The Midas Touch: Is the ability of King Midas a blessing? Or a curse?(Featuring new author @infinitor)

Since my childhood, the legend of King Midas has always fascinated me. The ability to have such an amazing and incredible surely has it's benefits but also has unforeseeable consequences.
If Midas sold all the things that he had ever touched, he could amass a fortune. This is what makes him unique. His rise is because of this uniqueness and ultimately his downfall also falls on the shoulders of this ability. I mean, sure he could be a very rich man. But if you cannot touch your wife or even children, if you cannot eat and drink, then what is the purpose of such an ability?

In the story, Dionysus finds that his schoolmaster Silenus has gone missing. He was found by a some peasants while he was wandering, drunk. The peasants brought him to their King, King Midas, who treated Silenus with hospitality for ten days and ten nights after which he finally brought him back to Dionysus. Dionysus asked Midas if he ever wished for something, and King Midas said that everything he touches should be turned to gold. And lo and behold, it came true!

Excited to try out his newly found power, Midas called for a feast:

So Midas, king of Lydia, swelled at first with pride when he found he could transform everything he touched to gold; but when he beheld his food grow rigid and his drink harden into golden ice then he understood that this gift was a bane and in his loathing for gold, cursed his prayer.

In Rufinem.

Sounds bad, doesn't it?

You could say that this ability is definitely a curse, but imagine if you had that ability. I wouldn't be honest if I said that if someone offered that kind of ability to me I wouldn't accept it. I would because without it, my odds of survival are drastically decreased. If I don't have enough money, I can't afford good clothes, good food or even a roof to live under. We can bullshit each other that an honest days work is better than a dishonest day's work all we want, all day long but in the end, money is the thing that matters. I'm not in any way condoning illegal methods of earning a living, don't get me wrong. The crux of the matter is that having a lot of money is better than having a small sum of it.

Although in the story, King Midas is punished for his greed, that does not happen in the real world as often as it should. The real criminals get away while the poor are caught by the law. When King Midas touches his daughter, she turns into gold. This is the moment when he realizes that his blessing is the biggest curse he could ever imagine, he doesn't wish it upon anyone else. To tell the truth, the world we live in is so screwed up that if someone's daughter turned into gold, he/she would sell for a single gram of cocaine.

Humans are savage in nature, no matter how much you dress it up.

I don't mean to sound pessimistic, but this is my view of the world, my experience with it. The internet is not devoid of things like this, it is not devoid of things infinitely more horrifying.

I like to think that there is still even a single shred of humanity left in people today. To not even hope for a single thing like that would mean that there is no future for us as a race. With the advancement of technologically, rise of corporations and corrupt politics, the only thing that can ensure the very survival of mankind in the long-run, is ultimately hope. Hope is the thing that makes us feel safe, it assures us that there is in fact a future to look forward to, it makes us not give up.

Conclusion

I think that Midas represents the greed of mankind. If there is one thing that humanity has longed for since the dawn of the human race, it is power. Money brings power. Midas wished for what, deep down, we all would if we were in his position. I mean, think about it. Sure, there some people in the world who aren't greedy, who are working for the sake of betterment of humanity. But their amount is infinitesimally small as compared to the greedy men, whose job is to prey on the poor and the helpless.

People think about themselves first and then about everyone else. They prefer to accomplish their goals first, ruthlessly advancing to achieve them and if, god forbid, their goals are different from the goals of others, then there is nothing more terrifying in the whole universe than man himself.

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