Alexander Pushkin wrote a fairy tale called “The Tale of the Fisherman and the Fish”, which is based on an older telling by the Brothers Grimm. In this story, a poor fisherman manages to catch a miraculous golden fish, which promises a wish to the fisherman in exchange for his freedom. The fisherman is too surprised and taken aback to take advantage of this offer and instead frees the fish. When he returns home he is berated by his wife, who declares that he should have asked for a new trough because theirs is broken. So the husband goes down to the sea and requests a new trough from the fish, which gladly grants the wish.
Upon returning home, the trough has been improved, but not the fisherman’s wife. She remains displeased and sends the fisherman to go and request a new house. When the fisherman goes down to ask for it from the fish, the seas are rougher, but the fish grants this further request. Again and again the fisherman is sent down to the fish by his wife, asking that the house might be a palace, the wife might be a noblewoman, and so forth. Each time, the wish is granted, but warnings of a stormier and stormier sea are ignored. Finally, the wife sends the fisherman to ask that she might become ruler over even the seas, including the fish. And finally the fish recompenses the greed of the wife by returning everything to how it was, including the broken trough. The natural order is restored.
In another modern fable, “The Monkey’s Paw” by W.W. Jacobs, a couple receives a magical set of three wishes, using one to return to life their dead son. Though the mother made her wish with only the best of intentions, the ending of the tale shows the foolishness of attempting to disrupt the natural order of life and death.
This theme holds true across cultures and not just the western tradition. In an Indian tale “The Two Headed Weaver”, the protagonist wishes to have two heads and two more arms so as to weave twice as efficiently. The tale ends, “He had barely spoken before he was two-headed and four-armed. Rejoicing, he returned home, but the people there thought that he was a demon and beat him with sticks and stones, until he fell over dead.”
Throughout the great treasury of fables and fairy tales we find warnings against the use of supernatural means to obtain for oneself the unnatural. These cautionary tales against overreach, greed, and the use of magic to change the course of life permeate our mythos. Faust’s famous deal with the devil illustrates the continuation of this theme into the Christian framework.
Before the modern era, the pursuit of wealth and power by magical means was perhaps best illustrated in the pursuit of alchemy in Greece, Egypt, China, India, Arabia, and elsewhere. Incantations and the secret of turning mercury into gold, or creating elixirs to extend life, offered mystical means of gaining wealth or power.
J.R.R. Tolkien wrote, “Myth and fairy-story must, as all art, reflect and contain in solution elements of moral and religious truth (or error), but not explicit, not in the known form of the primary ‘real’ world.” And his fellow Inkling C.S. Lewis, in his preface to “That Hideous Strength”, wrote, “I have called this a ‘fairy tale’ in the hope that no one who dislikes fantasy may be misled first two chapters into reading further, and then complain of his disappointment. If you ask why—intending to write about magicians, devils, pantomime animals, and planetary angels, I nevertheless begin with such humdrum scenes and persons—reply that I am following the traditional fairy-tale.”
In that vein of futuristic or contemporarily set stories, modern authors have moved away from magic, wishes, and miracles as their characters’ means of seeking to change their reality and instead focused on science and technology. “Better living through modern chemistry” is no longer a fantastical view of the future but has become the present. And authors of modern ‘myths’ are telling new stories warning of the danger of fulfilled wishes. This new crop of repackaged fairy tales shifts its focus from magic, which we know is imaginary, to technologies just over the horizon and so only slightly fantastical.
The father of science fiction, Isaac Asimov, predicted a future where the manual labor and menial tasks of daily living were assigned to artificial intelligence in his collection “I, Robot.” Despite man’s best attempts to restrict robots to their assigned role as the subservient class, in each of Asimov’s short stories the robots circumvent the protections against hurting humans or even rise up against their makers. Inevitably, this attempt to upend the natural order results in bloodshed and death for man, the maker.
In “Brave New World”, published two decades earlier than Asimov’s stories, Aldous Huxley predicted a future for man where what man can do has far outstripped what man should do. Social engineers have created a future where castes are created in laboratory wombs and the masses are appeased with entertainment and unhappiness has been abolished. Children are conditioned to be what they’re meant to be and to desire nothing else than what they’re given. “The world’s stable now. People are happy; they get what they want, and they never want what they can’t get. They’re well off; they’re safe; they’re never ill; they’re not afraid of death; they’re blissfully ignorant of passion and old age; they’re plagued with no mothers or fathers; they’ve got no wives, or children, or lovers to feel strongly about; they’re so conditioned that they practically can’t help behaving as they ought to behave.” With this innovation, passion, art, and religion are consigned to the junk pile of history.
Likewise, in “1984”, George Orwell traces a path to a future that is the product of the government’s expansion and use of technology. In this vision of the future, the surveillance state (Big Brother) and expectation of absolute obedience to the required social order grew to be ubiquitous: “Always eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or bed—no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimeters in your skull.” And questioning or contradicting the official story promulgated by Big Brother led to re-education by the Thought Police. These outcomes are poignantly described this way: “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”
Whether by means of wishes and magic or by means of science and technology, mankind has a pernicious desire to shortcut the natural order. We desire a long life, wealth, power, or prestige, but are always looking for a way to get them without the labor or sacrifice that is demanded. The lottery and reality TV shows offer a tantalizing possibility of getting what we have not earned. But we should heed the warnings of our stories. Reaching for something beyond us invites the unintended consequences that follow. Sometimes it’s not about what you want but how you go about getting it.
