National looney! Moby Dick is a biblical metaphor. Nothing in it is about whales and sailing ships. It is a morality tale about the individual, not some omniscient view of the culture. Maxist ideology like that of Hedges, is always attractive to the young because the solutions it presents are simple destruction of what is, with no formular for what happens next. (What happens next is always dictatorship and mass killing.)
In discussing malice, I am struck by how deep and encompassing it runs in our culture in the United States. So much so that the very people who proclaim to be Christians simple cannot see themselves and the utter malice, the giddy willingness to follow through with an economic system and a political culture that inflicts desperation on others. I can't understand it.
Maybe it comes from the type of people that left Europe, and were able to survive the trip over. Maybe they are a subspecies of those that will do anything to get on top.
@@jimnutter6901 Yeah man, if you google "woke," you'll find predator drones with a rainbow flag painted on the tail, people screaming "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to mandatory injections of an experimental gene therapy with alarming adverse effects, and people who claim to be anti-establishment supporting full on censorship by the corporate state.
I graduated college two years ago having read Moby-Dick and being utterly convinced that Moby-Dick is the most important book anyone could be reading today in America. It’a hard not to see the ripples of life that continue to ebb and flow that make this book so relevant to the way we could understand this american experiment. Big respect to Chris Hedges for being one of the few people that I know of in the broader culture hammering away the importance of Melville’s work. Bartleby and Benito Cereno are just as important and rewarding to read as well.
Unfortunately most of the younger generation doesn't understand the necessary concepts to understand what they should. Metaphor, context, irony, parable, satire.. The way we push kids into STEM causes them to skip over learning how to think critically or simple logical reasoning
@@Busto Spot on! Compulsory military for all, but first a solid liberal arts and history education for all paid for by the State for there would likely be no Military then. God bless, if there is one?, Chris, his guests, Socrates and folks that post comments like yours. Fuxk the Neo Cons!
Listening to Mr Philbrick's analysis, it is quite astonishing to think that Herman Melville, in the mid 1800s, described the self-destructive, self-devouring nature of American capitalism. Some of it is drawing references from the novel as a narrative of the current malaise in the US, but it shows the fundamentals of societal corruption are largely common and repeated through history in different societies, hence the uncanny correlation of Moby Dick to early twenty-first century America.
But that isn't what it's about is it .. who are we trying to deceive here servants? ruclips.net/video/Z_yyvEr4jNU/видео.html When you claim godship by the power of material destruction and right by hubris you are no different then most people pretty common brah. However .. Malice of this magnitude ruclips.net/video/9kUYYFJpd1I/видео.html Incurs wrath. The consequences of the opening of this door have been made clear already, the manner is irrelevant, there is nothing to debate. The consequences of closing it maybe terrible enough itself. This was a avoidable mistake that was insisted upon by fools.
Yes, he definitely had good perception and foresight, but I wouldn't prescribe to him the gift of clairvoyance. Let's not forget that the latter end of the 1800s is heavily characterized as the period of the robber barons and the first major instance of great wealth inequality in America having followed the first industrial revolution which Melville would have lived through. He would have likely seen the writing on the wall made in his own time.
@@GR8APE69 yes, which is my point above on societal decay and corruption being common and repeated throughout history. Which makes Moby Dick, metaphorically prescient for 21st century America.
I read Moby Dick in High School and again in my 20s. This conversation brought back so many ideas so it's time again to crack it open to reread. Thank you for this in-depth discussion.
Not to make this about me but it makes me feel really good to watch Chris hedges. The reason I feel so good is because I dropped out of high school in grade 12 and bought a house. I am literally an uneducated peon, according to the word of academia anyway, and I know what Chris hedges is talking about. This is a form of intelligence that cannot be bought. And if it is, it’s hella expensive. And that makes me feel good about who I am in this stupid hick town that I am stuck in. Thanks, Chris.
"Just human nature " is an excuse I can no longer accept. We are not the ego, our associative memories, nor contained by a body. We are our environment and part of our world. No more excuses..
So...how do you tell a deeply unconscious person this? That is the vast majority of the human population btw...most people I know are completely disconnected and deluded and only interested in survival needs.
