Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity

Subject: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 6:12 am

Quote :: Jurors have found Samsung guilty of "willful" violations of a number of Apple's patents in the creation of its own mobile products.

"This is a huge win for Apple," Mark Lemley, a Stanford law professor, said over e-mail. The award "is just large enough to make it the largest surviving patent verdict in history."

In aftermarket trading, Apple stock jumped more than $12 a share, to more than $675 a share.

Samsung said the verdict should be viewed "as a loss for the American consumer."

Quote :: (CBS News) ELIZABETH, N.J. - The Justice Department said Friday it shut down a number of web sites that were selling counterfeit sports jerseys made in China. Agents said they also seized $1.5 million dollars in illegal profits. But this is just one victory in a never-ending battle against Chinese counterfeiters. CBS News correspondent Bob Orr looks into this problem.

Two and half million containers arrive here each year. Mixed in with legitimate cargo are knock-off iPhones and imitation Ugg boots churned out by Chinese counterfeiters.

Other counterfeit goods like purses and sneakers are sold on the black market and on street corners.

Heacock said the counterfeiters are also adaptive, constantly changing their schemes in an effort to pass inspections. For example fake Nike manufacturers have tried hiding the signature swoosh behind tear-away panels.

"China is still our number-one source country for counterfeit and pirated goods. About 62 percent of our seizures are from China," said Heacock.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Quote :: After fake products, here come fake store chains in China: Fake Apple stores, fake Ikea stores, fake Subway stores, and so on, as reported in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal issue.

“When it comes to innovation, the Chinese won’t deliver,” he told me in a phone interview back in mid-May. “China is the total flip-side of the U.S. Piracy goes back to the China world view that individual rights don’t matter. The courts have never evolved to protect innovative individuals. There is still very much the ethos that economic growth has to be managed, so individual and intellectual property, where the spoils go to one entity or one person, is not a cultural value,” he said.

Quote :: After railing houses, cars, and travel, cosmetic surgery is the fourth most popular way that Chinese citizens spend discretionary income. Similar to Western cultures, it has become quite commonplace for Chinese women to get procedures done. It’s estimated that China ranks third behind Brazil and the United States in the amount of cosmetic operations performed each year. But unlike Western countries where breast enhancement and liposuction are most popular, Chinese girls are opting for enhancements that make them look more Western, arguably China’s leading standard of beauty.

The most popular plastic surgeries performed in China are:

Double eyelid procedure, making the eyes appear larger
Enlarging of the nose bridge to make it appear more prominent
Reshaping of the jaw to make it longer and narrower

You will notice all these procedures are about getting bigger, and about getting Western. Plastic surgery isn’t the only example of this: whitening powders are used heavily in order to appear whiter; based on the belief in China that a lighter skin tone is more desirable than a darker one.
As China becomes a more affluent nation, the taste for Western products have become even more in demand. And who is most often seen behind the billboards and magazine advertisements promoting fashion products? Almost always a Western model or a Chinese model endowed with Western features.There’s no doubt since Western fashion products have a competitive advantage over China in terms of quality, they wield a great deal of control and influence in regards to beauty standards.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Quote :: Batesian mimicry is a form of mimicry typified by a situation where a harmless species has evolved to imitate the warning signals of a harmful species directed at a common predator. It is named after the English naturalist Henry Walter Bates, after his work in the rainforests of Brazil.

The organism imitating the protected species is referred to as the mimic, while the imitated organism is known as the model. The receiver mediating indirect interactions between these two parties is variously known as the signal receiver, dupe or operator. By parasitizing the honest warning signal of the protected species, the Batesian mimic gains the same advantage, without having to go to the expense of arming themselves. The model, on the other hand, is disadvantaged, along with the dupe. If imposters appear in high numbers, positive experiences with the mimic may result in the model being treated as harmless.

Batesian mimicry need not involve visual mimicry, but can employ deception of any of the senses. For example, some moths mimic the ultrasound warning signals sent by unpalatable moths to bat predators, a case of auditory Batesian mimicry. A cocktail of deceptive signals may also be used.

Most living things have at least one predator, with which they are in a constant evolutionary arms race to develop protective adaptations. Some organisms have evolved to make detection less likely; this is known as camouflage.

Batesian mimicry is a case of protective or defensive mimicry, where the mimic does best by avoiding confrontations with the signal receiver. It is a disjunct system, which means that all three parties are from a different species.[5]

Imperfect Batesian mimicry

One of the most studied aspects of Batesian mimicry centers around the existence of imperfect or poor mimics, which do not exactly resemble their models. There are multiple theories behind why there are poor mimics, including that they are simply evolving toward perfection;[9] that they may gain advantage from resembling multiple mimics at once;[10] that humans may evaluate mimics in different ways than the actual predators;[11] that mimics may confuse predators by resembling both model and nonmimic at the same time (satiric mimicry);[12] that kin selection may enforce poor mimicry;[13] that mimics may not gain enough by being perfect mimics to make it worth giving up other advantages like thermoregulation, or cryptic coloration.[14] More than likely it is a combination of many of these factors under different circumstances.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

It may sound far fateched, but an adapted Batesian theory may account for some of this, if the theory takes into consideration that the main predators in the hominid kingdom are other hominids, not a separate, third party species. In this case Orientals would be taking on the appearance and culture of whites, in an effort to protect themselves against attacks/future extinction.

_________________
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -
- George Orwell

Guest

interesting.... also worth noting is the number of scientific papers released by race & nationality,Caucasians completely dominate science & tech...

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:05 pm

Yes...I think orientals have advanced in their feminization due to demographics and that they never developed that spirit of challenging nature, but internalized the challenge.

Now, to compete, they imitate, like you said.

The orientals, except the Japanese who had a Doric, aristocratic mindset up until the Second World War, took to slavishness easily. Communism or any religion that proposed a suppression of self flourished there.
The adaptation was a matter of survival.

_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:23 pm

johngalthasspoken wrote:: interesting.... also worth noting is the number of scientific papers released by race & nationality,Caucasians completely dominate science & tech...

Everything we do has a root in our physical nature. This goes for science as well. Hence our scientific theories tell us much about the universe... but something of our own nature is also projected/reflected in them.

This is why all races today exist within a Western universe. Everything from time and space to the number of dimensions, modern mathematics and logic is a product of Western thinking... Western biology. I've come across numerous attempts over the years by post-colonial, liberal thinkers to try to undermine these concepts by suggesting they are the result of prejudice or racism, but their accuracy at modelling and predicting phenomena is their final vindication.

Consider a retard like Alan J. Bishop. In his essay "Western mathematics: the secret weapon of cultural imperialism"(1990)*, he tries to undermine our maths on the basis that other types of maths (which he terms 'ethno-maths') exist, but these are ignored by school curriculum's all over the world due to prejudice and racism. He proposes alternative counting systems from primitive, hunter gatherer societies and African tribes, but cannot explain why Western mathematics has been so successful at what it does. He avoids that issue altogether.

