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On cold days, I’m reminded of the luxury of modernity. What a wonderful thing to have 40 gallons of scalding hot water stored up in the basement, delivered to my shower at a moment’s notice. How lovely to preheat my bed with the heated blanket sandwiched between sheet and comforter, ready to keep me from catching a chill when I lie down. Just decadent and so nice to be able to make my environment more gentle toward my body.
Peer reviewed tag (from OP):
#I wonder if my ancestors felt this way about the fire they tended
Well, there’s this Homeric hymn (#20):
[1] Sing, clear-voiced Muse, of Hephaestus famed for inventions. With bright-eyed Athena he taught men glorious crafts throughout the world, —men who before used to dwell in caves in the mountains like wild beasts. [5] But now that they have learned crafts through Hephaestus the famed worker, easily they live a peaceful life in their own houses the whole year round.
Be gracious, Hephaestus, and grant me success and prosperity!
English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. (Source)
P.S.:
I also think it is not insignificant that Hephaestus was the physically disabled god who invented tools to make his life easier. The Personification of the Curb Cut Effect.
I’ll never get tired of reminding people about Hephaestus’s homemade mobility-assistance droids. When the Goddess Thetis comes to visit him about new armor for Achilles –
…he limped out leaning on a thick stick, with a couple of maids to support him. These are made of gold exactly like living girls; they have sense in their heads, they can speak and use their muscles… These bustled along supporting their master, and he stumbled to a chair beside Thetis…
And then there are the automated delivery robots (which I strongly suspect he initially made for household use before some other god asked why they couldn’t be used for general deliveries).
…twenty tripods which were to stand around the walls of his room. He put golden wheels under the base of each, that they might run of themselves into any party of the gods and then run home again. They were a miracle! They were nearly done; only the lugs had to be put on, and he was just finishing these and forging the rivets. (Iliad XVIII, tr. Rouse)
But all through that poem he’s Mr. Pragmatic: the disabled divinity who just gets on with things as best he can, and doesn’t let what’s happened to him stop him.
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