The Chris Hedges Report: Moby Dick and the soul of American capitalism

now you talk about Terror [Music] what about for me [Music] I've been terrorized all my days [Music] Moby Dick by Herman Melville is America's greatest novel The One book the writer William Faulkner said he wished he had written it is the most prescient portrait of the American character and our ultimate fate as a nation and perhaps a species Melville makes our murderous obsessions our hubris violent impulses moral weakness and inevitable self-destruction visible in his Chronicle of a wailing Voyage Melville's description of the ship's Captain Ahab is a description of the bankers corporate boards politicians television personalities and Generals who through the power of propaganda fill our heads with seductive images of glory and Lust For wealth and power we are consumed with self-induced obsessions that spur us toward self-annihilation Melville is our foremost Oracle he is to us what William Shakespeare was to Elizabeth in England or fidor Dostoevsky to zarist Russia America is given shape in the form of the ship the pequod named after the Native American tribe exterminated in 1638 by the Puritans and their Native American Allies the ship's 30-man crew there were 30 states in the union when Melville wrote the novel is a mixture of races and Creeds the object of the hunt is a massive white whale Moby Dick which in a previous encounter maimed Ahab by biting off one of his legs the self-destructive Fury of the quest much like a society that is unable to rest itself from its addiction to fossil fuel assures the Pequod's destruction and those on the ship on some level know they are doomed just as many of us know we are doomed we like Ahab and his crew rationalize Madness all calls for Prudence for halting the March towards environmental catastrophe for sane limits on carbon emissions are ignored or ridiculed even with the flashing red lights before us the increased droughts rapid melting of glaciers and Arctic ice monster tornadoes vast hurricanes crop failures floods raging wildfires and soaring temperatures we like Ahab blinded by hubris bow slavishly before the enticing illusion of a limitless power Superior intelligence and physical prowess we believe in the Eternal Wellspring of material progress we are our own Idols nothing will halt our Voyage it seems to us to have been decreed by natural law the path to my fixed purpose is laid with iron rails whereon my soul is grooved to run Ahab declares joining me to discuss Melville's novel is Nathaniel philbrick author of why Read Moby Dick as well as books such as in the heart of the Sea The Tragedy of the whaleboat Essex Mayflower Voyage Community War travels with George in search of Washington and his legacy and the Last Stand Custer Sitting Bull and the battle of the Little Bighorn okay so Nat I want to begin with this quote from Ahab uh he says all visible objects man are but as pasteboard masks but in each event some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the moldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask if a man will strike strike through the mask to me the white whale is outrageous strength with an inscrutable malice sinewing it that inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate and be the white whale agent or be the white whale principle I will wreck that hate upon him can you talk about that seems to me the core of the novel yeah I mean it's it's I think it speaks to uh any uh demented leaders uh uh uh uh being completely convinced that the that what is opposing him or her uh is deeper is is is is is inherently evil and is out there and how to get at it uh Ahab has been attacked by a white whale he decides that the the whale is uh represents all evil out there and so he is um you know and and so he he the the real he sees something beyond the real world that um uh that you know there is God but there is also something malevolent malevolent out there that Ahab is desperate uh to to uh Revenge himself upon and when he says whether it's you know whether it's actually the whale or something behind it I'm going to do everything I can to uh to attack him and uh you know it's it's paranoia it's delusion um but it's it's brilliant in its own way um you know this is not your ordinary weightling Captain this is someone who is reaching for the the the philosophical Stratosphere as he flails around trying to Revenge himself on a brute Beast I read a book called shielding The Flame by Mark Adelman who was one of the leaders of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising uh and he chose that title he became a doctor after the war uh because he saw the deity as malevolent and that his role both in the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and as a doctor was shielding the flame protecting human life from that malevolent Force I wonder if that is where Melville was coming from yeah I mean what he's he you know he had read Nathaniel Hawthorne and uh and what uh uh appealed to him about Hawthorne was the power of Blackness how uh Hawthorne you know found uh that a unspeakable evil that is out there that even to to talk about it is to risk going insane and um and and yeah I think Melville would have uh or and particularly Ahab would have sympathized with