Chapter 15: Rotten Luck

Seaman and sailors are not the same, just as squares and rectangles aren’t the same thing. A square is a rectangle and a sailor is a seaman, but you can’t reverse those designations. A sailor sails sailing vessels with sails. A seaman on a steam or motor vessel is not justifiably entitled to be called a sailor. Except for the propulsion means, they do share much in common, and being almost universally a superstitious lot is one similarity.

There are many superstitions about the sea and ships. One that I have been contemplating recently involves the renaming of ships. Some claim it’s bad luck. The philosophy I concur with believes renaming a vessel CHANGES it’s luck. Based on that concept, you wouldn’t voluntarily choose to rename a successful vessel. On the other hand, a vessel plagued by misfortune could possibly benefit by a name change. The history of Speedy before belonging to Mr. Tynsall is unknown, not researched, a mystery, but it was pretty obvious just from her appearance she had fallen on hard times in the prior recent years. Renaming her Speedy certainly heralded an improvement in her appearance and maintenance. How are our misadventures with her explained and how can I counter a perhaps cursed future?

Are you laughing? Ridiculing me? Imagining me uneducated and ignorant just because my hide is weathered and leathered by constant exposure to the elements? Do you pretend your pasty frozen turkey office complexion or a sun lamp tan provides you with deeper insights into the true nature of things?

How much do you read? Other than stock quotes and op eds?

Wild Western adventures and Nurse Nancy romances? Science fiction? Or a couch potato addicted to boob tube game shows?

Let’s assume you have read some philosophy. Sometime. The ancient Greeks? More recent thinkers like Voltaire, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau? Without reading the opposing arguments, you end up lopsided with a lopsided education. Reading one-sided political op-eds, gives you your lopsided opinion of current events. Do you really think it’s YOUR opinion you’re regurgitating? Or the one continuously fed you?

Back to Voltaire and ilk. Ever heard of their contemporary opponent, Abbot Augustin Barruel? He wrote volumes refuting the humanists. Here is an example: “the error of every man who, judging of all things by the standard of his own reason, rejects in religious matters every authority that is not derived from the light of nature.”

What did he say? I’ll attempt to paraphrase. You claim to be reasonable? There is more than you can detect with just your natural senses in the day light. Don’t be an arrogant know it all and ignore, deny the obscure night shades which exist despite and beyond your feeble comprehension. Authority exists and it is not you!

How about Aldous Huxley?

“The surest way to work up a crusade in favor of some good cause is to promise people they will have a chance of maltreating someone. To be able to destroy with a good conscience, to be able to behave badly and call your bad behavior ‘righteous indignation’— this is the height of psychological luxury, the most delicious of moral treats.”

Sounds like rational argument, like the popular op-eds you’re so fond of reading and quoting?

Strange things and events can be seen away from the glare of cities.

In the middle of the oceans, nature stands as high as the sky and howls at you! Threatens to destroy the instant you relax your guard. There is beauty and wonder too.

Earlier, I was describing the appearance of the water when we find the current we want to ride. There is another phenomenon that is unique to currents. Life!