Another book, in a similar vain, but more insidious: African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design by Dr. Ron Eglash. This liberal suggests that the appearance of fractal-like patterns in African villages is evidence that Africans are a mathematically advanced civilization, rather than considering the alternative that they simplistically copied nature and are little different in that case to any naturally occurring phenomena such as a coastline or mountainside. Eglash gives a talk below. Whether these fractal patterns actually exist or not seems largely due to artistic interpretation:

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

* Full text: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

_________________
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -
- George Orwell

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 1:44 pm

Something more controversial and challenging to Eglash's theory, and with a more biological foundation, is that the Africans don't copy fractal patterns, but are themselves simply a blind expression of nature, unlike more sentient creatures who project their own psychic constructs onto the natural world and alter it.

_________________
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -
- George Orwell

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:03 pm

You should look into the Cultural Revolution in China if you haven't already. The chinese were memetically consumed by communism to the extent that they almost totally destroyed their own history and culture. It would be like the italians demolishing st. peters basilica and the collosseum.

Quote :: China's historical sites, artifacts and archives suffered devastating damage as they were thought to be at the root of “old ways of thinking”. Many artifacts were seized from private homes and museums and often destroyed on the spot. There are no records of exactly how much was destroyed. Western observers suggest that much of China's thousands of years of history was in effect destroyed or, later, smuggled abroad for sale, during the short ten years of the Cultural Revolution. Chinese historians compare the cultural suppression during the Cultural Revolution to Qin Shihuang's great Confucian purge. Religious persecution intensified during this period, because religion was seen as being opposed to Marxist-Leninist and Maoist thinking.[87]

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

This started a long time ago.

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 4:12 pm

The decay must have starter before.

Buddhism also went through stages where it adapted to changing circumstances.
Originally females were not considered capable of attaining the level of Buddha (awakened one) but then later on they were.

I posted some quotes by Evola on this.

_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 6:01 pm

According to Rushton, Orientals are more feminine than other races. They are less aggressive and have lower levels of testosterone. Would this not explain why they embraced communism with much more enthusiasm and recklessness than the Russians?

I think Satyr theorized that the feminine is more attracted to the flux, to being submerged back into nature and loosing its identity, hence it will abandon itself to the promise of utopian ideals more readily than the male. I remember him writing that on the forum somewhere but I've been unable to find it.

_________________
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -
- George Orwell

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 6:08 pm

Communism was the ultimate masculine promise of total order: authoritarianism.

The more feminine types would take to it far more easier than the more masculine ones.
This is also why Christianity, with its absolute masculine figure, attracts females and effete males.

A variant of this is Anarchism which attracts more masculine types.
For them anarchism is a way of eliminating all male order - erasing the slate - so as to hopefully create their own.
In this case it is the chaos (the feminine) which attracts the male, as a promise...a means to an end.

Unfortunately the very nature of anarchism makes it impossible.

_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:18 pm

If anyone has a free PDF copy of this:
African Fractals: Modern Computing and Indigenous Design by Dr. Ron Eglash

I would appreciate it if they send it to me via e-mail.

_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Aug 27, 2012 7:56 pm

Satyr wrote:: Communism was the ultimate masculine promise of total order: authoritarianism.

The more feminine types would take to it far more easier than the more masculine ones.
This is also why Christianity, with its absolute masculine figure, attracts females and effete males.

Yes thanks, that clarifies it.

I think there is a certain physical type attracted to the clergy, a more effete type, one that is not completely dissimilar to that found amongst liberals, and even scientists.

-----------

The article below suggests that there is genetic evidence for the psychological differences between Westerners and Orientals. What I find disturbing is the suggestion that individual uniqueness is simply the result of serotonin levels controlled by a gene, and no attempt is made to explain divergent racial phenomena within the context of broader patterns of differing physical characteristics:

Quote :: Why the British are free-thinking and the Chinese love conformity: It's all in the genes claim scientists

Common traits like British individualism and Chinese conformity could be attributed to genetic differences between races according to a new study.

The study, by the department of psychology at Northwestern University in Illinois, suggests that the individualism seen in western nations, and the higher levels of collectivism and family loyalty found in Asian cultures, are caused by differences in the prevalence of particular genes.

'We demonstrate for the first time a robust association between cultural values of individualism–collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene,' said Joan Chiao, from the department of psychology at Northwestern University.

Chiao and her colleagues combined data from global genetic surveys, looking at variations in the prevalence of various genes. The findings were matched with other research which ranked nations by levels of individualism and collectivism.

The team focused their attentions on the gene that controls levels of serotonin, a chemical in the brain which regulates mood and emotions.

Their studies found that one version of the gene was far more common in western populations which, they said, was associated with individualistic and free-thinking behaviour.

Another version of the same gene, which was prevalent in Asian populations, they said was associated with collectivism and a greater willingness to put the common good first.

People with this gene appeared to have a different response to serotonin.

[You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

_________________
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” -
- George Orwell

Guest

Satyr wrote:: The orientals, except the Japanese who had a Doric, aristocratic mindset up until the Second World War, took to slavishness easily.

from the mythology of japanese Shinto (or Shintoism, the main religion of Japan, a form of Animism) as narrated by Savitri Devi

Quote :: [...]
Soon Izana-Mi had some children, who unfortunately turned out to be a disappointment. They were all different from each other and appeared to be weak, unworthy of a divine couple. A general assembly of the gods was gathered to look into the problem and to find the cause of such a failure. The gods asked the couple: "When you get together, who gets to talk first?"

Izana-Mi immediately replied: "Me, obviously"

One of the gods remarked: "This is a serious violation of the rule regulating Rites! A woman should never speak first, since this is one of man's duties and privileges. No wonder your children are not what they ought to be."

The couple followed the advice of the gods to the letter, and soon their children changed for the better, becoming beautiful and strong, worthy heirs of their divine legacy. Izana-Mi did not just give birth to children, but also became the mother of four thousand islands, big and small, which eventually made up Japan. The other countries of the world slowly emerged from the waters through a geological and natural process, [...]

Guest

"Chinese students build concept vehicle that goes 400 km on 1 liter of fuel

A team of Chinese university students recently designed an ultra-efficient concept vehicle that can go 413 km on just 1 liter of fuel.

The vehicle, which is shaped like a water drop, was designed by a group of senior students at Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi'an, capital of northwest China's Shaanxi Province.

The 3-m-long, 60-cm-high vehicle can go as fast as 60 km per hour.

"We narrowed the width of the vehicle as much as possible to reduce wind resistance. The low-height chassis helps to increase steadiness," said He Jie, one of the vehicle's designers.

