Don't Want To Sail On This Ship Of Fools

We're setting sail
To the place on the map from which no one has ever returned...

Avarice and greed are gonna drive you over the endless sea
They will leave you drifting in the shallows
or drowning in the oceans of history
Traveling the world, you're in search of no good
but I'm sure you'll build your Sodom like you knew you would
Using all the good people for your galley slaves
as you're little boat struggles through the warning waves,
but you don't pay

You will pay tomorrow
You're gonna pay tomorrow
You will pay tomorrow
Save me, save me from tomorrow
I don't want to sail with this ship of fools

  — Ship Of Fools, Karl Wallinger & World Party (1987)

I often refer to the "elites" who own and run the United States. In America you become a member of this group if you own enough stuff and use the power which great wealth confers to influence how things go. Here's a good-enough definition of elite—

A group of people considered to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth.

An elite defined by money or power is not an elite at all as far as I'm concerned. Generally speaking, in this country, these people are really just a bunch of assholes tied together by limitless avarice, an insatiable hunger for control, bottomless personal insecurity, flaming untreatable narcissism, and the like. Do you realize how many people have to be stepped on in order to acquire a billion dollars in this country? Lots and lots, believe you me. By any reasonable definition of mental health, many of the so-called "persons" in this so-called elite should be put in a padded cell where they can't do anymore damage.

Let's talk about a real elite, people with rare insight into the human condition. Who am I talking about? I'm talking about you, the regular readers of DOTE, the cognoscenti, the tolerate-no-bullshit people.

I'm certainly not talking about those sorry, kiss-ass Washington think-tank hacks and fools who work at the Pew Research Center

Stand up and take a bow. Pat yourself on the back. I tell you this depressing but true stuff every day but you keep coming back for more. Perhaps you are like reader Steve, who recently said—

Reading [DOTE] on a daily basis reassures me that someone other than myself sees the absurdity in the human condition. It is a daily reminder that I am not totally insane.

That's Steve's reason, but there are many others. For me, the main reason is not wanting to be alone on this planet. I've got you, and you've got me and each other.

If we are an elite, we're certainly a peculiar one. We've got no money, no power to speak of, not really much of anything tangible. We're not a real community, either. In a community people need to occupy the same, well-defined physical (geographical) space. But my readers are scattered all over the world, connected only by this website and the intertubes.

But make no mistake about it, regular readers of DOTE are an elite. The common thread is insight, not "power, talent or wealth." And another important thing which ties some of us together is that we don't want to sail on this ship of fools into an extremely depressing, untenable future. Who are these fools? They are just about everybody else! Nearly all of these seven billion humans. Especially the billionaires!

And these fools think the planet Earth is their special vehicle, what we call a ship of fools. They think they are entitled to wreck the joint. They think they own it, that it is theirs to do what they want with.

But you know we're only renting, and we have an obligation to leave the place in at least as good a shape as we found it in.

Unfortunately, wherever these fools steer this spaceship Earth, we are bound to follow because there is nowhere else to go. After several million years, the Earth will recover but the fools will be gone. That's the good news.

So it goes, as Kurt Vonnegut used to say. I know there must be several thousand people—not tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands, certainly not millions—who might join us here on DOTE, but have not done so for various reasons. Maybe they don't know about this website. Maybe they do know about it but don't want to read here for personal reasons. Maybe they don't like me. I can be an arrogant prick, at least in print (but almost never in person).

But all of the "right people" are welcome here. The other seven billion can kiss my ass.

It might be useful to remember that—

It's not your fault. There are no earth-shattering choices left for you to make.

Of course there are personal choices you can make. And necessarily—

Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.

So, thanks for reading! I am grateful to reader Craig, who reminded me of this great World Party song, which I used to listen to over and over again the late 1980s. Way back then, I wasn't quite sure why I liked Ship of Fools so much, but I certainly know why I like it now.

 

Comments

[T E Cho]

Dave, your website is hard to find in the ocean of websites out there. I'd probably not have found it if it weren't directly recommended by a friend. You might find that encouraging. Actually I'm curious how the others happened upon it.

[Wanooski]

Awww, thanks Dave. You have a lovely Sunday.

[gretchen]

I came upon DOTE while doing searches for decay/decline of empires in world history. The way they've set up our world has always seemed wrong and has worried me from childhood, especially in regards to Nature. Glad to find others that care and can explain the mumbo jumbo.

[Ken Barrows]

You can lead a fool to issues, but you cannot make him think. Since you bring up the issues, there is nothing else you can do. You can be at peace with yourself.

[Ben]

I found DOTE in late 2011 (December if I'm not mistaken) at the recommendation of a very close friend who is no longer with me. Your blog keeps me sane because you express ideas and observations that I have intuited, but have not been able to articulate. Thank you Dave.