that that whatever is out there is is out to get him and is inherently malevolent well Melville told Hawthorne he wrote I believe I have this right an evil book didn't he yes and and yet I feel as spotless as the lamb and um and I think that's it in many ways uh where you know and that's that's the the the the that's that's an author uh as an artist Working At His Highest uh state where you can plunge into the most sordid uh mystical depths and yet feel uh insulated from it uh through the power of your art and uh you know Melville was just operating with all the cylinders firing and inhabiting uh uh a sensibility that I think for most of us is is uninhabitable to what extent did Melville identify with Ahab I I think Melville saw um more than he would have liked uh in Ahab and I think any artist does um you know uh and and as Melville says elsewhere all Mortal greatness is but disease uh you know to have any kind of ambition whether it's artistic political or personal uh is to to to challenge uh forces that are beyond your control that are ultimately um working uh to serve you but not necessarily to serve others and can that can be interpreted as evil t.h Lawrence uh describes Moby Dick and these are his words a vision of a doomed white civilization uh do you think that's a correct uh kind of interpretation of the book yeah I mean there's I think there's plenty of interpretations of the book but Lawrence is one of our uh uh great interpreters of American literature you know being English he had that uh that um that distance and and yet having you know been to America he he experienced it and and I I think you know Melville um had felt that America was at had reached a Crossroads where um you know we were turning in upon ourselves uh in in terms of the country where we're we're uh we're we're headed west uh uh conquering our way uh uh destroying native cultures in this this this Relentless quest to to push our borders West and uh and he saw that as inherently evil uh you know the the in another book uh the the uh he he talks about uh the metaphysics of Indian hating of of you know how anything that's the other we interpret it uh interpret as as bad despicable and worthy of of Destruction and uh and that's the great Redemptive power of Moby Dick where you have characters like uh quick uh where Melville is insisting that is not the right way to go and I think that that really is a direct criticism of America in Moby Dick and but he he names these forces as deeply self-destructive CLR James's uh comment on Moby Dick he calls it the biography of the last days of Hitler uh so I think what Melville is saying certainly and what Lawrence and CLR James are echoing is that these forces ultimately destroy us absolutely and you know that is the Crux of Moby Dick here we are hell-bent uh in this pursuit of a white whale uh and uh knowing full well that it is not going to go well for anyone and uh and you know that's where we are today uh where you know we fossil fuels uh what we need to do to maintain the the the level of civilization and I have quotes around that um is is destroying the underpinnings of the the planet itself to sustain us and so it's completely self-destructive it's you know it's what the fur Trappers went through the Fisheries are going through now where uh efficiencies uh make it uh so so effective in in in uh reaping these harvests that you ultimately uh kill the goose well there's this poignant moment in Moby Dick where Melville rights that at least the whales are safe under the Arctic Ice yeah well I think you know Melville loved Wales and uh and he he um he he wanted to have some hope uh that they would outlive our destructive urge uh to turn their uh blubber into oil and um you know because and and uh well you know ABS obviously will give him that um you know what he could not have foreseen at that when he wrote Moby Dick is that the urges that uh sent nantucketers and all Whalers remorselessly against sperm whales and other cetaceans would be redirected to petroleum and uh that which would have its own adverse effects on the environment in a very fundamental way and and that's what makes this book so Timeless where you um you know uh Melville's talking about something from the 19th century that is spot on to where we are in the 21st because human nature is human nature we are lethal we have been when the first Homo sapiens um uh began walking this planet everywhere we went uh there was a uh we wreaked havoc uh on on the species around us and it's only inevitable and it one day will come back to get us Edward Syed after the attacks of 9 11 uh brings up the Osama Bin Laden uh and the pursuit of he Likens the pursuit of Osama bin Laden to ahab's pursuit of Moby Dick uh and he see this is him he an imperial power injured for the first time pursuing its interests systematically in what has become suddenly a reconfigured geography of conflict uh I thought that was a really interesting analogy from Saeed yeah I mean that's it it sort of turned itself you know on its head and particularly was against the grain of how people in America were feeling at that time they wanted to kill the whale um like Ahab you know uh snuff it out without any attempt to see it in a larger context uh and of uh uh you know so that I think that is a