He said the car can run 413 km on one liter of fuel under only the best conditions.

The team spent more than five months using lightweight technology to figure out how to cut the weight of the vehicle to less than 55 kg.

Vehicle components, such as the accelerator, brakes and speedometer, may seem roughly designed, but the vehicle functions just like a modern car.

Source: APTN"

[url= [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]

Guest

A commercially viable model has not been produced yet..perhaps in the next decade or so..

and who wants to buy Chinese crap anyways?

Subject: Re: Oriental Slavishness vs Western Creativity Mon Nov 29, 2021 8:34 am

Cheryl De Ciantis, wrote:: Walking Straight and Walking Crooked: What Myth Tells Us About Nonlinear Thinking
Presented to the 2nd International Nonlinear Science Conference
March 10-12, 2006
Heraklion, Crete
by Cheryl De Ciantis, Ph.D., Kairios Group
The case for a departure from the traditional categorizations of human knowing has already been put forward on many fronts. Many members of the scientific community have acknowledged that the reign of logic has proven to be tyrannical, and has suppressed “deviant” ideas, notably in response to the challenges presented by the nonlinear sciences. That there are other modes of knowing is not in doubt. The aim of this paper is to describe alternative modes of knowing that have long been available, but more radically, to propose that they have been, and remain, specifically accessible through myth.
Ancient myths persist because they continue to hold meaning. Myths that cease to speak to human conditions die or split; new myths arise in which we may recognize familiar themes, or new themes that resemble familiar themes but twist off in new directions and then settle into an irregular but recognizable pattern that we know, somehow, to be “true.” In this sense, myth can be said to be fractal, in that myths contain mythemes that are self-similar, as Joseph Campbell showed in the example of the “hero’s journey” theme that can be found in the myths of virtually all world cultures. Ultimately myths contain practical wisdom that explains the cosmos and tells people how to live. However, these meanings are not discernable using the traditional categories of knowing. Myth remains alive, but not because it is accepted canonically and is fixed in meaning. Rather, myth remains alive because it is not fixed, because it is plastic. Myths are retold, rewritten, reinterpreted, remade, and told again.
The ancient Greek philosophers described three ways of knowing: episteme, techne and phronesis. The first, episteme, is knowledge of the abstract Forms underlying all phenomena. The highest form of knowledge, episteme is the object of philosophy and the essence of science. It is attained through logic. The second is techne, which is technical knowledge, based on experiment and application. The third is phronesis, the practical wisdom for living, which is drawn from social intercourse. Episteme, techne and phronesis stand in a coherent and hierarchical relationship to each other. Episteme is superior, phronesis is the inferior of the three in terms of their respective distance from ideal Forms, and thus the objective excellence their operations produce as contributions to knowledge. These categories have been accepted in European-derived culture as fundamentally descriptive of human knowing for nearly two and a half millennia.
The Greeks were also familiar, through myth, with a fourth mode of knowing. This way of knowing, metis, has been translated as “cunning intelligence” or “oblique knowledge.” Metis refers to ways of knowing that are indirect, and which may be applied to ambiguous and changing situations. In myth and folklore it is the kind of knowledge that is personified in the trickster figure. One of its classic exemplars is Odysseus, the inventor of the Trojan Horse. That metis should have become obscured from view among the explicit categories of knowledge held by Western culture since the Greeks is perhaps not so startling, since metis is a nonlinear, tacit, flexible, ‘between the lines’ kind of knowing and thus resists categorical defintion. Moreover, Metis was discredited as a way of knowing by Plato. He describes the men suited to form the elite ruling class of the ideal Republic as “…well-born souls, made for philosophy.” What qualifies these individuals to rule is the straightness and linearity of their epistemic thinking, which Plato metaphorically equates with the excellence and legitimacy of their family lineage. By contrast, men who are “deformed and lame,” those whose thinking is divergent from the linear rational mode of Platonic philosophy, are deemed as unworthy to rule the Republic as are those whose line of descent is imperfect or deformed in its deviation from the straightness of patrilineal legitimacy. Their thinking goes sideways, it is bent, deviant. Those who think this way are no better than bastards. Thus, Plato damned non-linear, metistic thinking as illegitimate thinking.
The line of argument I will develop in this paper emerges from mythology, and specifically from the myth of Hephaistos, the divine blacksmith in the Greek pantheon. In the ancient world, metallurgy was the most significant and portentous of technologies, and the discovery and working of bronze changed the face of the world three millennia ago in a degree comparable to that by which digital technology has revolutionized contemporary life. The Greeks honored Hephaistos as the god who brings good things to the quality of human life, separating us from the beasts who dwell in caves. He epitomizes the qualities of techne. Just as important in regard to his myth is the fact that, in contrast to the beautiful Olympian gods, Hephaistos is described as being dwarfish and ugly. And, he is crippled, a feature unique among the Olympian gods (though a common image in other mythologies, and very often associated with maker figures). He walks crookedly. Thus, the god who represents techne, which stands next in order to episteme in its objectivity as a mode of knowing, also embodies its metaphorical anti-quality, that is, lameness and crookedness of gait as opposed to the straightness of “legitimate” thinking. Add to this, the oldest texts tell us that Hephaistos was conceived without a father. Here we have an interesting question: what are the implications arising from this conundrum, that the Greek god of technology is a crooked-walking bastard? The first is that he possesses both techne and metis.
One more quality of Hephaistos that might seem at first self-evident is that he is said to be the only Olympian god who works. He makes things. These things, having been made by a god, partake in the divine qualities of beauty. As we look more deeply into the myth of Hephaistos, it will be seen that the objects made by this god also embody divinely creative and consequential powers. They are capable, however overtly or subtly, of altering destinies. If we look back at the three traditional categories of knowing bequeathed to us by the Greeks, it is not difficult to see that it is the fourth, hidden quality, metis, which equates with the “flow” aspects of creativity.7 This in itself does not explain how tangible creative products get made. Nor does techne, which issues in products that come from objective and replicable, not necessarily creative, processes. The fateful, consequential nature of the objects made by the god of technology requires us to consider an additional field of knowing. For this, the Greeks also provide a useful term. Poiesis, which means “making” is the root for the words “poem,” “poet,” “poetic.” In many mythologies, the rhythmic beat of the hammer on the blacksmith’s anvil is said to be the origin of poetic meter, which is further associated with the greatest magical powers. Poiesis is creative knowing.
I have now introduced several Greek terms. From this point on, I will concentrate on the interrelationship of three of them, techne, metis and poiesis, as suggested by a closer look at the myth of Hephaistos. This paper will show how, taken together, these three terms constitute a field that describes the nature of nonlinear thinking. The Greek god Hephaistos began to be forgotten when his divine powers were relegated to techne only—and, as will be seen, an increasingly restricted definition of techne. Along with the original myth of Hephaistos, these ways of knowing have become obscured and need to be rediscovered. With this rediscovery comes the ability to query these ways of knowing for their implications as well as their applications, for us, today, particularly in regard to understanding nonlinear thinking.

