Aboard the Modern Day Pequod

Call us all Ishmael. At least those of us who have been unwittingly conscripted on what we thought was a voyage with purpose only to learn out of the sight of land that we were on a monomaniacal expedition of bloodlust revenge. Those who our Captain Ahab stowed below deck as his chosen harpooners: Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice, Fedallahs all, knew what they signed on for. We did not, yet our fates are locked together aboard this modern-day Pequod that is the American war on terror. As such, we do well to reflect on the story as it was told one hundred and fifty four years ago.

In Herman Melville’s epic compendium Moby Dick, Ahab nailed a golden doubloon to the main mast; a prize for whomever harpooned the white whale. Is that not in part what motivates our crew today, as well as the Pequod’s owners, Bildad, Peleg, Halliburton, and their likes? While “they were bent on profitable cruises,” our Ahab is “intent on an audacious, immitigable and supernatural revenge.” Are these together not how they exhort us, as Flasks in the pursuit boat, to break our backs and crack our oars, hearts alive with the prospect of bringing our mad captain his vainglorious trophy? And who does the tumultuous work among the sharks and the very deep itself? Certainly not those who urge such ferocity. The many who drop into the water are the hapless conscripts, Queequegs, Tashtegos and Dagoos, those who obey, tolerate and question not the direction or logic behind the decisions made from inside the secluded Captain’s quarters. Blinded by the invented honor of the blood oath that christened the freshly forged harpoon, they think not to reason why, but only to do or die. Meanwhile those aforementioned Flasks, free of the moral obligations that would make a rational person think twice of the entire project, merely view the blood-stained brine their boat floats in as a sign of success.

Yet there are Starbucks among the crew. Those who question the motivation, the reason and morality behind the decision to chase the white whale of terror, at any, nay, at all costs. Ever more, they come to resent the oath they took to pursue Moby Dick, but questioning the directives of a Captain on a ship is a dangerous prospect. While they increasingly consider the integrity of the enterprise (or lack thereof), their responsibility to the hierarchy of the ship renders their dissent ineffective. “He waxes brave, but nevertheless obeys,” and Ahab knows this. Then there are as many Stubbs aboard the ship, but their dissent is mute. Their refrain is hushed when they hear the ivory leg on the planks: “Ahab has that that’s bloody on his mind. But, mum; he comes this way.” Reason gives way to the perceived need for order, and they stifle their dissent in deference to command. Mutiny is never a serious prospect, but their consciences trouble them to consider it as they lay in the bulk of the vessel at night, frustrated that the “terrible old man” manages to sleep in the gale, steadfastly eyeing the purpose at hand, while they toss and turn with the ship. Those 5,500 Steelkilts in uniform who have acted out, who quit their pumps and harpoons in realization that it is not their business, know too well the consequences. Discipline aboard the ship is harsh, and rebellions are always met with the harshest discipline.

Where does this leave us, Ishmael? Though we cringe at the prospect of Ahab’s directive, we are on this “cannibal of a craft,” bound by the enforced hierarchy that governs it. Or are we? Will our relief come as Ishmael’s did, when the white whale destroys our ship and crew while we are left floating on the waves, clinging to a coffin meant for someone else? Or will it come from elsewhere? Will our Ahab listen to the many Gabriels of as many Jereboam’s warnings that the attempt to destroy the white whale will be his own as well as his entire ship’s and crew’s undoing? Or will a Starbuck or a Stubbs yet unheard rise up from within the ranks of the morbid chain of command to challenge the undertaking at hand? Melville’s outcome is a disastrous one, forewarned by the albatross “in tormented chase of that demon-phantom… such over this round globe, they either lead us on in barren mazes or midway leave us whelmed.” It is a warning well worth considering so that our fate is not a similar one aboard this modern-day Peqoud.


n.b. This editorial appeared in the May 28-30 Weekend Edition of Counterpunch. Thanks to Jeffrey St. Clair and Alexander Cockburn for the forum. www.counterpunch.org.

