reason for creation.  The other will have nothing but the worst of the alternatives, their own liberty, their own reason for being eradicated.  Reason enough for rebellion.

The other rebellions continue evermore complex variants on the same theme, till the string is resolved by the carefully structured exchange between Prometheus and Zeus.  Prometheus accepts a symbolic ring from Zeus made of the chains that bound him and the rock to which he was chained and declares he will wear it forever.  Zeus, who had sworn that Prometheus would suffer forever, allows his own edict to be transformed into that self-same symbol, an intaglio of Prometheus suffering on the rock.  A good deal, they say, is when both parties walk away with less than they dreamed of getting.  

Here the Hellenic theogony stops.  Rebellion by one god against another god  and against the order of the divine itself comes to an end by the concession of the rebel Prometheus and the concession of Zeus to the impossibility of the situation.

No, Zeus and Prometheus resolve that long chain of rebellions.

The rebellions that follow, the divine exemplars having been set, from then on will be the rebellions of mortals themselves rebelling against the hybris of those who hold power over them, finding the irrational, the error, the flaw, the hamartia that's the excuse for hybris and inevitable nemesis, rejecting it and exercising at risk their own liberty and abiding by its limits.

Hey, No Taxation without Representation.  Don't Tread on Me.  It's the Olympic Tea Party.

Why bother projecting this onto the physical universe which doesn't know dilemmas rather than finding it in your own very human backyard?

Timothy wrote on 03/03/10 at 13:30:46:


I think I need to work on this theme a bit more.

I view the nucleus of a symbol as a myth, but the structure of myth itself is inordinately complex and the terminology is no fun either.

Too often the exposition of a symbol or a myth is just another variation on the symbol or myth.  Sometimes another symbol or myth explains things better, even if how it explains them isn't clear.

An Athenian paid a sophist a large sum of money in order to be instructed in the art of winning every argument or legal debate.  When he had completed his course of instruction, he sued the sophist for having failed to teach him properly.  If he won the case, he would collect;  if he lost the case, it would prove his case, and he would collect.  

I imagine he left his sophist pedagogue in a state of agitated rebellion.

Now there's an interesting allegory.

Maybe somebody's already done a good doctoral thesis on the topic.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/14/books/14dover.html

A great Hellenist who set aside the lingering Victorian proprieties in Classical scholarship and discussed Hellas as Hellas was, not as it's been idealized or "translated" into some "we" can feel more "comfortable" with.

Required reading.