The Myth of Hephaistos
Mythos in Greek means “mouth.” Myths must be allowed to speak in order for their wisdom to emerge. Here is how Hephaistos’ story begins.
The goddess Hera, both wife and sister of Zeus, ruler of the Olympian gods, is angry with her husband. The reason for her anger is not clearly given in the versions that come to us from among the oldest of Greek texts, Hesiod’s Theogony and Works and Days. Hera’s anger may be because of the attention Zeus has given to other goddesses, nymphs and even mortals who have given birth to his many children both divine and semi-divine. Or it may be out of jealousy for Zeus’s birthing of Athena from his head. Her rage turns to a plan to birth a son who will avenge her. To get this son, she strikes her palm on the earth. She feels the Earth, Mother Gaia, move in response and knows she has conceived. A child is duly born, but he is deformed and weak, with a shriveled foot, a failure. With her own hands, she discards the child, throwing him from the heights of Olympus into the sea. The child, whom we know as Hephaistos, is rescued by the sea-nymphs Thetis, daughter of Proteus, the Old Man of the Sea, and Eurynome, daughter of Ocean. Both are goddesses of the oldest generation of the gods birthed by Gaia when she emerged from Chaos. Thetis and Eurynome hide Hephaistos in an undersea cave, and as he grows, they entrust his education to the Centaur Kedalion, who trains him in the secret knowledge of metalworking.
Though deformed, Hephaistos is precocious in his acquisition of skill, and Homer tells us he creates daidala for his foster-mothers, objects not only of unparalleled technical virtue but also of divine and fateful beauty. The whereabouts of the discarded son are a secret until he decides to send his mother, Hera, a gift. Having come to the height of his divine powers as a craftsman, he forges a magnificent golden throne, fit for the queen of the gods. It is conveyed to Olympus—no tradition says how—and, thrilled by its magnificence, Hera sits in it. Whereupon manacles magically spring to imprison her wrists and ankles, and the throne flies up into the air where the goddess is helplessly suspended—some say upside down. None of the gods assembled in the great hall of Zeus can remedy the situation; none has either the wit or cunning skill to match that of the craftsman. Zeus is compelled to send for Hephaistos to release Hera. He commands Ares to fetch his brother (for Ares the god of war is also a son of Hera and brother to Hephaistos). Ares soon returns, shamed and sooted by an encounter with a blast from Hephaistos’ fiery forge. Zeus next sends Dionysos, who is capable in the arts of sympathy. As god of the vine, Dionysos is also capable in the arts of inebriation, and after a fateful banquet, Hephaistos rides to Olympus on the back of a donkey, escorted by Dionysos and accompanied by satyrs fore and aft, his disability compounded with drunkenness from unmixed wine. Arrived on Olympus, he releases Hera and is offered as wife Aphrodite, goddess of beauty and sexual attraction. And he takes his rightful place as an Olympian god.
The story is not over, but I am going to interrupt it here to discuss the concept of techne.

The Roots of Technology
One of the traditional Athenian epithets for Hephaistos is klutotechnên, “renowned for craft” He is celebrated as the bringer of good things that improve the quality of life for humankind. The Greek word technê derives from the very ancient Indo-European root tek. 8 Tek is first associated with fitting together the woodwork of a woven house. In primitive societies, house construction was a communal act, accomplished by utilizing skills held within the collective. As societies progressed in organization, the meaning of the term shifted from its residence within a community collective to denote the knowledge possessed by an individual, the tektōn or “woodworker.” This was the person whose skills were known and demonstrated and whom the community now consulted when those skills were needed.
Already in archaic Greece, the word techne denoted specialization in a productive field, no longer restricted to woodworking or house building, but whose products were similarly useful to the community and gave evidence of the special skills or “craft” of the technitēs, the possessor of techne. By the time of written Greek, the possessors of techne had already long been travelers, moving from community to community where their skills were needed. Homer spoke of demiurgoi—makers, creators—whose fame for their skill preceded them and who were welcomed into communities by virtue of their techne. Shipbuilders, physicians, orators, and the possessors of similarly highly specialized skills, based on deep
knowledge and experience, began to achieve renown approaching the degree of awe and veneration of heroes and gods across the Greek world. There are myths and legends which tell of kings or communities seeking to lure and even detain these highly esteemed possessors of techne, binding them permanently to the community and thereby increasing its stature and fame. The mythic Daidalos, the builder of the Cretan labyrinth for King Minos, was such a one. There is no evidence that Daidalos was a historic figure, but rather that his mythic image conceptualized the near-divine nature of techne and its possessors.
By Plato’s time the awe of the gods among educated Greeks was greatly diminished in favor of man, the “measure of all things.” As the concept of techne evolved, it came to assume that knowledge could be systematized, and the skills associated with a techne could be measured, explained and taught. The systematization of knowledge became central to the concept of techne, which by the 4th century BCE came to signify the objective standards by which the quality of a made thing could be judged. The concept was thus dissociated from both the community and from the individual identity of the demiurgoi who held skills once regarded as semi-sacred within the community benefiting from them.
Historically, the myths of Hephaistos and other blacksmith deities represent the spread of metalworking eastward and southward through the Mediterranean in the Bronze Age. Itinerant technitēs (possessors of skills) and demiurgoi (recognized and honored practitioners of valued technai such as medicine and shipbuilding) traveled from place to place carrying with them the secrets of powerful technologies. Once techne came to be considered teachable and systematically transmissible, it followed that techne itself as a way of knowing was separable from the will of the technologist. A techne could be applied well or badly depending on how well the technologist learned and applied the concepts involved. In addition, the techne might be applied with good or ill will and still be evaluable by the same standards. The ethics of a demiurgos, when held in semi-divine awe, would never have come into question, any more than would the actions of the gods that might result in human misery or joy. Separating techne from the community and from the personal identity of the possessor of techne ultimately resulted in separating technology from ethics. Techne became objectified, neutralized, and made independent of both divine and human values and their ethical implications.
As part of the process of redefining techne, myths become devalued. In Athens, the gods were relegated to a subordinate position vis a vis the good of the polis, or civic community, as determined by the self-styled philosopher kings of the 4th century BCE. Rationality had gained ultimate legitimacy and authority. The philosopher-kings reasoned that only select tales among the corpus of mythic stories deserved telling in order to inspire citizens and soldiers and control the impressionable masses by affirming selected civic values. The darker myths, telling of the twisted, irrational and “shameful” deeds of the gods—divine jealousies, infidelities, and crimes too uncomfortably representative of the incivil side of human nature—were deemed false and unworthy and were relegated to the shadows.9 The profound power of techne as a way of knowing was lost. However, the traditional gods were still present—as they always are. Let us return to the myth of Hephaistos. It will be seen that the art and craft of Hephaistos do not rely on techne alone, and that the fragmentation of the Hephaistean mythos can, at least in part, be traced to the definitive parting of ways between craft and ‘craftiness’ in the development of the concept of techne.

