Tuesday, October 27, 2009

You Should'a Seen the Ocean Then


There is no substitute for an alert crew standing watch.


Every now and then some genius sails into town to bemoan the general decline of humankind as if we're measurably devolving as a species. We no longer, for instance, know how to carve saintly statuary from granite slabs using a hammer and chisel. We’ve misplaced our ability to silently stalk small game for supper. We can't make our way to the killing fields and home again without a GPS-armed SUV. Stuff like that. There is always some noble talent gone stale, the shortcoming dissected by some Grizzly Adams type who often as not would be happy to show you how it's done on his cable show. The usual claim is that vital human skills are at or near extinction, the broader implicit message forecasting the inevitable demise of Homo sapiens.

Which is a load of crap. And as much as I might admire the presumed nautical capabilities of a fellow whose recent review of a piece of safety gear I just read, I cringed once again at his yearning for the days of yore when men were men, and the sea devoured those men with a regular vengeance.

Listen, I know what it’s like to have one’s eyes glued pathologically to the chart plotter while coming close to t-boning the freighter right in front of me. But technology does not turn us into chimps. It is our own nature that threatens us, just as an African plain full of tall grass and bereft of lion scent tends to make zebras heavy and lethargic. Succumbing to our indigent nature didn’t start with the invention of indoor plumbing. All animals adapt, some of us remarkably quickly, to an environmental change like a free smorgasbord at the local restaurant. Behavior is pretty predictable that way. Observe the boisterous flock of seagulls debating over my outstretched armload of Cheezos.

Darwin observed that species evolve rather slowly on the whole. The creatures foraging on bagged peanuts at thirty-five thousand feet in business class are virtually identical to the ones who huddled in moldy caves thousands upon thousands of years ago. But knowledge shared by note-taking animals is Lamarckian in nature. It gets passed on quickly, and we respond in kind. Let' s face it, it wont be long before every human is tapping away on an iPhone or Blackberry. These tools empower us to behave in different ways if we see fit, but I dare say if my i-Gizmo were taken from me for good, I would change again. In fact I did for a while on a boat once, because I had to. Then I changed back, because I could.

Here’s an analogy I don't quite know what to do with. Squirrels have been around for a long time, longer than cars, I’m pretty sure. The survival skills that got them this far, which include maddeningly unpredictable course changes as they’re being chased, don’t always work to their advantage on a paved road. Far more frequently than I wish to recall, I’ve watched a squirrel that seemed to be home free inexplicably double back into the road, and from thence into the hereafter. Squirrels could do with a little Lamarckian traffic seminar, I guess is what I’m saying.

To suggest humans are losing skills that make them essentially human is absurd. We might as well denigrate most honey bees for having lost the ability to procreate. What they did, as far as they’re concerned, is build a better mouse trap. If we weep for the loss of true love among the honeycombs, shall we not also eulogize the passing of good old Loran?

Humans take useful new technology and immediately put it to good use. As a side effect they often divest themselves of older paradigms no longer seen as productive. It also means that difficult chores like circumnavigating the globe on a floating platform become easier, which encourages a larger population to attempt the challenge. This fact seems to irk trained folks from the old school, which I find somewhat ironic. Because if you strip down any process into its component skill-sets, virtually nobody becomes an expert on his own.

We all stand on the shoulders of others. When I take my little boat out for a joyride, I do so because somebody else developed metallurgy, the combustion engine, fuel refining, textile manufacturing, synthetic materials, aerodynamic concepts, on the list goes, and then showed me how it all works, so I can sit there at the helm and go, “Well naturally this all makes perfect sense! And aren't I the master of my domain!”

I’m quite certain that the old salts who can still shoot a star with their trusty sextants could never actually make a sextant, or conceive of one, or a working watch, much less chart the heavens and develop the mathematical equations with which to locate themselves properly on a planet that looks flat to most of us. In fact, I’m pretty certain that just about everyone of us, were we forced to start from scratch, would place ourselves smack in the middle of the universe based on clear observation.

There’s room for all of us on the water, even the foolish ones. And if they get too stupid, well, Darwin has a place for those souls as well. It’s in the tarry pit I like to call the culling fields.


This crewperson is worth all the newfangled
gadgetry found in the catalogs, right?
Looks kind of shallow down there!