Myth, Prescience, and Technoevolution

Again, reading Paul Carus' The History of the Devil and the Idea of Evil... Carus traces the Greek figures of Prometheus and Hercules and their combination into the figure of Christ. Hercules was the protector and embodied many of the ascetic virtues we attribute to Christ. Prometheus was the "crucified one," who, after stealing fire from the gods, as the familiar story goes, was tied to a stake to have his liver repeatedly torn from his body by an eagle.

As the best known of the fire stealing myths (and if there is a universal myth, this would be it), Prometheus (the "one who thinks ahead") has some heuristic gems. I like to think about this particular birth of technology and the natural world. Remember, it is Prometheus' liver that is targeted here. The liver's main function in the body is as a toxin filter. Buckminster Fuller has reportedly argued that the human of the future will appear as a giant liver with arms and legs, since we will essentially be living in a toxic world of our own making if we live at all. Thus, it seems appropriate that the price for stealing fire - the price of technology - would be taken out on the liver.

Prometheus, however, is eventually saved by the heroic Hercules, Christ's "better half." Now, if one were to just blue-sky a little bit, one might propose that this is an archetype of technological development - a hopeful one on balance - and one reflected in Christian mythology as well. That is, the Platonic-Christian-Scientific techno story is going to progress through some tortuous, toxic times only to be saved by itself. In other words, Christ sets in motion the Christian story whose grim legacy only Christ can resolve in the end with a "second coming."

I recently had the opportunity to see Jill Tartar of the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute. One of the more interesting parts of the presentation was the experiment's rationale. At one point in the project's genesis, assumptions needed to be made about the "nature of technology" (oxymoron?) on Earth and other systems. The question: Does technology spike and crumble spectacularly like the tower of Babel? Or does it at some point stabilize? If it spikes, there will be little chance of two high-tech civilizations crossing signals. The only hope for SETI is the second option, and the more hopeful scenario is affirmed with SETI's continuation.

One might argue that Prometheus, Christ, and SETI are three versions of the same story: that technology is eventually its own salvation, evidence of the present notwithstanding. We hear this argument all the time from those unconcerned about the state of the environment - that technology will solve for technology all in good time, that Hercules or Jesus will swoop down from the sky and transform torment into a thousand years of peace and clean water. I wonder.