And Now…Back to Our Story
On Olympus, Hephaistos is somewhat ill-assorted with his brother and sister gods. He walks funny and his crablike gait is likely to elicit laughter. Yet, when Zeus becomes enraged at Hera’s criticism of how he is running the Trojan War and threatens to wring her neck, only Hephaistos has the temerity to intervene. The other gods quake with fear at the wrath of Zeus. Hephaistos soothes the quarrel, persuading his hot-blooded mother to back down, while at the same time delivering a thinly veiled criticism of Zeus’s violence. Hera’s memory of the punishment she received the last time she openly challenged Zeus may be short, but Hephaistos remembers it and reminds his audience of his own punishment when he intervened: Zeus threw him once again from Olympus. This time, he landed on the island of Lemnos. The people there rescued and nursed him back to health (and he has maintained a friendly relationship with them for millennia; their capital bears his name to this day.) Hephaistos, having prevented disaster for all the gods, now further soothes them by imitating graceful Ganymede’s usual task of pouring out wine around the table, huffing and puffing and dragging his deformed leg in his peculiar crooked gait, drawing their at first nervous and then happy laughter. And all is well in the great hall of Olympus.
One day while at work in his smithy, Hephaistos is visited by the sun-god Helios, who sees everything from the vantage of his golden chariot in his daily circuit of the heavenly arc. Helios informs Hephaistos that he has seen golden Aphrodite receiving the attentions of Ares in his own bed whenever Hephaistos is away. Hephaistos is enraged, but outwardly masters his anger and conceives a plan. He turns instantly to work to carry it out. Next he lightly tells Aphrodite he will be visiting his friends in Lemnos and rides off on his donkey. Aphrodite wastes no time in summoning Ares and the two hop into bed. Suddenly, they find themselves caught in flagrante delicto in a golden net whose links are so finely wrought as to be invisible. Hephaistos has never left. More, he has summoned all of the Olympians to come crowding into his boudoir to witness. Now, he won’t release his captives until Zeus gives him back the bride-gifts he gave for Aphrodite and Ares pays damages. The hastily assembled gods have trouble keeping straight faces and they laughingly congratulate him: “Look how limping Hephaistos conquers War, the quickest of all the gods who rule Olympus!” The cripple wins by craft.” “The adulterer, he will pay the price!”10 Zeus smilingly assents, Poseidon solemnly guarantees the fine. The miscreants are released and disappear in different directions, Aphrodite’s silvery laughter floating after her. When one day, who can say how long afterward, for the gods are not bound by human time, Thetis comes to visit
Hephaistos’ workshop, she is welcomed with gentle hospitality and winning modesty by Hephaistos’ new wife, the exquisite Aglaia, one of the three Graces.

Another Way of Knowing: Mythic Metis
For hundreds of years prior to the philosophy of Plato, the Greek poets described an alternative way of knowing, called mêtis. Detienne and Vernant have studied what they term the “semantic field” of metis and describe it as,
a complex but very coherent body of mental attitudes and intellectual behavior which combine flair, wisdom, forethought, subtlety of mind, deception, resourcefulness, vigilance, opportunism, various skills, and experience acquired over the years. It is applied to situations which are transient, shifting, disconcerting and ambiguous, situations which do not lend themselves to precise measurement, exact calculation or rigorous logic.11
For the Greeks, by the time of the fourth century, the development of the concept of techne into a model for rational knowledge (episteme) leads to stability, measurability, objectivity, and singularity. By contrast, the characteristics of metis are mutability, multiplicity, and obliqueness. Techne is stable. Metis moves; and its movement is an oscillation between the opposite conditions of stability and mutability. Metis must be seen as a phase shift from techne.
In ancient Greek myth, Metis was a sea-goddess said to be the wisest of all the gods. Pursued and caught by Zeus, she shape-shifted, assuming the forms of myriad beasts and monsters until Zeus, never relinquishing his grasp, swallowed her. Zeus, having swallowed Metis and thereby internalizing the voice of feminine cunning, secured his sovereignty as ruler of the gods through adding the quality of feminine strategy to masculine force.12 However, binding the possessor of metis is not easily done (as anyone who has tried to manage a metistic colleague, employee or student, or who has been the possessor of metis someone else is trying to rein in, is well aware). It can only be done by someone who also possesses metis and can tolerate disorienting change. The god or mortal who dominates a situation through his or her metis does so by proving his thinking to be more complex, more dynamic, more “polyvalent,” that is to say, more nonlinear, than his adversary.13
Not all the gods possess metis. Hephaistos captures Ares and Aphrodite in his invisible, strong golden net. Ares, who is described as possessing “straight” legs in contrast to Hephaistos’ crooked ones, does not possess metis. The god of war, Ares does not represent the general or strategist (that role is played by the goddess Athena, who is the daughter of Metis); rather, he represents the warrior who marches to battle under orders and is possessed by a straightforwardly brutal energy. Apollo the Archer, whose image, by the time of the Enlightenment, had been appropriated to personify science (“science” was not a term known to the ancient Greeks), represents order. The god of the bow is a “straight shooter.” Too, as god of the Delphic oracle, his pronouncements, if seemingly enigmatic, must nevertheless be understood to be accurate and “true.” Significantly, Hephaistos outwits Aphrodite, who does possess metis, specifically the metis of seductive charm and the maddening attraction of love, demonstrating a point made above, that the possessor of metis may outwit even another who possesses it, by being more metistic than his adversary and imposing unbreakable, constraining bonds upon him.14
In addition to shape-shifting, the mythic possessors of metis are also often associated with a reversed, circular or deformed gait. Metaphorically, they walk differently. For example, Hermes, the god of thieves, stole the god Apollo’s cattle and then obliterated the evidence by driving them before him while wiping out their tracks and himself walking backwards—literally “covering his tracks,” in the English-language metaphor for hiding thievery or financial misappropriation. Metis can include lying and deception, which we metaphorically describe as “crookedness” when associated with crime.
Hephaistos is the one Greek god who is both klutotechnên (famed for techne) and klutomêtin (famed for metis).15 Another of his titles in Greek is amphigueeis. This is an ambiguous term, which can be translated in two ways, either as “crippled” or, “ambidextrous.” Hephaistos is both. The deformed, circular march of the god with crippled feet is an emblem of his metis, or mental ambidexterity. It is also the signifier of his magical creative ability. Hephaistos symbolizes both the practical, technical skills and knowledge we rely on as well as the elliptical, ambiguous and ungovernable nature of creativity. Hephaistos presents to us an image of a highly functional and yet creative way of behaving that is not only familiar, but one that has been and continues to be discounted and rejected. In view of Plato’s comparison to bastards of those whose thinking is metistic, it is especially interesting to note that Hephaistos, the crooked-walking god of technology, has a mother, the goddess Hera, but no father.
The Hephaistos archetype is a container of seeming opposites, in this case both mastery of craft as definable by standards of quality and mastery of oblique strategies that take a nonlinear, irregular route. The masterful tricks of the golden net and the levitating throne are at once emblematic of both Hephaistos’ techne and his metis. But to most fully understand what the myth of Hephaistos has to tell us about nonlinear thinking, it is necessary to look still more closely at the nature of his making.

