Three magnificent Tall Ships sailed into the
Archipelago of Bliss yesterday and anchored only 200 yards away from
AVENTURA. I consider the sailing ship
humanity’s finest blend of form and function - or as I prefer to describe it –
beauty and purpose. So, seeing such
majestic examples of this artistry had my heart astir.
Because the evening light was insufficient for my
camera, I decided to row over early this morning to snap some photos. But one ship had left just after dawn, and
another had upped anchor and was headed out to sea as I comically attempted to
catch her. However, I was able to get this
nice shot of the remaining beauty.
*******
Rowing through the dreamy mid-winter tropical sunshine
back to my little ship, I had a sudden realization. If I could rewind the film of my life’s
movie, I would not go to college.
Instead, I would find a Tall Ship, where I could apprentice myself and
eventually work my way up to Captain.
My lifespan has more or less paralleled the
renaissance of classic sailing vessels. In
my youth there were no Tall Ship parades or festivals that I ever knew
about. So there were obviously not many
captains’ positions available. But now
if you search Wikipedia you will discover that there are over 225 Tall Ships
scattered about Planet Ocean.
Some of them are training ships for the Merchant
Marine academies of various countries. Others
are excursion vessels for adventure travelers.
Some represent various cities with nautical heritages, and serve as
floating goodwill emissaries. And many are
“semester-at-sea” sailing ships. I would
probably toss my sea bag aboard one of these floating classrooms.
However, given my passion for understanding the world
and sharing that evolving awareness, I undoubtedly would not be a typical
captain. The sea literature that I was
so fond of in my formative years – think Conrad and Stevenson and London – was
full of eccentric ship masters whose decades of direct contact with unbridled
Nature and men in traumatic circumstances provided them with very
unconventional attitudes about Life.
So, I would have a great legacy to fall back upon when
I was criticized for trying to pollute the minds of young people with my
radical ideas. Indeed, Jack London’s
classic, The Sea Wolf, is a tale of a worldly captain who expands the
horizons and philosophy of a narrow-minded city dweller, who he rescued after
he fell overboard from a San Francisco ferry.
This pleasant image of commanding a handsome Tall
Ship, filled with young people anxious to experience a very different world OUT THERE, enchanted me enough that I
decided to explore it in this essay.
Typically, a Captain will give a welcome and warning
speech to greet the students and to remind them that they are now in an
environment far more dangerous than what they are used to. After doing this, I would let everything
“settle in” for a week during which they would take classes in the normal high
school curriculum as well as in seamanship and navigation. Then it would be time to introduce them to
the Captain’s Class, which might more accurately be entitled “Subversive Ideas
101.” That first lecture might go
something like this.
*******
Hello everyone.
You are all looking terrific.
Already I can see how well you are responding to this life of Sea and
Sun and Sky and Stars. Bravo! Our format for this evening’s session will be
my short lecture followed by lots of questions and answers and discussion. My goal is to be the catalyst for a
wide-ranging and free-wheeling conversation between all of us.
Let’s begin by clarifying the purpose of
education. My belief is that its true
mission is not to pump you full of historical facts and boring dates, but to
teach you how to THINK CRITICALLY. The great poet Walt Whitman had a perfect
five word synopsis for what this should entail.
He counseled everyone to: “Question much - and obey little!”
In order to persuade you tonight of the need to think
critically and to deeply examine the world around us, I will defend two significant
propositions. The first is that we have
been lied to about almost everything in the past. And the second is that this deliberate
deception is just as prevalent in the present.
Fortunately, most of your daily curriculum is
comprised of studies that are not subject to interpretation or distortion. Your math and grammar and celestial
navigation calculations are all indisputable.
It is when we delve into the realm of human affairs that falsehood and
manipulation arise. More specifically, I
am referring to what I call PREM history – as in Political, Religious, Economic
and Military history.
We are taught that the Human Story has been a tale of
ceaseless improvement, and that great men made wise decisions to insure the
betterment of our species. Yes, we are
instructed, that there have been villains along the way, but largely it has
been an ascent towards noble progress.