You guys are brilliant. When i was an undergrad i took a course in Melville & Twain; one semester. The last book we read was Moby Dick. The final exam included an essay on the symbolism in Moby Dick. That was rough.
Great to see you do books again like with On Contact. One of the many things I like about Chris Hedges is that he is extremely well read and understands how the classics inform us and people of any time. Moby Dick is one of all time favorites and I knew I was going to enjoy these 2 gentleman talk about it as soon as I saw the title. I just happened to have re-read MD for the 3rd time just a few weeks ago. thanks so much.
Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is another great shot across the bows, KS. Likewise Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan". ( Find him on RUclips! ) NB: Queequeg, a central figure in "Moby Dick", is a Native American.
The metaphor, of course, works on a political/social level, as we can see, with corrupt or vain political leaders leading nations to ruin, but it's also very relevant, I think, on a personal level. I've seen people become so obsessed with their hatred of Trump, Clinton, or, in the UK, Boris Johnson, that they're entirely consumed and obsessed with their enemy, and unable to have any perspective on the issues or culture that created them. The more we obsess with that which we oppose, the more it "drags us down to its level".
What an endless chilling litany of horrendous if unprecedented crimes against humanity committed by a single nation with utter impunity! Infinite respect and appreciation for your altruistic investigative true journalism without an iota of biasness or favouritism!
4:33 "and be the white whale agent,or be the white whale principal,I will wreak that hate upon him". This is how I viewed the Cheney/Bush attitude towards Saddam Hussein and their obsession to 'get him' at all costs. Hussein found a work around to the oil sanctions and it drove them crazy with rage. He gnawed on the wrong leg and now must be punished.
Melville saw how the Polynesians lived without accumulation of wealth, with understanding of limits to resources on an Island, in a natural way.....then he returned to the avarice of civilisation.
Wow, what a great interview and interpretation of the classic, Moby Dick. Truly, a novel for our times. I just ordered Mr. Philbrick's book and will dig out my copy of Melville's classic and do some winter reading. Thanks to Chris, Mr. Philbrick and the hardworking staff of the Real News Network. Good work!
I much prefer the word contempt. Contempt begins very casually but becomes wholesale given time. Contempt dismisses, contempt gives permission to despise, it trivializes, it effaces, and it ushers in a self-created insanity.
So grateful for this. I had read Toni Morrison,in an essay, considering this the first anti slavery novel. So rich in layers, as Philbank says -endlessly relevant. I just read it during Covid isolation. What a ride, I will continue to reread, the richness of metaphors, gives us so much. Your attention to this masterpiece, and your points, for us today is so important. Thank you. Bartleby the Scrivener, would be another great exploration.
Melville was ironically a "Young American", a reform movement of young people in the 19th century that promoted the production of uniquely American literature, on purely American subjects but also advocated the since much altered "manifest destiny" concept of John L. Sullivan, the beginnings of modern exceptionalism. Sullivan's concept initially did not demand conquest but was seen to have later in history. It believed expansion would happen solely on merits and the exceptional and transplantable nature of the American model. In this light, Moby Dick seems to be a direct criticism of Sullivan's Utopian design, though he may have been a starry eyed disciple in his youth. The movement dropped off considerably in the 1850's and Moby Dick might be Melville's documentation of disillusionment and a eulogy. You would think such a direct target of this principle would possibly be borne out of Melville's one time naive immersion in it.
Thanks for highlighting Melville's work and how all-encompassing his allegory was in MOBY DICK. As an aside, Herman Melville's brother, Peter, acted as a speech writer for James Polk during his candidacy for President. And the central proposition that Polk ran on was the manifesto of "Manifest Destiny." Some critics have suggested that Melville meant for Moby Dick to be directly correlated with the obsessive notion of Manifest Destiny in mid-19th Century politics. Also, Herman Melville's father, Allan, was financially ruined by President Andrew Jackson's obsession with taking on the central banks in 1837 --- and that his father's subsequent suicide could be laid at the feet of "Old Hickory." Ahab had several features reminiscent of Andrew Jackson...
Humans are not lethal. Capitalists are lethal. To claim that all humans are equally lethal is to forget the thousands of generations of indigenous people who lived in relative harmony with nature.