Back In the Workshop of Hephaistos…
When Aglaia fetches Hephaistos to greet Thetis, he emerges, still sweating, from his smithy. Thetis has come to ask him to forge new armor for her semi-divine son, Achilles, to wield on the battlefield of Troy. Hephaistos quickly assents, setting immediately to work in building a massive shield, of the most precious metals. In its center he models the celestial bodies in their cosmic motions. Around these, he forges the images of two cities. In one, daily life goes on; weddings are being celebrated, and there is a dispute being adjudicated in the marketplace. The other city is under siege, its army clashing with the enemy outside the walls. Between the two cities the god forges fields where plowmen labor and are refreshed with honeyed wine at the end of each long furrow. Even though it is modeled in metal, the earth appears black and rich. A vineyard is rendered in bright enamel, fenced in tin. Beside it, a boy plucks a lyre and sings a dirge for the dying year as the harvesters moving through the rows of vines beat out the time with dancing steps. So realistic is the modeling one seems to hear the music. The god models drovers driving a herd along a stream, suddenly attacked by lions that seize a bull, ripping its hide and devouring its guts. Near to this, the crippled god forges a meadow where sweetly garlanded girls and beautiful, oiled boys with daggers on their belts dance rapturously as tumblers whirl and spring among them. Bounding the whole, the god renders Ocean’s massive river. When it is finished, Thetis carries it to Troy to give to Achilles. The glaring armor, “burnished bright, finer than any mortal has ever borne across his back,” causes fierce warriors to tremble at the sight of it.16 Gods as well as heroes bear arms forged by Hephaistos. Apollo appears among the Trojan warriors to lead a charge, “gripping the storm-shield, the tempest terror, dazzling, tassels flaring along its front— the bronzesmith god of fire gave it to Zeus to bear and strike fear in men.”17 Zeus is the ruler of the gods whose terrible earth and heaven shattering thunderbolts are the principle emblem of his power, capable of inspiring awe and fear in men and gods alike. It is Hephaistos who forges the thunderbolts of Zeus.
Another significant class of Hephaistean objects introduced in Homer’s Iliad consists of emblems of royal legitimacy and power. When King Agamemnon angrily denounces Zeus as the cause of the Greeks’ failure over nine long years to breach the Trojan walls, he brandishes his royal scepter as emblem of his temporal power. This scepter is of Hephaistos’ making. Homer traces its passage via gift from its maker to Zeus, from Zeus to Hermes, Hermes to Pelops, Pelops to the grandfather of Agamemnon, from whom Agamemnon has inherited it as emblem of the kingly power of the House of Atreus.18 Thus, King Agamemnon raises the very scepter that once belonged to Zeus to denounce the meddling of the king of heaven in men’s affairs.
Already mentioned above as a key example of Hephaistos’ making is the golden net he fashions to snare Ares and Aphrodite, which Homer calls “a masterwork of guile.”19 A net so fine as to be invisible even to the eyes of the gods is a magical one. The story of Hera’s throne reveals a similarly tricky, secretive, and magical mytheme embedded in the catalogue of Hephaistean creations. Further, Hephaistos has the magical ability to create animate and intelligent objects, like his bellows, which clearly possess their own degree of techne:
“Work—to work!”
And the bellows, all twenty, blew on the crucibles,
breathing with all degrees of shooting, fiery heat
as the god hurried on—a blast for the heavy work,
a quick breath for the light, all precisely gauged
to the god of fire’s wish and the pace of the work in hand.
The bellows can perhaps be said to be complicated, rather than complex, systems, acting as they do to produce predictable outcomes. Hephaistos also makes wheeled tripods that he sends on errands. These follow simple rules but also make simple decisions; they operate within a broader latitude of response. The hobbling smith god is also assisted in the forge by capable handmaids of his own making, “all cast in gold but a match for the living, breathing girls.” Beautiful, strong and intelligent, they too have been trained in techne by the god who fashioned them. It can readily be seen that these creations follow the parameters of complex adaptive systems, in that they become agents that are able to produce creative and emergent outcomes. Hephaistos creates other complex, robotic entities: the dogs that guard the palace of Antilochos, and a man made of bronze, Talos, who becomes the bailiff for King Minos in Crete.
Finally, the god creates the first flesh-and-blood woman, Pandora. Enraged when Prometheus steals the gods’ fire to give to men, Zeus orders Hephaistos to “mold together earth in the form of a maiden.” Hephaistos gives her “voice and strength,” and “liken[s] her in face to the goddesses.” Various gods give her attributes. Hermes, who also possesses metis, gives her “a thievish character” in order to fulfill Zeus’s will that woman will make the lives of men a misery, so that despite the gift of fire they may not think themselves equal to the “happy” gods. Pandora’s creation is meant to introduce chaos into the lives of men. Pandora is an equivalent of Eve, and is the mother of all human women.
Hephaistos is not only the blacksmith god, but also the god of fire. Hephaistos too has control over the elements of earth, the hiding place of metallic ores, air and wind as of the bellows, and water, through connection with his foster-mothers, the ancient goddesses of the sea. The qualities of fire are many, and Hephaistos represents not all fire, but specific kinds and qualities of fire. Hephaistos, first and foremost, represents the powerful fire of the forge, controlled through the blacksmith’s magic and techne. He also represents telluric fire—the thunderous noise and explosiveness of molten volcanic magma is recalled in the fire of the forge, in which the hardest and coldest of substances are startlingly transformed into dangerously red-hot, malleable substances which only the blacksmith is capable of bending to his will. The fire stolen by Prometheus is from the forge of Hephaistos. Both gods were celebrated in fifth-century Athens by a ritual torch-race, the lampadephoria, whose object was to “pass a lighted torch from hand to hand in the quickest time from the starting-place to the goal,” the goal being an altar lamp which must be lit by the torch of the victorious runner. This is the origin of the present-day Olympic torch race. Although seen to be a peacemaker in stilling the quarrel between Zeus and Hera, Hephaistos also represents the holocaust of fire turned toward destructive force. Called to the battlefield of Troy by his mother Hera, the god boils away a mighty river, immolating all living things in the path of his terrible and implacable “god-kindled” fire.

