Diving to explore the ruins of the historic, gigantic ocean liner the Titanic; the small, modern Titan submersible imploded under tremendous water pressure. Now the Titan, like the Titanic lies lifeless on the bottom of the sea. Ironically, “Titan” means “a person or thing of very great strength, intellect, or importance.” In Greek mythology, Titans were giants who ruled the Earth, until they were overthrown. The Titanic was named after them, because it was the biggest ship ever built, and was considered invincible. The fate of the “giants” who captained both the Titanic and the Titan was to be consumed by creatures living deep below the waves.
For the past 13 years, in teaching about spirituality and sustainability, I have been using a metaphor of eight ships, including Noah’s Ark and the Titanic. Here are a few insights that connect the Titanic to our current situation:
Humanity is on the ship Titanic and we’re heading dangerously fast for the iceberg; we either need to get into the captain’s room and turn around the ship, or we need to go into the boiler room and reverse the engines. The metaphor is a little bit imperfect, because there’s not really any unified captain on our potential collision course. We might think that political leaders of the world’s 193 countries are the captains, but for the past 35 years, they have been unable to reverse the ecological crisis, which intensifies each year. There are 8 billion human beings on Earth and all of us together have influence on which direction the ship is going. For us to change course, we need to act collectively.