The Eleventh Hole

Last Saturday I played golf with my father. This is nothing unusual, as last week many sons played golf with their fathers. I don't get to do it as regularly as I'd like, because I live about four and a half hours away from Buffalo, the town from which I hail. Last Saturday, however, was one neither of us will ever forget.

Growing up, golf was always the kung-fu of the household, and my father the zen master. I can remember standing in the backyard for hours while he'd chip wiffle balls, working on his short game. In the winter, he'd be in the basement, working on how he took the club back from the ground, as far as the basement ceiling would allow. His name is legend at the old public course he used to play at. I grew up there over the summers. A Junior Pass was cheap, and I'd play all day. My dad knew everyone there, so I had more babysitters than I needed. I'd play about 18 holes a day, maybe more, but everyone knew me because of my dad, and that was just fine with me.

To this day, there are few moments when the clarity of the father son relationship shines more brightly to me than when my dad and I are standing on the first tee. The dew cuts a glare on the fairway, the whole day is ahead of us. Neither of us knows what will happen out there, but we both know we'll do our best to meet any challenges that we encounter. Sometimes we'll handle them, other times, they'll handle us. Just like in life.

At the eleventh hole, a 156 yard par 3, a sunshower offered a few drops just as my dad was teeing up his ball. Then he swung. He's got a tight efficient swing that produces consistent results. The green is elevated on the eleventh hole, and as we watched the ball hit the green, it rolled a bit and then we lost it. Henry, one of the regulars in my dad's war party said, "I think it went in." My father just picked up his tee and walked out of the tee box, shrugging his shoulders. "I don't know." He didn't, so he kept his cool. None of us knew. I paced the teebox like a caged animal, looking for a good angle to see if it did indeed drop into the cup. Nevermind that I still had to shoot...I didn't even care.

As we approached the hole, we saw two balls on the green. I knew I had landed on the green, as did Henry. My dad's ball either went off the green or in the hole. Thinking the former impossible, I rushed the green to confirm the latter. There it was, in the hole. A Titleist Pro-V1 X-Out (my dad would never pay the full bill for standard issue Pro-V1's, so he buys the seconds). I went nuts. My dad wasn't even on the green yet, and I was hootin' and hollerin' like one can only imagine John Marshall did at Sutter's Mill in California on January 14th, 1848 when the gold shined up at him in the riverbed. My dad cooly walked onto the green, smiling. I practically jumped on him like a football player would in the endzone. I'm sure I disrupted at least one tee shot within earshot of my carrying on, but not even the most crotchety golfer would ever complain about such celebration.

The rest of the round was a blur. We talked about the fact that in the morning, my mother had given my son the golf balls that were on my dad's dresser to play with. My dad told him to be careful with them, because two of them were balls that he had gotten holes-in-one with before. The others were balls he won club championships with. My son, oblivious at just over a year and a half old, played on. I'm sure it registered somewhere in his subconscious though. I thought about the fact that my father sees those balls every day when he's getting dressed. I imagined that they must provide him with a sense of confidence and self-assuredness in the early morning hours, as he prepares for the grinding day ahead. That my son literally had a hand in the event made us even happier. Three generations were in on that one shot on the eleventh hole.

Golf teaches those who play it many lessons. How to handle pressure and frustration, how to lose with dignity and how to win with humility. It teaches discipline, sportsmanship, dedication and perserverance. It teaches endurance and strategy, technique and feel. Last Saturday it also taught me that, at the eleventh hole, my father is bigger to me today than he was even as a kid. I'll never forget the shot, and all the days practicing in the yard, and those winter evenings practicing his takeback in the basement it took for it to happen. If that's not a lesson worth learning, then surely there are none worth learning at all.

On Arts and Sciences.

I have been watching the current debate over the nature of knowledge and education in American society with some attention, given my personal and professional interests in such matters. It is my opinion based on such observations that there is a faction of ideologues moving to reshape the foundation of modern knowledge in a way that fundamentally cripples its ability to be an effective arbiter of reality by essentially objectifying the arts and the subjectifying the sciences. It seems that their intent is to remove the ability of traditionally subjective disciplines like philosophy, history and literature to critically analyze and challenge any social, political or economic system they consider. At the same time, this group is seeking to challenge the fundamental nature of science as a consideration of reality, moving to make it a tool of faith rather than reason.