Poiesis as Creative Knowing
The Greek word poieô signifies making, creating, bringing material products into existence. Hephaistos the blacksmith is the god of poiesis. We have already seen that the god of technology combines techne with metis and that his myth suggests that the combination is not a simple joining of opposites but a qualitative shift from what the 4th century Greeks thought of as the bounded domain of techne. We know that the god both commands techne and thinks metistically. But, so does wily Odysseus, who is a mortal. Techne and metis alone do not sufficiently describe the fundamental character of divine making. To understand this, we must examine the semantic and mythic field of poiesis.
The mythological image of the blacksmith-maker gods is a very ancient one, with roots in much older technologies. Among the most religiously potent of these technologies are those involving fire as a catalyst, operating on a medium such as clay or, later, metal, and involving technical knowledge resulting in the physical transformation of substances, for example creating a figurine or statue of a god which then is believed to contain some of the god’s power. Ritual sacrifice too is a form of making that transforms the material sacrifice, very often by means of fire, into an expression of powerful connection between gods and humanity.
In many cultures, blacksmiths have been viewed with a special awe due to the unpredictable nature of fire and the ambiguous properties of metal when subjected to the blacksmith’s operations. The blacksmith has the ability to make iron flow like water, and then to give it shape, creating a product which is hard, cold and unyielding. Thus, the blacksmith’s making paradoxically combines the opposite qualities of hot and cold. The social qualities of the blacksmith likewise combine opposites. The blacksmith’s clients include warriors, for whom he makes weapons, as well as farmers, for whom he forges plows. Like his brother-smith, Hephaistos, the West African god Ogun is a civilizer who forges the scepter and sword that are the symbols of royal legitimacy and thus of ordered society and the rule of law. Yet, Ogun is at the same time known as the god of chaos and conflict (think of the ‘clash of iron’ in battle), and his adherents specially acknowledge and propitiate the god’s two-sided nature. “Ogun has many faces.” Hephaistos who is a peacemaker in the banquet hall of Olympus is also capable of unbridled destruction in the Trojan war, when he blasts withering fire on the river. The blacksmith gods oscillate between order and chaos.
Yet the movement described in the myths is not a simple back-and-forth between order and chaos, techne and metis. It is far more complex and involves a phase-shift in understanding. The poietic gods do not merely make inanimate objects. They move the elements of fire, water, earth and air. They make things that are fateful and portentous, things that move communities and histories, such as the scepters of gods and kings, weapons of heroes of war and the peaceable implements of agriculture. More, they make things that move and think on their own. Finally, it is the task of the maker-gods to create human bodies with identities and consciousness.
In short, the operations of poiesis informed by techne and metis issue in complex adaptive systems, examples of which “include living organisms, the nervous system, the immune system, the economy, corporations, and societies.” The creations of the maker-gods have the ability to adapt to changing environments. As they evolve, their experience contributes to their future trajectories. Their evolution can respond to unanticipated factors, which makes them unpredictable. Further, they have “the potential for a great deal of creativity that was not programmed in to them from the beginning.”
In very early traditions, the smith is known as “the wise one,” “the clever one.” Daedalus (Daidalos) is most likely a personification after the fact of the excellent and fateful character of the objects made by the most ancient divine smiths. Homer uses the doubled root word daidal-, from Daidalos, to denote divinely beautiful and fatefully consequential, “daidalic” objects. The most significant quality of the work of Daedalus, the legendary maker of the Cretan labyrinth and the wings of Ikaros, is how lifelike it is. Daedalus is specifically associated with Hephaistos in Greek epic poetry. In ancient Athens, he was celebrated for making magical statues. In a satyr play, a statue of Pan mysteriously disappears, provoking the wonder, “Was it made by Daedalus, or did someone steal it?” In another play a statue announces, “I am Hermes with a voice from Daedalus / made of wood (but) I came here by walking on my own.” Such is the expressive quality attributed to the work of Daedalus that it was said in Athens that his statues had to be chained down to prevent them from walking away. The Athenians may have burlesqued mobile satyric statues, but the image nevertheless affirms the very real notions of divine images possessing such numinosity that they must be bound, either to retain their blessings or restrain their dangerous power. A famously chained statue of Artemis of Ephesos was credited with sending men mad “as a result of encountering her gaze.” Such numinous qualities were solely associated with objects made by a god like Hephaistos, a semi-divine culture hero like Daedalus, or the daemonic Telchines, mythic metalworkers and fearsome magicians said in some traditions to be the first makers of images of the gods.
Recognizable through their profoundly artful elaborateness and lifelikeness, the appearance of daidalic objects signals themes of fate and divine intervention. The most frequent use of the daidal- set of words describes arms and armor, though never of an ordinary kind, but consistently associated with the Greek concept of the kleos, “glory,” of heroes and deeds of epic heroism, as well as with the honoring and burial of heroes—for lasting glory is attained only through glorious death. The glamour, and the aura of fatefulness, of these objects outlasts the life and action of their owners, and they retain a unique value and luster of their own, as well as a reflection of their divine makers. Hesiod reserves the use of this emphatic word complex exclusively for describing the daidalic attributes of Pandora, the ultimate “beautiful evil.”
The Ugaritic smith-god Kothar-wa-Hasis, who features in the Baal epics of the early Bronze Age (late third millennium BCE), is another personification of the qualities of the archetypal maker. His name derives from ktr, an Indo-European root word likely relating to metal, also denoting creativity, both in the sense of craftsmanship and of natural generativity, including childbirth.34 Hasis comes from hss, “wise one,” a praise-term also applied to the god Ea in the Enuma Elish as well as to Utnapishtim in the Gilgamesh epic. Hephaistos too is “praised not only for his craftsmanship but with intellectual epithets:
“very wise,” “renowned in wisdom,” “rich in wisdom,” “with knowing heart.’” All of these epithets underscore the nature of poiesis—making—as a way of knowing.
Both Hephaistos and Kothar-wa-Hasis are associated with powerful female goddesses of generativity, Kothar-wa Hasis with a group of goddesses called “the ktrt or ‘skilled ones,’ who are guardians of marriage and childbirth,36 and Hephaistos with the Eileithyiai, the goddesses of birth who appear in Athenian vase paintings depicting the birth of the goddess Athena, whom Hephaistos liberates from the head of her father Zeus with a hammer blow. Their appearance together denotes “the language of generation, the part of the woman (tiktein: to bring forth) balancing that of the man (gennān: to beget).” It will also be remembered that Hepahistos is a child of Gaia, the personification of the Earth, through his mother, Gaia’s daughter, Hera, and that his birth, far from being unnatural, points back to the earliest forms of generativity, preceding sexual generation.
In exploiting the ores buried deep inside the body of Earth, the mythic blacksmith is concerned with the “primitive conception of mineral embryology,” in which stones and ores grow in the womb of the Earth and engender precious stones. For example, an Indian treatise on precious stones “distinguishes diamond from crystal by a difference in age expressed in embryonic terms: the diamond is pakke, i.e., ‘ripe’, while the crystal is kaccha, ‘not ripe’, ‘green’, insufficiently developed.” European natural science at the dawn of the age of Enlightenment preserved a similar tradition that “the ruby, in particular, gradually takes its birth in the ore-bearing earth; just as the infant is fed on blood in the belly of its mother so is the ruby formed and fed.” Pliny reported that mines “were reborn” after being closed up and allowed to rest after exploitation. A similar belief seems to have been shared by African metallurgists. Like vegetal life, “Ores ‘grow’ and ‘ripen.’”
Mythically, there is a “symbiosis between flesh and metal.” The role of the smith-gods in human and animal creation is attested in many mythologies. Ogun refines newly-created humans, by “adding lineage marks on the face and tattoos on the body, performing circumcision and other such surgery necessary to keep an individual in good health and make him or her socially acceptable in Yoruba society.” Talos, the man of bronze forged by Hephaistos, is in one variant a remnant of Hesiod’s race of bronze, antecedents of the present human race. In Dogon myth, humans were formed and then broken at the knees and elbows by a divine blacksmith’s hammer. In the Kalevala, the divine blacksmith Illmarinen makes from iron, steel, gold, copper, and silver an eagle, an ewe, a stallion, and a maiden.
Among the specific qualities that the mythmakers describe as evidence of life in the blacksmiths’ creations is voice. The creations of Daidalos move and speak. The girls in Hephaistos’ workshop, though made of gold not clay, have wits, voice, and strength. Pandora’s acquisition of “voice and strength” attributed by Hesiod to the art of Hephaistos makes her a living, breathing woman, mythically the foremother of all women. Appropriately, the daidalic golden crown he makes for her depicts the wild animals and beasts of the sea, “wonderful creatures, like living creatures with voices.” By the fifth century BCE, Greek philosophical speculation on the nature of humankind imagines human ancestors as a sort of work of art, to which the addition of a voice denotes the manifestation of spirit.
The connection between poiēsis and all creative making, including poetry, has already been noted. In many myths and folktales, the first poetry is written in imitation of the rhythm of anvil-blows. The Daktyloi, mythical metalworkers associated with Hephaistos in mystery rituals, were taught the blacksmith’s art by the “mother of the gods.” The dwarfish Daktyloi are said to be the teachers of Orpheus—meaning that Orpheus is among those initiated into their mysteries—and that they are the inventors of musical rhythms, “hence the dactylic meter in poetry.” Poetry of course is far more than simple word-smithing, and the close association of the smith with poetry is rather an expression of the smiths’ magic and their connection with primordial creation. Moreover, myth tells us that poetic making is not for the faint of heart. In Nordic mythology, dwarf smiths kill the “man of wisdom” shaped out of the gods’ own spittle and brew his blood into mead that could create a skald (bard) of the man who drank it. “Hence poetry was called ‘the dwarf’s drink.’” Powerful song is an element of many myths concerning the divine smith. The Phoenician smith-god Chusôr “invented the art of ‘good speech’ and that of composing chants and incantations.” In Ugaritic texts the chanters are called Kôtarât,” a title having the same root as the name of the smith-god Kothar-wa-Hasis, and the creatrix goddesses he is associated with are known as singers or musicians, meaning they use song to magically create. In Arabic, q-y-n, “to forge,” “to be a smith,” “is related to the Hebrew, Syriac and Ethiopian terms denoting the act of ‘singing’, ‘intoning a funeral lament.’” Similarly, “Odin and his priests were called ‘forgers of songs,’” and the same theme is found among the Turco-Tartars and Mongols. The activity of the Vedic world-smith Brahmanaspati embodies the “prayer-word” which, manifested by Vac, the goddess of sacred sound and the creative energies channeled through it, forms the different poetic meters, giving dynamic order to the entire cosmos, both manifest and emergent—Vac is said to be three fourths unmanifested. The Vedic poet-priests, receiving divine inspiration, used the sacred meters to construct the hymns they sang in sacrificial ritual to re-make the world at every sunrise just as Brahmanaspati did at the beginning of the world. That the making of these hymns is to be understood as a powerful and consequential act is expressed by the use of the Sanskrit word taksh, meaning “to create.” Song is thus powerful in the sense that what the creative, crooked-walking smith imagines, comes into being. In Nordic myth, the primordial dwarf-smith divinities stand as pillars holding up the very fabric of the universe. Thus, the smith-gods’ poiesis is implicated in the whole of creation.

