The Myth of Possibility: 1 Prometheus: Fire as Possibility

When we read the myth of Prometheus through the lens of relational ontology, it is immediately clear that the story is not about moral instruction, nor about the mere possession of fire. Rather, it is a narrative of possibility actualised: a dynamic map of how systems negotiate innovation, risk, and transformation.

Prometheus, the agent who steals fire for humanity, does not simply “give” a tool. Fire, in this context, is a structural affordance — it reshapes the network of relations between humans, their environment, and the divine order. The myth encodes the consequences of introducing a new potentiality into a structured system: divine wrath, human empowerment, and the subsequent evolution of practice and culture.

From a relational perspective, each element of the myth functions as a node in a network of constraints and affordances:

• Prometheus represents the activation of latent potential, the instantiation of possibilities that the pre-existing system (gods, cosmic order) suppresses. He is not heroic in a conventional sense; he is systemic perturbation realised.

• Fire is the affordance itself, a medium through which potentialities can be explored and enacted. It is simultaneously a tool, a risk, and a signal of systemic reconfiguration.

• Zeus’s punishment illustrates the network’s corrective mechanisms: systems resist perturbations that threaten their equilibrium. Yet this resistance does not eliminate potential; it shapes its pathways.

• Humanity’s subsequent transformation shows the relational cascade set in motion: social structures, technologies, and symbolic practices all reorganise in response to the new affordance.

Viewed this way, the myth functions as a possibility machine: a narrative that maps how new potentialities enter, propagate through, and reshape relational systems. The ethical and heroic readings traditionally attached to Prometheus obscure this deeper insight: myths, in their original force, are not prescriptive, but operational, tracing the unfolding of potential across constraints and agents.

In short, Prometheus teaches us not how to behave, but how possibility unfolds in structured fields. The theft of fire is a relational cut, actualising what was latent, forcing the system to negotiate the new topology of what can happen.