Over a period of more thirty years this, now ancient mariner, has produced a series of lectures recounting the history of the Sea and Society from the perspective of these oceanic children. The lectures have now evolved into a thesis and a theory that postdicts and predicts (albeit "through a glass, darkly.")Humanities relationship with the sea from the beginning of time to the end of time.
The lectures have divided themselves in twain. A series that begins with the Big Bang and ends with the Industrial and cultural revolutions of the 1850's and: a series that begins with 1850 and ends with the lawyers "Rule against Perpetuities" This rule limits contracts and compacts to "lives in being plus twenty one years" In our American Society with a life expectancy of seventy five years this prophecy and projection is thereby limited to the year 2,100
Considering the chronological age of the Ancient Mariner(80+). This may well be the last revision of the text or at best the penultimate revision. There are about thirty four chapters and to keep the interest of the readers the web will reveal one chapter each month. What will be new in this version derives from the realization that at long last the Ancient Mariner must cope with the need for a dogma that satisfies his need to believably sing “Ah sweet mystery of Life at last I found you.” There are, in his view, three acceptable frameworks for this rationalization. All begin with a dogma about the origin of the Universe. One starts with the belief that the Universe is created from nothing by some sort of “big bang” that produces a gigantic mass of chaotic matter and an equal mass of chaotic anti matter. Should these worlds every mix the anti matter will annihilate the matter and we shall end where we began with nothing.
Well well!
what care we about the mass of anti matter if we live in the Universe of matter. We can now posit the existence of a Universe initially composed entirely of hot chaotic photons and neutrinos. All we now need is a logical mechanism through which the chaos is created into order. This we find in Markovian statistics which at one and the same time produces Markow regions and an electromagnetic radiation at a frequency (approx 160 Gigaherz) which scientific framework folk believe is a measure of the Temperature (i.e a measure of the chaos) of the Universe. This provides a mechanism for the evolution of inanimate things into living things in which every “living thing” is identified by the existence of a DNA molecule as its road map for procreation. We will call this a Darwinian frame work.
Enter human mammals who believe (incorrectly) that they have an ability to manipulate symbols with a one to one correspondence with descriptive symbols of living creatures and thereby the ability to predict the future of evolution and to modify or reinforce this pattern with self fulfilling prophecy. We will call this frame work Social Darwinism.
A second framework postulates some sort of omniscient, omnipresent and omnipotent God or God’s who looks with favor on a tribe or tribes who are dedicated to the notion that their God has a will and that his will can establish a perpetuating Kingdom on Earth which has the Power and the Glory for ever and ever AMEN. The history and perspective from any one of these long lasting tribes forms a framework for satisfying the yearning for and an understanding of “the sweet Mystery of Life. This writer, steeped as he is in the Judeo Christian history that begins with Genesis and the creation of Adam and the creation of a replicating clone called Eve as mother and father of all creation has been exposed to this mystery . He understands it as a framework for history but also as framework for the prediction of the role of self-fulfilling religious prophecy in the world of 2,100.
The third framework postulates a world in which humans believe there is no good and no evil, that we are beyond freedom and no dignity and that news reports and analysis by the media are nothing but “tales told by an idiot, full of Sound and Fury, signifying nothing. We will call this framework the Sound and the Fury.
Why then should the Ancient Mariner bother with this intellectual history which self reflexively modifies history. Simply because at least one philosopher has enunciated an overall framework that copes with all of these incompatible frameworks and provides a working strategy for a long Bittersweet life which at the end, if luck prevails, provides for a memory without pain. This philosophy is summarized in The Ancient Mariner’s poetic rendition of the last lines of Oedipus Rex
At that final day With life’s last milestone passing Count no one happy Unless they find life at death A memory without pain. With that motivation in mind Let the Tales of the Ancient Mariner Begin
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