very provocative uh uh interpretation of of uh Post 9 11 and and nowville and you know and that is the power of Moby Dick uh it is endlessly relevant uh because uh humans are humans and as our technology changes as we make our way into the future uh there are fundamental uh aspects of our behavior of who we are that are hardwired into us in a way that we may know what we're doing is insanely self-destructive but we're just unable content to contain ourselves so the the Pequot is kind of uh uh uh uh a microcosm of uh American civilization one of the things that's fascinating is that uh Melville's keenly aware that the the dirty work uh of uh Western Civilization as on the clipper ships and the Whalers was done by the exploited uh he has this quote yes all these Brave houses and Flowery Gardens come from the Atlantic Pacific and Indian oceans this is Ishmael talking about New England's Prosperity one and all they were harpooned and dragged up hither From the Bottom of the Sea and of course the authority figures are white men Ahab Starbuck flask stub uh but the Dirty Work from the harpooning the gutting of the carcasses that's the task of the poor and the task of uh people of color I just wonder if you could talk about those class divisions on the ship yeah well uh you know Melville there's a Native American uh uh tashtago um uh uh from Martha's Vineyard uh there's Dagu a uh an African and uh there's the African-American cook who uh evocatively uh at one point looked down at night while the the uh sharks are feasting themselves on the the the carcass of the whale strapped to the side of the pequod talks about you know the the the the the the the terror really of the shark and you know what is that and and so um as Melville will say elsewhere the work of our Republic uh you know our economic might is provided uh by either enslaved Americans or or those that have been employed uh under very onerous terms I mean this is what um this is how the economic Miracle Works and uh and the Moby Dick you you just see it in cross-section really of of um how uh you know America has all this land has all these resources but it the real geniuses and how it harness harnesses uh its Workforce well and these Sailors once they came back from these voyages that could last two to three years were just cast onto the street cities like New Bedford uh they were virtually homeless penniless they were just thrust aside yeah and I mean it was it was you know the irony you know here on Nantucket uh we were they were Quaker nantuckets who were abolitionists uh when it came to to Southern slavery but when it came to the whale fishery I had no qualms about uh enlisting a a a system of work that was as exploitative as anything happening down south and in fact when nantucket's whale fishery was founded back in the 17th century uh the the the early nantucketers used the Native American population and and snared them in a system of debt servitude uh whereby they developed a a Native American would uh have a judgment against them in court sent to be sentenced to several years in the whale fishery and that those sentences were available for people to to basically bid on and um and so this is where the the nantucketers had come from uh when it when it it came to the increasing economic sophistication of whaling uh it's it's uh the the as as Melville says in Moby Dick they were Quakers with a Vengeance well the owners of the pequod were Quakers yes they they were and you know and there's that wonderful beginning of the book when uh they're talking about the lay uh that a whaleman will make and of course you know it's a fraction so you should explain what a lay is yeah a lay is uh when uh when you went on a voyage a wailing Voyage uh you signed up to get a certain percentage of the final take on the voyage and uh and it was a fraction of the voyage and uh and Quaker whale ship owners were uh very good at convincing green horns from you know wherever that the higher number which was on the you know on the bottom meant that you were going to get more when it was exactly the opposite and and so Ishmael talks about um the lay he ends up getting which is just miserable um uh and you know which was typical yeah it was if you were not a nantucketer uh it was an economic system designed that by the end of Voyage the the semen made no money and if anything owed uh the the the the the the company store so to speak the the slop chest money and so what do you do you get drunk and then get back on a whale ship I want to talk about the first time Ahab appears on the quarter deck so he's in his cabin for the first few days of the voyage and he holds up in front of the crew this Doubloon this gold coin he promises it to the first crew member who cites Moby Dick the white Whaley Nails the Doubloon to the mask and Melville writes that Ahab knows that quote the permanent constitutional condition of the manufactured man is sordidness and of course that's what Ahab does can you talk about that plane to that sortedness yeah I mean the it's an absolutely uh a lack of respect uh for the your fellow man and to see it in in you know as something to be exploited as something to be dismissed as less than human uh you know it's it's hey it's capitalism uh taken to the nth degree and uh it's it's yeah it's