Greek legend has it that the first woman ever, Pandora, once opened a jar (loosely translated as "box") out of curiosity, releasing all the evils of mankind upon ourselves. She left only Hope inside the jar after closing the lid.
Mind you that she did not open the jar out of malice or shame, but rather out of curiosity. Are humans no different? Will we obliviously plummet to our ultimate doom? Does this metaphor reflect the premature forecasting of demise brought upon us by the female population, or rather the potential for women to bring out the worst in us? This has a sexist, albeit historically valid, undertone.Alternative, equivocal perspectives on this philomythical metaphor illustrate the human capacity to "create" at will. It also highlights the extreme interpretive flexibility we have, guided by our personal goals and emotions. We create thoughts, fantasy, fears, emotive extremities, and context-friendly reasoning; we voice these through story, art, song, poetry, dance, music, drama, and, of course, general instruction. There is hardly a device in this world that could penetrate and dismantle the human need to create and explain. Illusory beliefs realized into fanciful, ambiguous words are merely cultural tools that humans use to explain that which is unknown and chaotic to us - an operationally defined feature of human fear.