On the topic of objectifying the arts, take the easiest and highest profile example of Ward Churchill, the University of Colorado professor accused of "Anti-American" thinking on the matter of the September 11th attacks. Churchill suggested that the people who died in the World Trade Center towers that day were legitimate targets for the terrorists, as they seem to have seen the economic impositions of the United States in the middle east as one of the primary causes of their jihad. "Patriotic" Americans instantly cried foul, arguing that the Americans who died on September 11th were innocent civilians who were singled out for their defenseless condition to strike fear and terror against all Americans.

As I've written in a previous post, I don't think anyone deserves to die at the hands of another human being (God seems to agree: see Exodus 20:13 for further elaboration), and I think most of the people in the towers on that day were hapless victims of the same oppressive system that the hijackers were trying to bring down. But, let us consider the framework for this consideration. Churchill's critics pointed out that the Americans in the towers were innocent civilians and should not have been killed because they weren't legitimate targets, given the rules of conventional warfare. Correct? If this is what they believe, then how would they consider the American firebombings of Dresden and Tokyo during World War II, where hundreds of thousands of civilians were targeted and died at the recieving end of American incendiary bombs? According to their stated formula, they would have to condemn the American firebombings as well, given the aforementioned problem of killing civilians, but I doubt you'd ever hear one of them do so. This is simple inconsitency, something that their attempt to make the subjective nature of history an objective inquiry cannot handle. Objectivity depends on models and formulas to insert variables to come up with consistent results. This model produces inconsistent results, and is therefore worthless.

Next, consider the current debate in Kansas over whether to challenge evolutionary theory in the classroom with the argument for "intelligent design." Intelligent Design is, as columnist Ellen Goodman wrote last week, simply the evolution of creationism; a stronger, fitter version picking up where its weaker predecessor left off. While the irony there is heavy, it is also worth noting that proponents of "intelligent design" are ultimately suggesting that scientists and students take a leap of faith. Scientific inquiry at its very foundation eschews assumptions, yet they expect this exception to be made because it serves their ideological agenda to do so. Thus it makes science subjective, open to interpretation, and devalues the entire discourse in the process.

This is, at its base, a move by people with a belief that America is exceptional to any moral rule they see fit to impose on others, and that scientific inquiry corrupts rather than uplifts the human condition. The result, were these inconsistent ideologues successful, would be the corruption of all the progress made in science and the arts since the Renaissance, when any books not initially burned by the Christians during their rise to power after the Roman emporer Constantine incorporated it into the ruling framework and the subsequent "Dark Ages" came out of their hiding. If this whole thing doesn't seem terribly scary to you, consider the fact that, due to the work of Eratosthenes, the Greeks and Romans were very conscious of the fact that the earth was round, and had actually calculated with some degree of accuracy its exact size, before such knowledge was deemed heretical by the Christian hierarchy once it gained power. That it took some convincing of the faithfully ignorant that Columbus would not fall off the surface of the flat earth should he sail west from Spain serves as warning to us not to let those more concerned with faith than reason begin dictating the terms by which we understand knowledge and pursue education.

Absent With Leave.

Hi there,

A month after my last post, I still don't have much of an itch to commit my thoughts to the blinking cursor. I've been taking it easy, and simmering some ideas to address when, as Mike Muir sang, "The Feeling's Back."

In the meantime, here are some more links for your edification:

www.counterpunch.com
Fox News commentator Bill O'Reilly says this site is "anti-American," which is as rave a review as I could ever write.

www.pitchforkmedia.com
Hyper-literate music reviews. Thelonius Monk once said that "talking about music is like dancing about architecture." If that's the case, then these people sure can dance.

www.fark.com
The ultimate time killer. Great for cubicle dwellers and insomniacs.

More whenever I get around to it. In the meantime, get some sun.