it's you know it's there all over Moby Dick where Ahab needs these crew members um but he um and he's wonderfully uh wonderful at whipping them up uh in the equivalent of a political rally uh on the from the quarter deck but he sees them as instruments to his will yeah he has no sense of their needs uh that you know what their what they deserve in terms of uh not just this Voyage but um as human beings well Starbuck calls all of this Behavior blast from us and then there's this amazing scene this is kind of Dark Mask this uh Mass this Eucharist of violence and blood uh it it is this almost fascist rally uh can you talk about that moment because at that point Starbuck who realizes what's happening becomes powerless right and and and in many ways Starbuck is you know the moral uh fulcrum on which the novel is based because Starbuck uh unlike even Ishmael who admits to being caught up uh in in the ahab's uh charismatic gravitational force uh Starbuck uh the first mate uh doesn't and uh when and and Starbuck uh realizes exactly what's ahead this guy is demented he's what he wants to do is illegal he is hijacking uh this ship uh contrary to the what the owners manifest insists that he does for his own personal means and um and and what he is legally bound to do is to oppose that um but and he he flirts with that idea of take actually taking up arms against Ahab but ultimately he is just not strong enough and uh he he allows it to happen and I think you know how many of us have seen not only in our own experience but in the past in history instances where um A demented leader is enabled by those that are just simply exhausted and ultimately terrified of what opposing this Maniac will bring down upon them well Ahab is quite conscious of this uh in the book he says that uh Starbuck is helpless uh quote amid the general hurricane Starbuck now is mine Ahab says he cannot oppose me now without rebellion and then Melville writes the honest eye of Starbuck fell downright right uh this is a a fascinating moment for me because Starbuck was one of the most courageous uh harpooners a very dangerous task on a whaling ship and it's this juxtaposition between physical and moral courage absolutely uh yeah and Starbuck is a good guy you know he's a family man but he's a Warrior when it comes to the whale fishery uh he as is as good as it gets but Ahab takes the voyage in a direction that no Nantucket whaleman uh has really experienced even though uh it you know it's it's enough it's it's a metaphor for life where you know we're we're at we're under control of someone who is who is going to take us to places we don't want to go the only uh brave brave thing to do is to oppose him but ultimately you just look at the options and say nope uh I'll I'll go with the rest and uh it's it's that Grim fatality um and you know uh it's it's it's heartbreaking really um and you know there is that final moment in in towards the end of Moby Dick uh where where uh Starbuck and Ahab you know Starbucks says hey come on man you know there's there's there's a Green Valley you can go back to your own your your your son back on Nantucket I can go back to my wife and my family and uh and Ahab is tempted But ultimately no it isn't just rhetoric uh it isn't just kind of fascistic ritual but Ahab has his internal security force uh his you know stalinist secret police the five Dusky fatums that seemed fresh formed out of air uh this is ahab's secret because he hides them from the rest of the crew uh private well broke crew so just talk about that that that art of propaganda but also ahab's understanding that he needs in the end uh a force of coercion yes he needs a force of coercion but what's really interesting in Moby Dick is towards the end when Ahab and Starbuck are talking and you and Ahab is feeling that you know do I really want to go no it's his security detail that said Oh no you're you're in this and it it you know is Ahab ultimately is as much apart you know who is who is really calling the shots here and I think uh there's been many a dictator who uh uh finds him or herself in that position where the the forces you've created to enable you uh have their own momentum and own will uh that ultimately not even you can pose because you are dependent on them well that's the theme of Orwell's essay shooting an elephant uh he doesn't want to shoot the Rampage by the time he gets to these he's a uh raw he's part of the British police force and I think Burma and uh by the time he gets the rampaging elephant it's already calmed down but he has to shoot it because it's what the crowd expects of him uh there's a very similar kind of you're captive to that kind of uh those kinds of forces I want to talk about the internal battle uh so this is between ahab's kind of hubris and his Humanity um he clearly has a yearning for love that makes him a fascinating complex figure which he expresses to the black Cabin Boy pip uh and perhaps you can also flesh out a little bit about what happens to pip but talk about that that moment there's a woman of tenderness really absolutely and pip is is quite kind is equivalent to lear's fool uh you know and Shakespeare's play uh and pip is uh you know the cabin boy uh no you know has uh known to dance and you know his antic and everyone loves him