American consumerism has entered its final, baroque stage. "Baroque" is defined in my dictionary as "exaggeratedly showy or ornate," and this is a perfect description of early 21st century America -- the SUVs are bigger, the superstores are larger, the houses are more ostentatious than ever… while at the same time the polar ice caps are melting more rapidly, the rainforests are being destroyed even more voraciously, and the atmosphere has reached a state of near-terminal pollution. America has gone stark raving mad. Like passengers in an out-of-control car headed for a brick wall, Americans glance up from their TVs and ask, "Is that a brick wall we see up ahead? Well then, let’s SPEED UP! That’ll show em! Any more brick walls around? Bring em on! Yee hah!"
The sinking of the Titanic makes an even better analogy, since it lasted long enough for the drama to fully develop. Crashing into a brick wall is over much too quickly for the lesson to truly sink in.
Like America, everybody thought the Titanic was invulnerable. Like America, the Titanic was ultra-modern, the highest high-tech. Like America, the Titanic carried all social classes, and this is why the disaster achieved such mythic power. If it had held only steerage rabble, no one would have remembered. But the thought of John Jacob Astor slowly freezing to death in the icy waters of the North Atlantic -- now there’s a scenario from which legends are made. (Back then, the wealthy were still hated, and there must have been considerable satisfaction realizing that even the rich can suffer and die like that.)
Like America, the Titanic was on a corporate mission, a mission from God as it were. In this case, the mission was to reach New York in record time. Imagine the headlines from the lapdog press if the Titanic hadn’t hit the iceberg -- TITANIC BEATS TRANSATLANTIC SPEED RECORD. What an advertising coup for the corporation this would have been! The corporation anticipated a long and profitable career from their new investment.
Unlike America, the corporation chose their best, most experienced captain to be in command. But like America, the captain had serious gaps in his resume. Specifically, he had never encountered significant danger from icebergs. He was clueless about what an iceberg could do to the thin steel hull of a steamship. Having never been challenged by icebergs, he considered himself and his ship invulnerable.
During the voyage, some of the passengers became aware that they were heading into the iceberg zone. They spoke to the captain and other crew members, and urged them to change their course to a more southerly latitude, or to at least slow down. But no, the Titanic was on a corporate mission, as you will recall, and changing course was not an option. (Sounds like the Bush administration, doesn’t it?) In fact, the captain decided to SPEED UP so they would get through the danger zone faster! Don’t you just love corporate logic?
(What we have here, of course, is the common situation in which the people in power ignore the people with good information. Why do they do this? Because they can. This is why Global Warming will turn into such a disaster as the 21st century progresses. The powers-that-be were amply warned, but chose to ignore all the good advice they were so freely given, and now we will all pay the price.)
When the Titanic hit the iceberg, the first response was, of course, denial. Faith-based ideology trumped reality: "This ship is unsinkable, therefore it will not sink." (Obviously, the Titanic was owned and operated by Republicans, and in fact the majority stockholder of the Titanic was none other than American plutocrat J.P. Morgan.) Only when the ship started to tilt at an impossible angle was it time to break out the lifeboats and save as many rich people as possible.
Even after the lifeboats were deployed, the remaining passengers clung to hope. They had their life vests, after all. Few stopped to consider how cold the water was. (Just as today, few people stop to consider what this planet will really be like without rainforests and polar caps.)
The Titanic disaster illustrates an important aspect of human nature: By all means, let’s avoid thinking if at all possible. Before the disaster, nobody wanted to talk about prevention, and after the disaster, the situation was self-evident and nobody needed to talk about it. Both before and after the disaster, human intelligence was dispensed with. This is exactly what has happened with Global Warming. Now that we have probably passed the point of no return, more people are finally starting to talk about Global Warming, but talk is way too cheap. The wrong hands are on the tiller. As long as corporations run our ship of state, the intelligent people with good information will be ignored. What can we expect, when idiots are in command?
Clearly, the American system (a combination of corporate capitalism and what passes for democracy) has failed utterly. This system, hastily cobbled together during the 18th century, has seldom been capable of making wise decisions, even during the best of times. Now that we face unprecedented global environmental disaster, the limitations of the American system have become lethal for the entire planet. As long as the American system remains intact, people have no incentive to change their behavior, which makes ecological disaster inevitable. We’re in a hell of a pickle, I would say.
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