Pandora's vs Eve's Daughter

Lately I've been thinking about Pandora's Box. The whole idea of it is just mind boggling and twisted and of course vastly amusing, especially considering everything that has gone on during our history.

For those of you who don't know Pandora's story, here you are:

"At one time the only mortals on the earth were men. Prometheus had made them, Athene had breathed life into them. The chief god Zeus did not like them.
One day Prometheus was trying to solve a quarrel that was raging between the gods and the men. At a festival the men were going to sacrifice a bull for the first time. They asked him which parts of the bull should be offered to the gods and which should be eaten by men. Prometheus decided to play a trick on Zeus. He killed the bull, skinned it and butchered it. He split it into two portions; in one he put the best, lean meat. In the second he put bones followed by a thick layer of fat. Prometheus offered both to Zeus to take his choice. Zeus looked at both portions; one looked good but was rather on the small side, the other was much larger and covered in a layer of fat which Zeus felt must cover the best, tastiest portion of meat. He chose that one. When Zeus realised that he had been tricked he was furious. He took fire away from man so that they could never cook their meat or feel warm again.
Prometheus reacted immediately flying to the Isle of Lemnos where he knew the smith Hephaestus had fire. He carried a burning torch back to man. Zeus was enraged. He swore vengeance and started making an evil plan.
Zeus, set Hephaestos the task of creating a clay woman with a human voice. Hephaestos worked and worked and created a masterpiece. Athene, goddess of wisdom and Zeus' daughter liked the clay figure and she breathed life into it. She taught the woman how to weave and clothed her. Aphrodite the goddess of love made her beautiful. The god Hermes taught her to charm and deceive.
Zeus was pleased with what he saw, but he had made her as a trap. He named the woman Pandora and sent her as a gift to Epimetheus. Epimetheus had been warned by his brother Prometheus that he should never accept gifts from Zeus because there would always be a catch. Epimetheus ignored his brother's warning, fell in love with Pandora and married her. Zeus, pleased that his trap was working gave Pandora a wedding gift of a beautiful box. There was one condition however...that was that she never opened the box.
For a while they were very happy. Pandora often wondered what was in the box but she was never left alone so she never opened it. Gradually over a while she began to wonder more and more what was in the box. She could not understand why someone would send her a box if she could not see what was in it. It got very important to find out what was hidden there.
Finally she could stand it no longer. One day when everyone was out she crept up to the box, took the huge key, fitted it carefully into the lock and turned it. She lifted the lid to peep in but before she realized it the room was filled with terrible things: disease, despair, malice, greed, old age, death, hatred, violence, cruelty and war. She slammed the lid down and turned the key again...keeping only the spirit of hope inside." (http://atschool.eduweb.co.uk/carolrb/greek/pandora.html)

Now, the moral of the story is that no matter how bad it gets, hope is still there. Except that my question becomes: How do we get to hope if it's still in the box?! We've got everything else. Why was that not made available to us? And why didn't anyone tell the poor girl what was inside. Why would Zeus even want to do that? I realize that it was to trick man, but still, it kind of feels like when my brother took my Barbies and decided that they'd be better of decapitated. How do you play with them after that? At least in the Bible when Eve ate from the apple and she and Adam were banished from Eden, their punishment was exile, death and pain at childbirth and the knowledge of good and evil. This is a whole other ball game.

I'm not saying that in Christianity God can't be vindictive, of course he can and has been. Look at the great flood and God tricked Adam and Eve (through the snake) into eating from the tree of knowledge. After all if God knows everything he would have known that it would happen. One could look at these stories that way, and for hundreds of years they were. However, there's a big difference between the opening of Pandora's Box (or rather jar) and childbirth, death, banishment, and knowledge of good and Evil.

First of all most women survive bearing children nowadays. According to a study done by UNICEF, WHO, and UNFPA; Maternal death in developed countries averages at about 1 in 2,800. In Africa it's 1 in 16. Compared to 2 hundred years ago, there's definitely a drastic change (http://www.who.int/whosis/mme_2005.pdf ). We're getting better at keeping our women alive. Next death, imagine over-population, I’m not saying we should all die, but it would get crowded without some sort of control. Banishment seems a little severe. I know that they were kicked out of Eden, but it is not as if we have it so bad at the moment. Anyone who has been to the top of Mount Sinai at Dawn or Niagara Falls, or even central Amsterdam could probably attest to that. These are my favorite places in the world, and each one of us has our own little heaven on earth. And lastly, Knowledge of good and evil- is it truly that bad to have that knowledge? It isn’t the knowing that is a pain, but rather the responsibility that is. Just because we know about it does not mean that it was already there.

Pandora on the other hand isn't considered that lucky. She's been remembered in history as the woman who released all evils. Or rather "disease, despair, malice, greed, old age, death, hatred, violence, cruelty and war." If I were her I'd ask for my money back.
Let’s look at her list: Disease, well we eradicated small pox, but now it’s back as a biological warfare. In 2006 National Geographic even said that the measles is back and that there are people in the United States at risk. Despair, well, wherever there is war and fear there’s despair. Israel and Palestine cannot seem to figure it out, nor Pakistan and India; but those are our ‘never ending wars’. What about the wars the western world seems to start, like Afghanistan and Iraq. The world is still at war with the Al-Qaida and that looks like it will never end. Malice seems to be all over the place and in all forms such as betrayal and abuse. Some people are just twisted. How many people in the world have become corrupt and as a result greedy? Old age and death, well, there is no getting out of that. Hatred and violence and cruelty are also things that we may try to prevent, but that does not seem to go away.

So yes, I’d rather be the daughter of Eve, but in the end we’re a combination of both ladies. We cannot seem to keep our grubby hands out of the cookie jar, and nor should we. Science is full of mishaps waiting to happen and things accidently being discovered through each mistake: dynamite from nitroglycerin for example by Alfred Nobel, or Velcro by George de Mestral.

All in all we should be lucky with what we have and remember that there is a Niagara Falls when we feel outbalanced by all the evils, because they make all the beautiful things all the sweeter. We may not truly have hope, but in the end I think we have something a lot more powerful: belief.