| Remember the Titanic |
| Tuesday April 11, 2006, 5:03 AM EST |
This weekend, I finally shed my distinction of being the last adult over the age of 25 in the U.S. to see James Cameron's movie, Titanic. Aside from being underwhelmed - and slightly embarrassed for marking out a bit for the melodrama - I was struck by the incredible parallels between the voyage and demise of the Titanic and the path we seem to be on right now in the world. Consider:
Titanic was the biggest, mightiest ship in history. It was perceived as unsinkable. Its stakeholders were very motivated to leverage its fame and capabilities as much as possible in order to maximize their business interests. Because of the arrogance surrounding all of this, they did not notice an iceberg ahead of the ship that would sink it. They tried to change course once they did see it, but it was too late. The ship smashed into the iceberg. Quickly, the powers-that-be realized the ship was doomed as a result of this crash, and it was just a question of when - not if - the mighty vessel would sink. This was followed by an almost comical lack of realization by the crew passengers, a tacit refusal to acknowledge or accept what was happening. But as the great ship slowly began to ease into the water, people finally figured it out. Trouble was, for most of them it was already too late. As the ship continued to sink, and as it became increasingly clear who would make it to a lifeboat and survive, and who would end up stuck on the vessel, people began to panic. They began to make irrational decisions. As the ship was in its last throes of preparing to sink to the bottom of the ocean, most of those who remained on board were tossed about and crushed, powerless in the vortex of this superhuman calamity. And then the ship sank. And then most of the people died. And then there was silence.
There are lots of icebergs ahead, ranging from the degredation of the environment to the threat of nuclear or biological calamity. Almost all of these threats were caused by us, a product of the civilization we've created and the drive for technology and capital at the expense of the ecological and human systems that sustain us. I'm not informed or knowledgeable enough to know how close any of these icebergs are, or whether it is too late or not to avoid them. But I do know that watching this over-hyped Hollywood artifact represented a change of context for me. Before, Titanic was a big ship that was badly administered and sunk and a lot of people died as a result. Seeing the movie tell the story - especially with such a melodramatic angle toward the human tragedy involved in the fall - Titanic suddenly became a cruelly predictive metaphor for where we've been, where we are, and where we might all be headed.
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