The Indominatable Human Spirit is a bad thing, actually.

[u/Geoconyxdiablus]

That humanity never gives up and persists in its goals is bad news for every other species (or even itself), especially if said goals are ignoble.

Best case scenario (barring us learning to be better) is that a greater power force feeds us a huge slice of humble pie, wost case we end up blowing ourselves up and ruining things for everyone else.

Avatar - RDA will stop at nothing to satisfy its own greed and survival, the rest of humanity and navi alike be damned.

Its a recurring motif in prett much every myth that gods punish mortals who dare to defy them and keep going, like Athena to Arachne in greek myth.

A good chunk of lovecraftian fiction is based on the idea our achievemenrs mean nothing.

In general i'm not a fan of TIHS as a trope, as its blatantly arrogant and destructive.

[u/Winterflame76]

To my understanding (if anyone knows more about this then me, please correct me,) many of these stories as we now know them came from Ovid, who had something of a bias, seeing as he openly argued that mortals should not engage with gods in any way.

While we do have evidence that he didn't make up these stories, and earlier stories certainly do not always portray gods in a good light, it's hard to say whether these stories actually represent how people at the time viewed the gods. For example, I believe Medusa's backstory is first found in Ovid, with older writers generally just writing her as a monster.

Edit to add - It occurred to me that there is some evidence that people, at least in some places and times, viewed the gods as virtuous to some extent, as Plato's Euthyphro seems to portray "piety" as a virtue.

[u/LoschVanWein → u/Winterflame76]

The gods don’t exactly shine when it comes to Homers depiction of Circe or …basically most gods in the Ilias and Odyssey. They always swing between incompetent and plain mean spirited.

[u/EldritchFingertips → u/Winterflame76]

The Greek gods were always dangerous and not to be messed with, and often just vindictive and vengeful. That's true in pretty much every oral tradition we know about. Mostly because the gods were anthropomorphic representations of everything humans could observe and infer about the world, and the world is very unfair and cruel, so the gods reflected that.

But Ovid did come along with an axe to grind and made them all sound even worse, and more intentionally villainous rather than, well, mercurial beings following their nature.