“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home,” famously said Ernest Shackleton to his men, at a moment when the chances for any of them to reach home or civilization alive again were extremely remote.
Was it sincerity, or was it willful optimism in the interest of good leadership? Who can know, though I suspect it was probably all of that.
It wouldn’t do to say, “We’re toast, gentlemen, there’s little hope and I reckon we’re doomed, but let’s just trudge along a while longer in futility and despair.” This may not have motivated individual effort and teamwork, one thinks.
“Ship and stores have gone, so now we’ll go home.”
Such perfect language.
Many point to Sir Ernest Shackleton as an example of a great leader, and he unassailably was, for in the end, his entire crew survived that series of ordeals, each escape from doom more miraculous than the last, and credit where due, that’s amazing. I’d offer that a great leader might instead of sailing headlong into the coldest most inhospitable-to-humans place on earth just have taken the lads to a pub for a tipple and pies by the fire but of course, then we wouldn’t have heard of them.
Still, great leadership. And why, just the other week, some of my team leaders hosted a holiday party with hearty beverages and song. Famous? Nay, but great. Yet, I digress.
Aboard the crippled spaceship Apollo 13, Jim Lovell asked his two flight-mates what their intentions were. And, he told them simply, he wanted to go home. Their odds of safe return were as bleak at that moment as Shackleton’s had been when he said “we’ll go home,” but that was the task at hand, and they set out to do it. The teamwork between them and the ground crew was so brilliant and spectacular, and of course it’s all beautifully portrayed in the Ron Howard film. When pressed for the odds of survival by an annoying and stupidly unhelpful president Nixon, flight director Gene Kranz snaps back, “We are not losing those men!”
Intention. Leadership. They didn’t lose those men.
These are famous stories. Not as famous are the infinitely more common stories where the odds were bleak, and then all hands perished. Maybe there were inspiring speeches, “We’ll go home, mates,” just before a ship is swamped and dashed on the rocks. Ron Howard won’t make that movie, and why would we want to see it?
What of now, our ship of state. What of values, and the rule of law. What of a habitable biosphere, and the biodiversity that requires, which human society stupidly obliterates. What of all these simultaneous existential crises?
We’re Apollo 13 halfway around the moon, a thin fragile layer between us and oblivion, careening toward an uncertain fate over which we have only some minimal control. What’s our leadership, who’s our Shackleton, our Jim Lovell, our Gene Kranz? Surely we have many a qualified candidate, but, these persons are presently not running our federal government. To the contrary we have these belligerent imbeciles bent on ruining all that is good. Rather than bringing to bear our wisest, smartest, best scientific and moral minds as the Apollo 13 team did, and Shackleton’s team did, it’s.. this.
Until we have good leadership in power again, I suppose we have to build our own morale, and try and set good examples for each other. I try not to share my bleaker assessments. But they creep out of me; I can’t be so message-disciplined all of the time. I think the chance for handling the climate crisis intelligently was blown, the deadline has passed – it was Nov. 5 of 2024, and botched. No one wants to hear that. Ron Howard wouldn’t make that movie. And I don’t want to be right. We’ll see.
Humans can do remarkable, amazing things. Or we can be so acutely stupid. We seem to be in The Age Of Stupid. Inconvenient timing, since the forces of nature won’t wait.
Anyway it’ll level off, this Anthropocene. Human population will peak, then plummet. Strange time to be alive, really. An amazing privilege to be present and witness it all. I remain curious as to exactly how and when things will unfold, and I don’t think anyone truly knows. Cultivating more willful positivity meanwhile, seeking to do the next right things that I can. I do have some control over that.
Cue Philippulus the Prophet.