R. Buckminster Fuller coined the phrase Space Ship Earth to describe how interconnected everyone and everything is on Earth. He posited that humanity would eventually run into a brick wall, a test of sorts, that would determine whether or not we have a future as stewards of Space Ship Earth. Fuller died on July 1, 1983 (aged 87) - I'm sure that if he were alive today, he would look around at the convergence of seemingly disparate human fuck ups, accumulating one after another, and determine that we have no future.

[gretchen]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVEDwnvwQkM&list=FLlRYu1m_GYj3w_5VOHvj7NQ&index=1&feature=plpp_video

[The Practician]

Dave, I would recommend your website to anyone I thought could handle facing the hopelessness of our situation without becoming miserably depressed, but you know as well as I do that those people are few and far between. Personally, I think I only know one other person (in person) who, when pushed on the serious issues, will not fall back on empty platitudes such as "we can change the world" or some equally meaningless humanist drivel.

Great sunday post though, made me feel less guilty about my own superiority complex.

[IvyMike]

I'm convinced the only hope for life on earth—and survival of the human species—is near term global thermonuclear war.

He which testifieth these things saith, Surely I come quickly. Amen. Even so, come, Lord Shiva.

[Eugene]

Most people can't read the writing on the wall until their backs are up against it. I am confidant some of us will survive but I have little hope that the world will continue as it has over the past 50 years or so. My guess is that the survivors will be cooperatively resilient in tough times, be deficient in those character traits (extreme materialistic self centeredness, thievery and lust for power) that got us into this mess and will work with nature instead of against it.

[Gallifrey]

I have lurked here for a long time without ever commenting, fall 2010 if I recall correctly. The irony of my situation is that I learned the score (thanks to you and a handful of others) at exactly that point when I was fully enmeshed and entangled in the suite of social traps and responsibilities that characterize the American Sleepwalker (marriage, job, house, child). Now I don't have anyone to truly talk to in the physical world, because everyone I know is a Rabbit-Out-Of-The-Hatter who thinks that policy X or politician Y will make things better, when precedent indicates otherwise. So thanks for the straight dope, Dave. By the way, I printed out your 2nd Lesson of Human Nature from your post Learning from the Aquacalypse and taped it next to my monitor at work. It's a good daily reminder that we are who we are.

[Mike Roberts]

I can't think of a single person that would seriously consider it, if I recommended your site, Dave. That is the measure of the mess we're in. Almost everyone believes that things will return to "normal" eventually and that they can continue to rape the planet and destroy their children's futures without consequence.

For some people, the bits of reality start to add up and eventually flick a switch somewhere. Then they'll find their own way here, as I did. It's a shame we're not a community but I take what comforts I can from knowing that there is the odd rare person out there who is aware of what's going on.

[Chris]

I don't remember how I found DOTE, but hardly a day goes by that I do not check in and read your posts, Dave. I guess I keep coming back because it is, as you said, a No Bullshit Zone. I appreciate that, and thank you for keeping it that way without fail.

[raintonite]

"But you know we're only renting, and we have an obligation to leave the place in at least as good a shape as we found it in."

For some reason I find this one of the most compelling sentences I've read this year. Thanks.

Maybe it has impact because it frames our dilemna in language we can all understand these days - the language of the market place. Yet, its meaning is certainly not in keeping with current financial ideology, but rather subverts the language of the ideology.

Anyway, too much analysis on my part.

[Tony]

Thanks Dave. I look on as a fellow-traveller from down-under knowing we will follow the US down the same road.

[Alexander Ač]

Greetings from depressed Europe (Slovakia) too! My last article is about dissapearing arctic ice and all the possible shit effects on food production. Shit happens almost everywhere, everytime you look...

cheers,

Alex

[T E CHo]

@Dave,@raintonite,

"But you know we're only renting, and we have an obligation to leave the place in at least as good a shape as we found it in."

Yes, I needed the reiteration, that is the essence of things, framed for our contemporaries in a way they might understand, on some level, maybe some of them, eventually (?) Maybe not.

[eclecticskeptic]

I've been reading this site for maybe three years now, I'm an old duck, been around the block a few times... stockbroker, restaurant owner, homebuilder, real estate agent... lotta stuff. No particular talents, just trying to keep my head above water for the most part. Reading Taleb's "Fooled By Randomness" came like the proverbial slap upside the head. Near as I can tell, almost everybody is subject to linear thinking. That is, they believe that what happened yesterday is probably going to happen today. And tomorrow. And the next day.
Well, there's an aphorism that keeps coming back to me. "If it can't happen, it won't happen. If (for example) Greece can't pay its debts, they wont. If health care can't double every 9 years,it wont. If we can't "defeat" those brown folks in Afghanistan, we wont.
If we can't support 7 or 10 billion people on this earth, we wont. I don't know what will happen, I only know that if it can't, it wont.