There should definitely be differentiation and recognition of the unique destructiveness of European industrial capitalist empire. But I think the pathological anthropocentrism (along with androcentrism) underpinning almost all human cultures is another deeper layer we need to attend to. The book The Sixth Extinction gets into the repeated correlation anthropologists have found between humans arriving in a place and then other species disappearing.
For the first time, I don't have to reference _Moby Dick_ to illustrate some aspect of modern American society, as this discussion covers the issue. "Who ain't a slave?"
Mr. Hedges, you are the best and most radical speaker I've heard for a LONG while. Your ability to summarize, with passion, is deeply disturbing - and inspiring. Thank you so much for this!
Well done gentlemen . Thanks. At 75 years, I can't get this novel out of my head since high school. What immortal hand could frame this fearful symmetry? So dark, the horror.
Great conversation; love stuff like this that overlaps arts and politics, two things that are - at their peak - automatically political because they are about the human condition and the ways in which human beings can become perversions of themselves, betraying all that we know to be moral and ethical. At the other end of that spectrum, of course, is the work that reminds us of our deep-rooted communal and spiritual nature. Thanks to both Chris Hedges and to Nathaniel Philbrick and, of course, to The Real News Network for bringing us this. Excellent.
Arthur Koestler wrote that somewhere along our journey over the past many (tens) thousands of years of development. we became "hardwired" for something like self destruction as a race. Read this in the last few months, very disturbing, and trying to understand in more detail.
I'm going to run with the hero worship you're garnering! I'm bingeing on your content. Only saw you a week ago, first. Thinking about "King Kong", which I watched yesterday, after a long while. Also, very prophetic story. Your new fan, Roberta/ NYC
I just finished this book yesterday and raced to this video I have been eagerly chomping at. I am sure 80% of this book went over my head but what sunk in was really phenomenal. What really surprised me, having never read Melville's works before, was how funny the story is. To me, Moby Dick read like a Loony Toons episode as if it were written by the Coen Brothers. I am surprised the Coens never adapted this book into a film.
This discussion today was so powerful between you, and Nathaniel Phillbrick, illuminating the novel of Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick ". ONE OF OUR GREAT NOVELS. THE PARALLELS ARE ARTICULATE DEEP INSIDE OF HUMAN NATURE IN ALL OF US .AS IN Melville 's 17th century till now the 21st century. Physical, spiritual metaphor for life. THANK YOU, BOTH.❤️❤️
This was fantastic. Thank you for sharing these political meanings and intimations in the novel. I have only read parts of it, and i have found those parts dense and disturbing, repellent almost, and now I understand why. They describe a earlier capitalist hellscape that we're still forced to traverse today.
This inspired me to get MD on audiobook and revisit it. It's very well written but in some parts it loses focus and goes off on tangents. The themes and moral lessons, however, are very poignant and still as relevant as ever
I'm reading moby dick, melville is incredibly poetic and at points reminds me of joyce (i dont read enough). I will definitely buy and read Philbrick's analysis of it, I really like what you both had to say. Thank you Chris Hedges, yet again. Light in the dark, man.
"We are under the gross misconception that we are a good species going somewhere important and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It is delusion." Farley Mowat
When I was in high school I took humanities. One of the assigned books was Moby Dick. I can't remember who the teacher was, but I know I was turned off by it because the way symbolism was presented to me was or seemed irrelevant. Since that time I've never been a big fan of fiction. But I love reading philosophical texts and critical texts. I think if I had had a teacher like Chris hedges teaching literature or Humanity, I may have turned out differently as far as fiction goes. But I think it also might have something to do with the fact that I have a blind mind. In other words my brain does not create pictures or images. So I'm not sure. That said though I ended up a philosophy major and my love of philosophy is only grown over the years, the very first philosophy course I took the professor presented it in a very similar way as that Humanities class and I was completely turned off by it. I had to quit that semester but when I came back I had a different professor and it completely changed my world. But in any case this is a really great discussion about Moby Dick.
Just read the first chapter, it's free on the internet and won't take 10 minutes. Then just guess what the hell Melville is writing about, many people do it.
