The Greek God Of Luck Shows How To Deal With An Unpredictable World
How the ancient view of chance can help us deal with uncertainty today
I caught up with a few friends this weekend that I’ve known for over twenty years now. Our conversation inevitably came to change. The world around us appears to be moving at an unprecedented speed it’s hard to keep up with.
Obviously, there’s technology. When my friends and I first started hanging out, cell phones were new and only functioned as phones. Now, AI both promises to free us from mundane tasks, and threatens to steal our jobs.
This all feels like it happened in the blink of an eye. Similarly, we also talked about how small random events you’d never expect can upend your life in both positive and negative ways.
One of my friends had a tree crash through his roof after a storm. The aftermath was a battle with an insurance company and my friend being without a house for about eight months.
Another of our group pinched something in his spine picking up a box of tiles. He ended up not being able to work or move for a solid year, which caused significant weight gain that seriously affected his health.
I had back surgery at twelve. The resulting stiffness caused me to get into fitness which led me to lose significant weight and improve my health for the rest of my life.
The instances above point to an unpredictable world, where a mixture of technology, chance, and overall luck can shift the balance of the average person’s life dramatically at any given time.
The uncertainty creates anxiety, which is normal. But we double that anxiety by believing we’re experiencing a level of uncertainty that’s unprecedented in the history of humankind. That’s not exactly true.
Our ancient ancestors experienced incredible amounts of uncertainty, but they didn’t have modern psychological techniques to express it. They demonstrated it in their gods.
In fact, the ancient Greeks had a god of luck named Hermes that personified their feelings towards chance. We could learn a lot from this deity today.
A Trickster God Of Chance
Hermes is an ancient figure in the Greek pantheon of gods. In fact, his first appearance is before the modern Greek city states, within the Mycenean period (from 1750BC to 1050BC). He evolved further in the Archaic Age, which took place about two hundred years later.
Originally sporting a beard, the images of Hermes continually got younger, until he was a fresh-faced youth — the youngest of the Olympic gods.
Over his evolution, he became a god of boundaries, merchants, theft, speed, inventive cunning, and a messenger of the gods. He also served as a trickster god. This is a deity that acts as a bridge between heaven and earth, taking part in the world of man, while maintaining the attributes of a god.
In Homer’s Iliad, Hermes is referred to as a “bringer of good luck and excellent in all cunning.” Although luck by nature isn’t always good.
In his book, Trickster Makes This World, scholar and essayist Lewis Hyde says Hermes brought both good and bad luck to the world of humanity. Although it’s a bit more complex than this.
Not only did this trickster invent the lie, but he also created the closely named musical stringed instrument the lyre.
Hermes’ first act the day after he was born was to steal heavenly cattle from the god Apollo, cleverly hiding the crime, then charming the god with an amusing lie once Hermes was suspected.
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Hyde says the cattle Hermes took symbolizes humanity’s adoption of animal husbandry through the work of a trickster god. However, it wasn’t total good fortune. The eating of the animals also meant humans would always be hungry, need to eat, and have to work endlessly to fulfil this need.
So, luck or chance has a duality since it could either be good, bad, or a mixture of the two. You see this often today. For instance, how many times have you heard the story of someone winning a large lotto jackpot, only to be bankrupt a few years later?
But there’s more to chance than just randomness. Hyde says that a lucky find “reveals the mind of the finder,” and we take part in shaping that chance.
He says there’s both “dumb luck” and “smart luck.”
Dumb luck is the plight of the lotto winner that goes bankrupt because their luck brought no change. They were already bankrupt mentally before the windfall, and no amount of money would change that.
Smart luck is when the receiver “adds craft after accident.” Hyde says it’s a type of “responsive intelligence invoked by whatever happens.” This is Alexander Fleming accidentally contaminating a container of bacteria culture with fungus, and through curiosity and diligence, discovering Penicillin.
While Hermes brought luck, mortals had a hand in crafting whether it would be dumb or smart. This psychological idea got incubated in Archaic Greece
This was a greatly unpredictable world where the Greeks developed harbor minds.
Dealing With The Uncertainty Of Life Based On The Sea
After the Bronze Age collapse, in 1200BC, author and member of the Society of Antiquaries of London, Adam Nicolson says a new world emerged. Ancient empires disappeared. This gave way for smaller kingdoms to expand on the regional stage.
In Nicolson’s book How To Be: Life Lessons from the Early Greeks, he says this paved the way for the Archaic Age of Greece beginning around 800BC. But these weren’t the powerful city states we recognize that conquered the Persians.
These Greeks lived in small harbor communities, reliant on trade, the sea, and connections with other ports.
While the ocean they traveled on was home, it was also dangerous. Anything could, and did happen here. These sea travelers couldn’t make use of force, because the sea they traveled on was the ultimate force.
A sudden wave could destroy a fortune, not to mention end your life. The Archaic Greeks could only respond with creativity, since no amount of strength could tame the sea.
Sometime around the seventh century BC, the writer Homer started penning his Iliad and Odyssey. He lived in the Greek colony of Smyrna, which Nicholson says, “Was a society more about cleverness, than about heroism or dominance.”
Furthermore, just like their experience with the sea, the Greeks “lived in a fluid world and thought with a harbor mind.” A harbor mind was a type of creative imagination, known as Métis. You see this throughout Homer’s works.
While many mythologies involve the acts of gods with great strength or power, the favorites of the Greek world used cunning. Odysseus, hero of the Odyssey, not only stole, but continuously used tricks to make his way.
This is what made Hermes popular, and why this trickster became so relevant to their world. It also incubated their psychological impression of luck. Moreover, we can learn something from them today.
Looking At The Unpredictable World Through Hermes’ Eyes
This brings us back to our modern world. Technology makes the skills of our grandparents useless today, our present so convenient we become listless, and our futures unpredictable.
Random chance can also throw our personal lives into chaos. It’s all a recipe for anxiety. However, a chaotic world like this isn’t an invention of modern humanity, the Archaic Greeks lived in a similar world.
While technology growth was slower, chance affected their daily lives in a much greater way than it does ours today. Life demanded sea travel. So, the oceans acted as both a highway to riches and a graveyard for lives, along with livelihoods.
The Archaic Greeks couldn’t control what chance events Hermes provided them, but they learned to mold the package with Métis. Even the very luck they encountered could be transformed from dumb to smart by adding craft to incident.
Recently I experienced my own bad luck. A financial downturn is requiring me to spend less time writing so I can work a second job to pad my income.
Initially it depressed me. I’ve invested the last six years consistently writing, so it felt like quitting something I worked really hard on. However, Hermes’ gift of chance opened another door.
The second job I found will be training AI programs, putting me on the cusp of a technology both exciting and terrifying the world. I don’t even have to leave my house to do it.
This is the Archaic Greek method — expressed through Hermes — for dealing with an unpredictable world. Chance will happen. It’s inevitable, and so is luck.
In the end, it’s what we make of this chance and luck that matters. Will it sink our boat? Or can we use the Métis within us to transform bad luck to good luck, or dumb luck to smart luck.
Inevitably, whether Hermes leaves us with a gift or curse can be influenced by the “mind of the finder.” It’s an ancient idea still relevant in our time of uncertainty.
-Originally posted on Medium 8/7/24