Monday, April 9, 2012

Titanic and the Power of the Secular God



There is this western obsession about the biggest boat ever built at the time, the fastest boat, and the hand of God could not sink this boat thing, that lingers now to a centennial mark on April 15.

I, as a youth, was fascinated with the Titanic myth of Icarus and its failing and sinking going back fifty years. There was a big layout in the Philadelphia Sunday Inquirer edition that spread and reiterated all the myths about the great British super liner on the fiftieth anniversary of its sinking.

I saw that Clifton Webb, Barbara Stanwyck movie Titanic http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0046435/ on TV that weekend I think to boost the propaganda myth of man’s invincibility and technology. That flick also pointed out the form of an iceberg’s passive natural power to crash the hearts of man and his invincible mythology. I also eventually saw the B&W British film A Night to Remember http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0051994/.  

So when we as a family were walking out of a movie and into a movie lobby in Arizona in 1997 and seeing the posters of the new flick Titanic to be released at Christmas 1997, I yawned and said aloud “Wow, another Titanic film. What a bomb that will be.” Of course I was wrong on that one. Wasn’t I? http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120338/

I understood the myth. Another generation had yet to introduce itself to the myth and its hidden lessons.

The incredible failure of common sense to wrap itself around technology’s 1912 myth was one of the reasons for the failure.  The engineers and designers of Titanic thought it would float if damaged because of untested technological theories about what watertight compartments could or could not do in a worst case scenario. In such a case, no need for so many obsolete lifeboats to spoil the traveler’s view. 

Obviously, dumb icebergs have their own agendas regarding man and his technologies of the day. Of course we are talking 1912 technology. Think about how man and his myth and his modern day secular worship of technology are in 2012.  Holy Shit!

The younger generation, the tech generation, the Internet generation, re-embraced the Titanic myth once again in 1997.

So why the fascination?  I think it is the valuable lesson that all our knowledge and all our current technologies do not foresee the unforeseeable.  Man is limited even in his madness about how great he is among the creation of the universe, and in blind governance of the things of this planet.

“Man is the measure of all things.”  When man sets himself up in the secular role of an all-powerful and perfect God role on the earth, it is important that major failures be reported, told and retold again in myth to remind us all of how limited in scope and purpose he is in the ultimate scheme of things in the Universe. 


White Star Line - New York Office - Titanic Inquiries - April 1912
9 (part of 11) Broadway NYC - Currently a Radio Shack

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