The movie “Titanic”, as well as the real-life events of the Titanic, provide an important metaphor for our sociological imaginations* to grasp.
Let me start with a few equations to properly build this metaphor:
The ship = The world
The Captain and Crew = The powers that be and their agents of enforcement
The Iceberg = The disaster towards which the powers that be are steering us
The Upper Class = The upper class
The lower class = The Lower Class
I’m sure you’ve started making the connections already. An interesting by-product of peoples’ placement in the world is their different ability to see the impending disaster. Just like the ship USS Planet Earth, in the Titanic, it was the lower classes who were able to see the water rising while the rich remained oblivious. Sounds just like real life. There were a few of the nobility class that saw the disaster, and who make a heartfelt effort to make the problem known among their kind, but their voices mostly fell on deaf ears.
And like real life, the capitain is a man of character, charisma, and good-will, who unwittingly sinks the ship. It’s not so much the captains fault, it’s the disgustingly bloated size of the ship. No man can steer something so complex and frickin’ huge. The ship is meant to power through anything and was deemed “unsinkable”. So our western way of life is deemed. We think that our above-average way of life should and will continue, but it can’t
Let it be a reminder how utterly fragile our peaceful, comfortable way of life is. You can see by looking at history, stable civilazations can overturn in a matter of years because of a few powerful lunatics. Cherish it now, because we can’t expect the west to remain on top for the duration of our lifetimes. I hope it’s a peaceful decline and we (North America) don’t try to go down in a blaze of “glory” and take billions of souls down with us…
Learn Mandarin and cheer up,
La Joie De Vivre.
that was a great post! a little depressing to think about… but still really good. it’s really difficult to think about what our future holds and it is much easier to just remain in the pleasant bubble, but knowlegde IS power and i think we have a moral responsibility to do what we can. it’s unfortunate that class plays such a huge role in opportunity and unfortunatly i think it will remain this way until we hit the ‘iceberg.’
God, I loved that! You’re so right, I was just never able to articulate it as well as you. I’ve been wanting to learn Mandarin for a while, I just worry about the whole polytonal thing
We can also add that the biggest number of survivors were also of the upper class, the ones who ignored the signs and somehow remained completely unaware. The least deserving. The rich have so little desire to hear anything outside what they want, they lock away the ones who might interfere with their little hunky-dory world.
The smackdown is coming, and it shall be good.
Haha! Wow, I will never watch another movie without trying to equate it to society now! That was pretty cool. It’s wierd how that was a real event, symbolizing our society that way, it didn’t have to be someone’s imagination for a film, it did it all on its own.
I think that if we look hard enough, or even not so hard, we can find many metaphors of our domination and the structure of our society, within society. Sociology really opens your eyes to that type of thing … if only the “educated” class reached more than 20%, maybe we could start making a difference that wouldn’t lead to North American demise!
That was an awesome blog. Keep it up!