It's like Ahab, after catching a glimpse of the ineffable unity of the world, was struck with such an intense feeling of alienation that he wished to destroy everything. People strike out at the world in blame when they feel alienated instead of looking at themselves. But there is nothing worse than that feeling of being separated from your true being and feeling you have to chase it outside of yourself. The separation is felt as a malice being visited on oneself from outside - the hate and malice being a reflection of one's own mind. People will do anything to get out of that feeling, and they will relentlessly chase the whale forever - like chasing an image in a mirror.
So Captain Ahab was a Type A personality? No wonder I never could make heads or tails of Moby Dick: I'm a Type B. Thanks, Chris, for finally analyzing this story for me. It now makes sense. 5:20 So "terrorism" is the current white whale? I dislike the attribution of all of the worst features of the human psyche to "human nature." It completely ignores the other side of human nature: altruism, compassion, empathy (34:14: "what makes us human") I am reminded of the Native American story, the one that says that we have two wolves inside: a violent one and a peaceful one, and the one that is uppermost is the one that you feed.
The problem with interpreting Moby Dick as an anticapitalist screed is that the evil Captain Ahab is not motivated by money at all. He's on a mission of vengeance, a personal vendetta against an animal. It's the "good guy," Starbuck, who says (in effect): "Look, skipper, we're not here to chase after just one whale. We're here to make money for ourselves and the owners of the ship by killing as many whales as we can."
This interpretation is very interesting ,. However , it ignores the class identity of society. That fact is precisely the bottom line ofvthe present incapacity of the working class to find not only a leadership but also the necessary allies we need to solve the urgency of uniting as a people. The class identity of the conflicting forces represented in the book are a dissolved force in a confusion of agents seen in the conflict. There is no common enemy but a fogged image of participants. Precisely the condition of both the right and the left in the political wilderness of the USA. The only relevant clear force finding a closed ranks condition is the established state of capitalism. The legal system is the executing political force with all its ominous discouraging power. Very American in its confusing condition. All ready to take sides in a war. Any war as long as it is led by the USA corporate class.
Was obsessed with Moby Dick the movie as a kid and have read the book twice as a teenager and adult. Fantastic book. A gteat analogy of our self-destructive impulses.
After I dropped out of college, running as hard as I could from my dad's academic career, I still felt obligated to read Moby Dick. And I did, hating every page. But I found it gave me strange memories. In the rear view mirror, it's a weird thing to recall. I'm profoundly unequipped to think or opine about it, but I feel like there's a through line from Blake's mystic liberalism to Melville.
@@ClearOutSamskaras I wrote this HUGE essay, and then accidentally deleted it before replying. I'm a huge idiot. I was trying to make a point about the Protestant tendency to mythologize political thinking. The Levelers, the Diggers, the Icarians, and the Paris commune; liberalism produced greatness that rests on a kind of religious thinking. Bartelby lived in a world where Blake's angel in "America, a Prophecy" became an enslaved demiurge. Richard Linklater's slackers and Philip K. Dick's druggies and losers (and me, and you) live in that world.
I have never noticed gnostic imagery in Melville, but there is an evil Old Testament god in Blake who needs to be overthrown. Both authors are on the dark side of Romanticism versus the innocence of the naiive transcendentalists, though I believe Whitman had no problem subjugating the natives--some transcendentalist.
As a writer I am conscious that it is the story picked to tell that makes all the difference. Of Melville's books it is the one of the man without a country that I could read, was open to reading. I've been happier since touching my vision with my idea of a nation of airports. The vision is not of any one thing but I had one vision. I touched the vision. It said it was good. Well I am working on it. I wrote a passport and the passport or just the idea of the passport is what will live beyond my life.
I just read Moby Dick for the first time. I'm an oldster and it was never required reading for me. It was great as an adventuresome thing. The deep meanings... weren't apparent to me, but y'know I like me some Chris Hedges! And Pip... poor Pip...
What a terrible interpretation of moby dick. Talk about being lost in modern narratives. This novel is in no way protectionist, one of the main signs that ahab had gone insane was that he wasnt interested in killing whales anymore, only one specific whale. Also, Melville directly adresses the idea that whales could be hunted to extinction in the novel, coming to the conclusion that it could never happen and he does that through the voice of Ishmael, if he was trying at satire he would have had ahab voice it. Also, the "people of color" who are "taken advantage of" all make more money and outrank Ishmael, a white guy. When i hear educated people interpret art this way, it really terrifies me in how it makes me realize how much each generation is really wrapped up in their own narratives that they are taught to see everywhere. Makes me wonder to what extent i suffer from the same affliction.
