Hope Alone or Empty Hope?

Over at SA, High Sharpe commented: "Here is the real meat. Sunday special. The IMF has no choice but to grant additional funding to Greece. Portugal will fail in 12 months. I see another issue. We cant escape them. It's like trying to put brush fires out by digging fire lines.

Just venting as I watch the money continue to pour in over the past six years. Glasses clink, netjets booked. Pandora's jar now empty except for hope. Only Hope was left within her unbreakable house, she remained under the lip of the jar, and did not fly away. Before [she could], Pandora replaced the lid of the jar. This was the will of aegis-bearing Zeus the Cloudgatherer."

We Natter: "Only Hope was left " and by the will of Aegis-holding Zeus who gathers the clouds. Prometheus persuaded the satyrs to steal that pithos (large jar) from Zeus, before he could pour it out over humanity.  There are two possible reasons Elpis (Hope) was kept in that jar. 

One, to comfort man in his misery and a stimulus rousing his activity. Two, as the idle hope in which the lazy man indulges when he should be working honestly for his living.  I believe it is the latter you may refer to... "Just venting as I watch the money continue to pour in over the past six years. Glasses clink, netjets booked."

Nietzsche opined: "Zeus did not want man to throw his life away, no matter how much the other evils might torment him, but rather to go on letting himself be tormented anew. To that end, he gives man hope. In truth, it is the most evil of evils because it prolongs man's torment."

Beall, posits the phrase "moune Elpis" – "only Hope," or "Hope alone" as being misconstrued. Alternative translation has the phrase meaning "empty Hope" or "baseless Hope". So not only are humans plagued by a multitude of evils, but they persist in the fruitless hope that things might get better.  

I think John Lydon took this pessimistic view to heart, "no future." That jar is at mans service and he reaches for it when he fancies it. And if we want a decent kind of future, perhaps the talking monkeys should stop opening that jar for the wrong reasons, and get back to work. This is the world we live in...