Whenever, I hear the human condition described in such idealistic terms,
a wonderful word from British street slang leaps to mind – BOLLOCKS! This essentially translates to “what a load of
garbage!”
PREM history has not been a cavalcade of heroic,
enlightened men nudging Humanity upward through the strength of their vision
and character. Instead, it has been an
unending trail of tears and violence and injustice as powerful men strive to
oppress everyone else. It has indeed
been “rule by the few” and “might makes right!”
This is not the version of history that you find in
your textbooks, and I can tell from the expressions on your faces that you are
shocked by my analysis. But it gets even
more surprising. That’s because this dreadful
inequality began with the introduction of what is widely perceived as one of
Humankind’s crowning achievements –Agriculture!
Sedentary –stay in one place agriculture – began only
about 10,000 years ago. Prior to that,
for at least 10,000 generations, Homo Sapiens was a species of itinerant
hunter/gatherers. We lived in small
tribes where everyone knew each other and the common good was the highest
priority. Everyone could forage and find
shelter and build a fire. Self-reliance
was a hallmark of this type of life.
But when Capital A Agriculture arrived, dependency
swiftly replaced independence. Soon
villages became towns and towns became cities.
Then Division of Labor reared its ugly head. Suddenly, individuals were no longer
self-sufficient. The wheat grinder
relied on the farmer who relied on the plow-maker. Division of Labor quickly led to a division
of society into the few who ruled and the vast majority who were ruled.
Soon the most manipulative and ruthless psychopaths snared
the reins of power through hierarchal governmental systems. These control junkies were soon aided by the
monotheistic, patriarchal religions with their sky gods. Religious leaders could provide perfect cover
for the tyrannical policies of any ruler by claiming that it was god’s will
that this pharaoh or emperor or sultan be in charge.
Relentlessly, down the centuries, wealth and power
were transferred to fewer and fewer people. These Political and Religious elites condemned
most of humanity to a life as an Economic serf.
And, if these people rebelled, the Military would crush their uprisings. The PREM hierarchy now had a stranglehold on
the planet. This led to a social
structure drowning in atrocity. I could
name dozens, but here is a handful of disgusting evils that such top-down rule
has imposed upon the world:
·
War
·
Slavery
·
Torture
·
Subordination of
Women
·
Destruction of
Nature
Occasionally, as the human caravan stumbled forward,
there would be a glimmer of hope for the Common Man - A Magna Carta or a Gutenberg
printing press or the 18th century democracies. But always the powers that be, who I prefer
to describe as The Malignant Overlords,
found a way to co-opt these movements and retain an astonishing amount of
control.
Our history books teach us that our foundational principles
of Agriculture and Civilization have been wonderful for all of us. But in fact they have been beneficial to only
a few of us, while they have been catastrophic for most of us. Our historians have lied to us about our
past. Napoleon realized this long ago
when he said, “History is a series of lies that we agree upon.”
Unfortunately, we are still being lied to. But they are more masterful in their methods
of doing so. One of the movies that we
will be showing onboard in the next few weeks is called “Wag the Dog.” It is a perfect example of how modern spin
doctors – otherwise known as highly paid liars – can cleverly distort the
truth.
They told us that cigarette smoking would not lead to
health problems and early death. They
told us that they would find ways to safely store nuclear waste. They told us that they were not spying on our
phone calls and emails. They told us
that moving good paying jobs overseas would be great for the economy. They told us the 2008 bank bailouts were
necessary to save Main Street, but they only bloated Wall Street.
So, here is a summary of my position that I will leave
you with before we open the deck up for questions. The “history” that we have been told is true
and objective, is in fact a litany of lies that The Malignant Overlords have
used to justify their greed and malice down through the generations. They lied to us in the 17th
century and they still lie to us today, on the 17th of January,
2016.
My sincere hope is that by the end of this cruise you
will have sharpened your critical thinking skills - and perhaps even more
importantly- that you will have developed a first-class BOLLOCKS detector!