Moby Dick is without a doubt the greatest American novel, the story of a demented sea captain who will willingly do the greatest evil to exact vengeance on the White Whale, no matter what the cost.
Well, I can't agree that Melville loved whales. In one chapter he argues that whalers shouldn't worry about depleting the species, since the whalers were less efficient in their killing than the bison hunters of the west who were obviously exterminating that species. He also argued that whales were mere fish and not mammals. But he did describe the killings of some whales emotionally, as though he regretted taking their lives.
Well, in Jungian thought, as far as I understand, there's an ego-Self axis that needs to be in balance. The ego presides over the conscious mind and can overtake, become a blind authoritarian, if lacking healthy communication with the Self, with our unconscious, our deeper instincts and self-knowledge. "As infants, we embody an original wholeness, or Self-hood, out of which ego (a sense of “I”) gradually emerges. The connection to the Self may be damaged if the ego believes itself the sole source of identity and life or if the ego has been depleted through trauma. In either case, reconnection to the Self is essential to life vitality. A living relationship with the Self can be sought through work with the unconscious: we can attend to our dreams, develop self-reflective capacity, and learn to see meaning and magic in everyday occurrences."
I asked my mother🤓who has a masters in depth psych, she wrote: "If you want something brief and clear to the novice, I'd say the ego is at the center of the conscious mind and the deep Self at the center of the unconscious. We need to try to build the axis between the two by bringing more to consciousness. So much gets tied up in our complexes in the unconscious and we need to break that up to bring material to consciousness in ways like noticing what triggers us and looking for source, facing our shadow, doing dream work, etc..."
@@noelliebtsie IMHO We have a conscious mind, a subconscious mind, an unconscious mind both personal and tribal, and a censor. The censor directs conscious material to the unconscious when the conscious mind is overwhelmed with unacceptable (id est, trauma) material. What this means, is that the unconscious only contains material that was once conscious and suppressed. The collective unconscious is tribal and not ecumenical. Which means, while we each share the same ability to reach the unconscious, we don't share the same content. The content of the collective unconscious will be personal-tribal. This position refutes Carl Jung's position which stated that the collective unconscious is universal. For example, as someone born of the Abrahamic-Jewish faith, I had to spend over a decade of effort to integrate the teachings of Jesus the Nazerite. Why? In my personal collective unconscious was: Jew: The Christ Killer. Christians would not have this problem. The subconscious mind has a relationship with our conscious mind. The unconscious mind is separated off from both, the subconscious and conscious mind, for once the material of the unconscious mind is revealed and integrated, it ceases to exist in the unconscious mind. How we doing this far? Eventually, the unconscious mind, both personal and tribal (collective), ceases to exist. The censor remains, but its function changes toward integration.
@@noelliebtsie Next, let us speak to the products of the mind, which is thought. We have rational, nonrational, and irrational thoughts. The opposite of rational thought is nonrational, and not irrational. Thus, irrational thought is separated out from both, rational and nonrational thought, as similar as the unconscious is distinct from our conscious and subconscious minds. In our conscious mind we receive two (2) different voices based upon two (2) different choices: love or fear, from two (2) distinct domains. Which means, these two different voices reflecting two different choices: love or fear, do not reside in consciousness, but are received into consciousness. One voice is our conscience, and the other voice is our ego. Our consort or conscience speaks always of love, and our ego always speaks from fear: doubt, and uncertainty. Our little self chooses: love or fear. The conscience or the ego. The ego is fear based thinking, and our consort or conscience is love- based thought. One question I have to your mother is this: "When there is no material left in the unconscious, what remains of the deep Self?
What "Moby Dick" describes is what happens when a people give themselves wholly over to worshipping Satan while rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ os LOVE & Forgiveness and our refusal to treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated.
I love the take on this. I originally read moby dick because of the existentialism take Hubert Dryfus talked about in his classes and book, All things shinning.
