Why does this story seem so familiar?

I’m not as well-versed in Greek mythology as I’d like to be, so I really didn’t know anything about this story save that a woman ruined the entire world per curiosity, once again*.

The family drama apparently all started with Prometheus, who gave humans fire without asking permission. Zeus plotted revenge, asking Hephaestus to create a beautiful woman out of clay who would be given to Prometheus’s brother Epimetheus as a wife. The woman, called Pandora, was given a box, which she and her husband were forbidden from opening, lest the world be cursed by its contents. Epimetheus was given the box’s key, instructed to ensure the box would not be opened. Zeus figured Prometheus or his brother would open the box out of curiosity and the consequences of doing so would serve as Prometheus’s punishment. But Pandora stole the key as her husband slept and opened the box. And *spoiler* the world was ruined because of a woman. All sorts of evil began to spring out of the box before Pandora had the chance to close it. The only good thing in the box was hope - the only counter to the evils that had just been brought upon the world.

Nothing boils my blood more than prejudice and inequality. Our brains tend to handle large amounts of information through shortcuts - one of them being stereotypes, which allow us to make a quick assessment of a group, saving our brain energy, yet costing us the critical thinking that would tell us it’s unfair to slap a label on a group and put individuals into categories based on gender, color, creed, and so forth. We generalize people, which makes it easy for us to be prejudiced. We observe one trend within a group and apply it to every individual we meet that belongs in that group. When we buy into these negative stereotypes, it becomes easy for us to treat some people as lesser and unjustly glorify other groups. And it all just really sucks.

*Why does this seem to be a theme? And yet it ultimately ties back to a male in both situations…in Genesis, God decided to place the supposed forbidden tree he absolutely did not want anybody eating from right in the center of the garden, and in this story Zeus sets up the backdrop for the whole situation in the first place..I’m just saying.