Myths are always a reflection of personality. The myths we create, accept, reject, and tell others perhaps tells us most about ourselves. But mythic tropes do not point to one, invariable, mystical Truth of the human condition. Instead, they are born out of our human need to narrate common experiences. These experiences may be more or less universal, ranging from the biological processes of birth, adolescence, reproduction, and death, to the highly situated conditions of life within this or that class society. The myths we create and share are always value-laden. For they reflect, at least implicitly, the normative positions of the storyteller. Myths, therefore, are narratives as well as diagnoses. This is the case with the mythic figures of Prometheus and Gaia.

These images began their recorded existence in Iron Age Greece as part of a Chaoskampf story—a narrative about the creation of order out of chaos. Depending on the storyteller and context, Prometheus and Gaia have evolved, been modified, and repurposed throughout the ages. Still, a degree of their original, Greek significance has remained, attesting to their powerful hold over the human imagination. Prometheus has long stood for mastery, heroism, innovation, technology, and progress, as well as defiance against sclerotic order. Gaia, for her part, perennially evokes the notions of balance, vitality, care, and respect for a primordial Being which precedes civilization.

In this chapter, we shall explore how these figures have appeared in literature and popular culture. We will also demonstrate a tendency for these titanic personae to turn anti-humanist, especially when human storytellers are subjected to the unique pressures and traumas of modern capitalism. A leap to the “titanic” is often an expedient for the hopeless and scared. In any case, social being—how we materially produce and reproduce society—determines mass consciousness, and consciousness includes myth. But which myths we affirm can tell us a lot about how we hope to cure society's ills.

Enter Prometheus

The Promethean persona is born of an individualistic rebellion. It is resentful, not only of the boss, but also of the family. It reacts, not only against the established order, but against the vulnerable as well. To the Promethean imagination, women and children represent need, care, dependency, and above all, unproductivity. In the works of Hesiod, the Olympian order uses the family as a means to control mankind.