but uh but he he is is terrified of of when he when actually put on a whale boat uh twice he jumps over the side of of the whale boat in Terror at what's happening yes I think any rational person would uh and the first time they go back and rescue him but say you know not the next time and when and they don't and he stays out there on this vast sheet of water without any other vessel in sight and goes insane uh his sensibility is as Melville says is dragged to the depths uh where these great uh you know see insects crawl here he sees the the underpinnings of the universe and he comes up uh mad and yet uh he's not Ahab mad uh he is someone who is you know still immensely attractive and is the one Soul upon on the Essex excuse me on the Moby on Moby Dick that Ahab can you know find some emotional uh connection with uh because Ahab has been dragged to the devs um and is using that you know to to get back as an act of Revenge and it's you know it has such a level of poignancy uh to it and um shows that Ahab even though he is this creature he has his Humanities uh as as is said of him which makes it all the more poignant uh uh in terms of what will ultimately happen well there's that line I'm going to butcher it something my object is saying but my my motive is mad or something he uh ahab's fully aware of his own demented quality even says to pip lad I tell thee thou must not follow Ahab now the hour is coming when Ahab would not scare the from him yet would not have the by him there is that in the poor lad which I feel to curing to mimality like cures like and for this hunt my malady becomes my most desired health yes yes oh okay that's that's it and um and and with Pip we see um we we I mean I think that it's it's it with Pip it's Melville and ishmael's most eloquent expression of what a terrifying Universe we are really in uh whether it is evil whether it is good whether whatever it is um it is beyond us and in control of us and ultimately we are helpless uh in our attempts to to determine our own faith because there are things larger than us that are governing this and so uh with Ahab you know who has taken the opposite poll he is trying to take control of his life while pip has relinquished uh that control and is is is is is you know barely holding anything together you see the the the the two sides of of uh seeing too clearly into the the terrifying real quality of of what life is all about well Ahab is quite aware of the fact that he he calls this remorseless Emperor commands me that against all natural lovings and longings I keep pushing crowding he's aware in a way that he is possessed yeah he's possessed and yet he's possessed and yet he has this ability to seem completely sane as he talks about and you know that is the Eerie gripping quality of of his of that Insanity that there's no real outward manifestation of it if you're the owner talking to Ahab before he leaves or the crew members uh uh and yet once you realize where he is really coming from you realize just you know it's an insane Quest he's what gonna punch through the pasteboard mask and get at the react you know truth of it um you know that just that's not going to happen and yet there's a there is a a metaphysical truth to that and and so that's the almost creepy nature of Moby Dick in that uh yeah he's insane and yet he really is seeing with a Clarity into the essence of of life and uh you know where does that put us uh uh ultimately uh this is a very unsettling a portrait of of man uh and and the Universe I want to talk about the Rachel this is a ship it's it it had cited Moby Dick uh the they had given Moby Dick Chase uh the captain of the Rachel had his son was on a whale boat it was that had been lost he's desperately searching for his son and he implores Ahab to help him that moment reminds me of the school shootings I think and I I don't know if it does to you as well uh because Ahab refuses Ahab turns his back even though Ahab of course as a father absolutely yeah I hadn't thought of that Resident modern day resonance but right it is that look I am it's this is the danger of Dogma you know if whether you say it's it's it's my freedom my personal freedom and nothing will interfere with that despite the fact that it's having all these horrible repercussions here is Ahab he is on this Quest nothing will divert him from it even this this plea of a fellow father to to retrieve his own child uh you know so so yeah I mean that's that's it's it's it's it's when someone is willing to to turn their back on you know what makes us human uh so that what they feel is more important really than anything their own personal freedom and that just shows you how how slow cystic that is how how uh you know lack of any kind of empathy for anyone out there it's it you must stay true you know if I if I must stay to the mission no matter what it does to to those around me great that was Nathaniel philbrick on Herman Melville's novel Moby Dick [Music]

Channel: The Real News Network

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Keywords: Moby Dick, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Philbrick, Capitalism, Chris Hedges Report, The Real News Network, TRNN

Id: HEP86KPd0Cs

Length: 35min 13sec (2113 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 29 2022