In a way we are a group of male chimps on a raid to destroy a neighboring group of chimps at all costs. When we aren’t raiding there is the false impression that all is well in the jungle and that we can sleep safely in our night nests in the tropical trees. In these chimp observances we humans feel safe and complacent assuming that we aren’t like those lower species of creatures which we observe unawares all the while denying our base impulses. Melville understood these analogies while sticking to his leviathan storyline.
“Calls for prudence”-there is a we/us making those calls, the humans making the calls, including Chris Hedges, are not ignoring them. We are all human, we all screw up, we have stuff we rationalize about-but that is not what Chris Hedges is doing here and we who are listening aren’t doing it either, at least we are trying not to, some percentage of us, and trying counts. We do not all ignore all calls for prudence-there is a struggle to get heard and understood so we can have big, positive changes in society for generations to come and for all Earth.
"Moby Dick the Whale" is often cited as the greatest American novel; about blind hate &/rage & revenge, and the whaling industry. A few movies were made on this novel..but read the book instead!
![Felix "Unfair" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Oswujxm2Ag0/mqdefault.jpg)
Chris Hedges is a national treasure.
He's good. But the average American is totally ignorant and this is way over their heads.
Most Americans don't recognize him as such, because they choose to believe what they're told by the msm.
A nacional treasure for the whole world to share. He's profoundly renovated my hopes on the prevalence of sanity among responsible intellectuals!
National looney! Moby Dick is a biblical metaphor. Nothing in it is about whales and sailing ships. It is a morality tale about the individual, not some omniscient view of the culture. Maxist ideology like that of Hedges, is always attractive to the young because the solutions it presents are simple destruction of what is, with no formular for what happens next. (What happens next is always dictatorship and mass killing.)
and he does so without giving his political opinion/slant, real journalism
In discussing malice, I am struck by how deep and encompassing it runs in our culture in the United States. So much so that the very people who proclaim to be Christians simple cannot see themselves and the utter malice, the giddy willingness to follow through with an economic system and a political culture that inflicts desperation on others. I can't understand it.
Awesome comment.
Wholeheartedly agree, but I should add that the same applies to "woke" culture.
Maybe it comes from the type of people that left Europe, and were able to survive the trip over. Maybe they are a subspecies of those that will do anything to get on top.
@@sidlee3118 Have you googled ‘woke? It seems to me that you are aligning with the ignorant.
@@jimnutter6901 Yeah man, if you google "woke," you'll find predator drones with a rainbow flag painted on the tail, people screaming "my body my choice" when it comes to abortion but not when it comes to mandatory injections of an experimental gene therapy with alarming adverse effects, and people who claim to be anti-establishment supporting full on censorship by the corporate state.
I graduated college two years ago having read Moby-Dick and being utterly convinced that Moby-Dick is the most important book anyone could be reading today in America. It’a hard not to see the ripples of life that continue to ebb and flow that make this book so relevant to the way we could understand this american experiment.
Big respect to Chris Hedges for being one of the few people that I know of in the broader culture hammering away the importance of Melville’s work.
Bartleby and Benito Cereno are just as important and rewarding to read as well.
Unfortunately most of the younger generation doesn't understand the necessary concepts to understand what they should. Metaphor, context, irony, parable, satire.. The way we push kids into STEM causes them to skip over learning how to think critically or simple logical reasoning
@@Busto Spot on! Compulsory military for all, but first a solid liberal arts and history education for all paid for by the State for there would likely be no Military then. God bless, if there is one?, Chris, his guests, Socrates and folks that post comments like yours. Fuxk the Neo Cons!
Darn! I had to read Dante’s Inferno…pretty straightforward…
I'm 20% of the way through and i love it!!!
Listening to Mr Philbrick's analysis, it is quite astonishing to think that Herman Melville, in the mid 1800s, described the self-destructive, self-devouring nature of American capitalism. Some of it is drawing references from the novel as a narrative of the current malaise in the US, but it shows the fundamentals of societal corruption are largely common and repeated through history in different societies, hence the uncanny correlation of Moby Dick to early twenty-first century America.