Conclusion
Creativity has long been modeled as an aggregate, ultimately linear, process of preparation, incubation, illumination and implementation.53 The myths of Hephaistos and other divine world-smiths show us that a far more dynamic model has existed within the field of human knowing for thousands of years. The dynamic combination of techne, and metis with poiesis describes the profoundly rhythmic, unbounded and emergent nature of human as well as divine creativity. The poetic rhythm of the world-smith’s hammer is very different from the distinctly regular, steady-state rhythm of the clockwork universe envisioned by the Enlightenment. (And it is well to remember that Yahweh created Adam from clay, placing the Hebrew god within the lineage of poetic/maker gods.) However, that the paradigm of God as clockmaker is a persistent and powerful myth tells us something about the power of myths in the pernicious sense of the word, to constrain thinking. In the positive sense, myth enables creative thinking.
Myths have shown us that techne alone is neither productive of creative thinking, nor of technologies that may ultimately be imagined through nonlinear, metistic thinking. The ancient myths tell us that nonlinear thinking combines techne, metis and poiesis, and that it is not only instrumental; it is consequential, and that in fact, it is capable of effecting the emergence of complex adaptive systems.
One more thought. The animate works of Daedalus and Hephaistos prompted Aristotle to imagine intelligent robotic instruments, each “able to accomplish its own task, either in obedience or anticipation” of orders. If “shuttles would weave and plectra play the lyre on their own, master builders would not need apprentices, nor masters, slaves.”54 Much of society still imagines that technology is value-neutral. This suggests that more work must be done to query myth in the creation of an ethics that takes poetics as its basis.

_________________
γνῶθι σεαυτόν
μηδέν άγαν

» The Conception of Life (survival) After Death and Human Creativity
» Clash of Civilization: The Descent And Collapse Of Western Civilization Through The Underground News
» The Hypocrisy of Western Liberalism.
» Degradation of Western Music and Literature
» Death Of Western Civilization And The Future.