Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick seems to instill in prospective readers the same trepidation felt by the whalers who pursue its eponymous sea monster. During the two weeks I spent reading it, multiple people inquired as to why I would put myself through such an agonizing ordeal. Early on, I could provide no better answer than that […]
“Oh, grassy glades! oh, ever vernal endless landscapes in the soul; in ye,––though long parched by the dead drought of the earthly life,––in ye, men yet may roll, like young horses in new morning clover; and for some few fleeting moments, feel the cool dew of the life immortal on them. Would to God these […]
“What are the Rights of Man and the Liberties of the World but Loose-Fish? What all men’s minds and opinions but Loose-Fish? What is the principle of religious belief in them but a Loose-Fish? What to the ostentatious smuggling verbalists are the thoughts of thinkers but Loose-Fish? What is the great globe itself but a […]
“There is no folly of the beasts of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men.” ––Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, pg. 310
Modern America faces a labor crisis that is both practical and existential. Even as new kinds of work are rapidly being created, we can’t adequately educate and fully employ the workforce we already have. Worse, we’ve created a system where elites have almost exclusive access to intellectually challenging and meaningful work opportunities, with everyone else […]
“We know the sea to be an everlasting terra incognita, so that Columbus sailed over numberless unknown worlds to discover his one superficial western one; though, by vast odds, the most terrific of all mortal disasters have immemorially and indiscriminately befallen tens and hundreds of thousands of those who have gone upon the waters; though […]
“Not yet have we solved the incantation of this whiteness, and learned why it appeals with such power to the soul; and more strange and far more portentous––why, as we have seen, it is at once the most meaning symbol of spiritual things, nay, the very veil of the Christian’s Deity; and yet should be […]
“Let me make a breast of it here, and frankly admit that I kept but sorry guard. With the problem of the universe revolving in me, how could I––being left completely to myself at such a thought-engendering altitude,––how could I but lightly hold my obligations to observe all whale-ships’ standing orders, ‘Keep your weather eye […]
“Heaven have mercy on us all––Presbyterians and Pagans alike––for we are all somehow dreadfully cracked about the head, and sadly need mending.” ––Moby-Dick, by Herman Melville, pg. 76 “Suppose we were to tell our boys that they have the same opportunity in their lifetimes to expand the social and economic roles for men in […]
“Yes, there is death in this business of whaling––a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into Eternity. But what then? Methinks we have hugely mistaken this matter of Life and Death. Methinks that what they call my shadow here on earth is my true substance. Methinks that in looking at things spiritual, we are […]