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But that isn't what it's about is it .. who are we trying to deceive here servants? ruclips.net/video/Z_yyvEr4jNU/видео.html When you claim godship by the power of material destruction and right by hubris you are no different then most people pretty common brah. However .. Malice of this magnitude ruclips.net/video/9kUYYFJpd1I/видео.html Incurs wrath. The consequences of the opening of this door have been made clear already, the manner is irrelevant, there is nothing to debate.
The consequences of closing it maybe terrible enough itself.
This was a avoidable mistake that was insisted upon by fools.
Go figure! Humans have a sinful nature? What a surprise!
Yes, he definitely had good perception and foresight, but I wouldn't prescribe to him the gift of clairvoyance. Let's not forget that the latter end of the 1800s is heavily characterized as the period of the robber barons and the first major instance of great wealth inequality in America having followed the first industrial revolution which Melville would have lived through. He would have likely seen the writing on the wall made in his own time.
@@GR8APE69 yes, which is my point above on societal decay and corruption being common and repeated throughout history. Which makes Moby Dick, metaphorically prescient for 21st century America.
So happy to hear Mr. Hodges on a new platform. The man is just a wealth of knowledge.
A true paragon of intellectual integrity and rigor
Chris is one of the greatest teachers of our age
Thanks to Chris Hedges for this and the other work he does and thanks to those who help in bringing it to us.
I read Moby Dick in High School and again in my 20s. This conversation brought back so many ideas so it's time again to crack it open to reread. Thank you for this in-depth discussion.
Not to make this about me but it makes me feel really good to watch Chris hedges. The reason I feel so good is because I dropped out of high school in grade 12 and bought a house. I am literally an uneducated peon, according to the word of academia anyway, and I know what Chris hedges is talking about.
This is a form of intelligence that cannot be bought. And if it is, it’s hella expensive. And that makes me feel good about who I am in this stupid hick town that I am stuck in.
Thanks, Chris.
Wait-what you mean you didn't go into crushing debt to spend 4 more years learning nothing in advanced govt indoctrination camp.
good for you...
@@richsclageter521 daaaaaaw. Thanks, Rich. ☺️
Bless you brother Hedges
"Just human nature " is an excuse I can no longer accept. We are not the ego, our associative memories, nor contained by a body. We are our environment and part of our world. No more excuses..
So...how do you tell a deeply unconscious person this? That is the vast majority of the human population btw...most people I know are completely disconnected and deluded and only interested in survival needs.
“Nature and Nurture”
So cry
This is great! I requested in the comments that Chris do more book reviews and related history analysis. Here we are! Love it!
Chris is good
Chris Hedges is the closest thing to a father I've ever had.
Because he had a great dad, he knows what it takes to parent
You certainly could have picked worse. He's a major source of inspiration for me as well.
Me too. He is absolutely the voice of the people.
Maybe thats your problem ! Looking for love in all the Wrong places ! Hmmm maybe .
@@sempervigilo804 That's very insightful.
Advice like this is why you're the closest thing to a best friend I've ever had.
So happy to have this man in my life
You guys are brilliant. When i was an undergrad i took a course in Melville & Twain; one semester. The last book we read was Moby Dick. The final exam included an essay on the symbolism in Moby Dick. That was rough.
Great to see you do books again like with On Contact. One of the many things I like about Chris Hedges is that he is extremely well read and understands how the classics inform us and people of any time. Moby Dick is one of all time favorites and I knew I was going to enjoy these 2 gentleman talk about it as soon as I saw the title. I just happened to have re-read MD for the 3rd time just a few weeks ago. thanks so much.
Melville's story "Bartleby the Scrivener" is another great shot across the bows, KS. Likewise Kurt Vonnegut's "The Sirens of Titan". ( Find him on RUclips! )
NB: Queequeg, a central figure in "Moby Dick", is a Native American.
The metaphor, of course, works on a political/social level, as we can see, with corrupt or vain political leaders leading nations to ruin, but it's also very relevant, I think, on a personal level. I've seen people become so obsessed with their hatred of Trump, Clinton, or, in the UK, Boris Johnson, that they're entirely consumed and obsessed with their enemy, and unable to have any perspective on the issues or culture that created them. The more we obsess with that which we oppose, the more it "drags us down to its level".
