According to one of the oldest tales we tell about ourselves, we know things we are not supposed to know. In a Mesopotamian version of the story, it is the knowledge of good and evil. As told in the Mediterranean region (as well as India, the islands of the Pacific and the Americas), it is the use of fire. Apparently, in certain instances, human ignorance has been seen by some as a necessity of human existence.

      A crucial component of the tale is how we come to know what we know. Someone who was not supposed to tell us, told us: a serpent, a coyote, a rabbit, a Titan. Often, the knowledge is imparted in direct defiance of those who have decreed the knowledge be kept from us, and the one who enlightens us is punished.

      It is no wonder a tale still told thousands of years after its origins allows us to see in it ourselves and our contemporaries. Adding the prosaic to the ranks of Prometheus, we have Julian Assange, Edward Snowden and Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning. Their predicaments lead one to wonder what is more dangerous: defying gods or governments.

     Being prosecuted and imprisoned by our government might seem preferable to being bound to a rock on orders of Zeus and having one’s liver eaten by an eagle every day for eternity. Both may seem unwarranted and unfair to our modern-day heroes/villains. The rest of us are left having to make our decision based upon which side of that forward slash we stand.

      There is some question as to how much of it will be an informed decision. We don’t know why we aren’t supposed to know what we end up knowing. Is our national security really at stake if we know our government is secretly watching us for national security purposes, or if we discover some of our bombs in Afghanistan missed their targets? If so, why? Who has yet to hear a reasonable response from anyone anywhere in government? If there is a good reason, it is a reason known only to those who decided we shouldn’t know. That, in itself, is the problem for those like Assange, Snowden and Manning.

     This modern-day conundrum parallels the original. We still don’t know why the deity in Genesis thought it necessary to withhold information. To be generous, we’d like to think it was for our own good. To be practical, we’d have to acknowledge the reason offered smacks of class snobbery – God did not want us to be God-like.

      On the whole, we are nosy creatures who – having learned good and evil – have developed a pronounced sense of right and wrong. Some of us know things most of us don’t. Some in the know feel it is wrong to keep what they know from everyone else – and that the right thing to do is to tell us. Those who tell risk incurring the wrath of superiors who hold the opposite opinion.

      It seems gods and governments believe in the necessity of secrets. We create both, and must decide just how far that should go. When, in our somnolence, we complacently allow governments to go too far, we can thank God for those who choose to stir us.