Moral of Icarus

Ikaros' problem was shoddy workmanship. You can fly as close to the sun as you want if you affix your wings with pegs or glue instead of wax. Maybe even use nails? Daidalos had string. Could have tied them on.

The first moral of the story of Ikaros is not to use poor workmanship. It's deadly. Bust out your whip and go beat the poor workman until he doesn't suck so bad. Or simply don't allow him the opportunity to fail in the first place. He's a ditch digger now.

Slaves take shoddy workmanship for granted and therefore assume they must obey and glory is impossible. Slaves automatically assume what exists is mandatory. Ikaros used wax, therefore he had to use wax.

Remind yourself not to unconsciously copy the vicious habits of the slaves you're surrounded by. Don't think like them.

The slave thinks, because of course they do, that Ikaros' problem was disobedience. He was told not to fly so high, but he did anyway. However, this is merely a secondary problem. Even a tertiary problem: the fact Ikaros would disobey is also an engineering constraint. You can't give Ikaros wings if he can't follow the user manual. (Instead use a glider or a tunnel, depending on account.) The second moral of Ikaros is that if you give a wings to someone who doesn't deserve wings, they will not fly, they will kill themselves and therefore continue to be unable to fly. 

 

In the tale I originally heard, Ikaros is restrained repeatedly by Daidalos. "Hey, you're flying too high, come back." Eventually Ikaros closes his ears so he can kill himself properly. By analogy to real-life situations, realize Ikaros is afraid of Daidalos spanking him, but, slowly, he grasps that Daidalos can't spank him mid-air. All Daidalos can do is talk. Ikaros can complete his suicide without interruption, so he does. See also: Catholic schoolgirls. "Mom can't switch me way out here, better destroy myself ASAP before she comes hunting for me." 

It's absurd to suppose Ikaros didn't know he was killing himself. No, Ikaros didn't want to be alive, but was too afraid of pain to fall on his own sword. He needed a gentle suicide method. One that wouldn't hurt until it was too late. 

At best, Ikaros wanted to be close to the sun more than he wanted to be alive. Ikaros doesn't appear in mythology except as someone who gets himself killed. Ikaros' life was meaningless, especially next to the prolifically creative Daidalos. He refused to live if he couldn't be close to the divine, and you can't blame him for that. Instead, we can see that Daidalos is to blame for raising Ikaros to be a loser or allowing him to be raised as such. Lacking the vision to escape Daidalos' abuse and live, Ikaros could only grasp a method of escape through death.

 

P.S. Warning against complacency and hubris pre-supposes that the reader is illiterate. Anyone who can genuinely understand words, and therefore learn verbally, will realize they can't go too softly or too hard without having to be told. The only folk who can fly using these wings can already fly without them. At worst, they will overhear the phrase, "phase I trials," and realize they need to prototype and test.

Something Daidalos didn't do.