What an endless chilling litany of horrendous if unprecedented crimes against humanity committed by a single nation with utter impunity! Infinite respect and appreciation for your altruistic investigative true journalism without an iota of biasness or favouritism!
Wonderful analysis, thanks for this enlightening conversation Professor Hedges.
Thank you so much for all the uploads. generally speaking, these are the most enriching videos that I consume on RUclips.
4:33 "and be the white whale agent,or be the white whale principal,I will wreak that hate upon him". This is how I viewed the Cheney/Bush attitude towards Saddam Hussein and their obsession to 'get him' at all costs. Hussein found a work around to the oil sanctions and it drove them crazy with rage. He gnawed on the wrong leg and now must be punished.
Too bad we cannot wage ruthless kindness
Melville saw how the Polynesians lived without accumulation of wealth, with understanding of limits to resources on an Island, in a natural way.....then he returned to the avarice of civilisation.
Wow, what a great interview and interpretation of the classic, Moby Dick. Truly, a novel for our times. I just ordered Mr. Philbrick's book and will dig out my copy of Melville's classic and do some winter reading. Thanks to Chris, Mr. Philbrick and the hardworking staff of the Real News Network. Good work!
Buddhism refers to that 'malevolence' as - Gampon no Mumyo (The Fundamental Darkness).
In case anyone wanted to know.
I much prefer the word contempt. Contempt begins very casually but becomes wholesale given time. Contempt dismisses, contempt gives permission to despise, it trivializes, it effaces, and it ushers in a self-created insanity.
@@9UaYXxB
Contempt could be considered a function of the Fundamental Darkness.
And Hosshaku Kempon is "discarding the transient and revealing the true"
So grateful for this. I had read Toni Morrison,in an essay, considering this the first anti slavery novel. So rich in layers, as Philbank says -endlessly relevant. I just read it during Covid isolation. What a ride, I will continue to reread, the richness of metaphors, gives us so much.
Your attention to this masterpiece, and your points, for us today is so important. Thank you.
Bartleby the Scrivener, would be another great exploration.
Melville was ironically a "Young American", a reform movement of young people in the 19th century that promoted the production of uniquely American literature, on purely American subjects but also advocated the since much altered "manifest destiny" concept of John L. Sullivan, the beginnings of modern exceptionalism. Sullivan's concept initially did not demand conquest but was seen to have later in history. It believed expansion would happen solely on merits and the exceptional and transplantable nature of the American model. In this light, Moby Dick seems to be a direct criticism of Sullivan's Utopian design, though he may have been a starry eyed disciple in his youth. The movement dropped off considerably in the 1850's and Moby Dick might be Melville's documentation of disillusionment and a eulogy. You would think such a direct target of this principle would possibly be borne out of Melville's one time naive immersion in it.
Thanks for highlighting Melville's work and how all-encompassing his allegory was in MOBY DICK. As an aside, Herman Melville's brother, Peter, acted as a speech writer for James Polk during his candidacy for President. And the central proposition that Polk ran on was the manifesto of "Manifest Destiny." Some critics have suggested that Melville meant for Moby Dick to be directly correlated with the obsessive notion of Manifest Destiny in mid-19th Century politics. Also, Herman Melville's father, Allan, was financially ruined by President Andrew Jackson's obsession with taking on the central banks in 1837 --- and that his father's subsequent suicide could be laid at the feet of "Old Hickory." Ahab had several features reminiscent of Andrew Jackson...
Humans are not lethal. Capitalists are lethal. To claim that all humans are equally lethal is to forget the thousands of generations of indigenous people who lived in relative harmony with nature.
There should definitely be differentiation and recognition of the unique destructiveness of European industrial capitalist empire. But I think the pathological anthropocentrism (along with androcentrism) underpinning almost all human cultures is another deeper layer we need to attend to. The book The Sixth Extinction gets into the repeated correlation anthropologists have found between humans arriving in a place and then other species disappearing.
For the first time, I don't have to reference _Moby Dick_ to illustrate some aspect of modern American society, as this discussion covers the issue.
"Who ain't a slave?"
Breathtaking discussion, thank you both.
Holy Crap, you got Philbrick! My most-read author for 5 years or so. Sorry about what Hollywood did to "In the Heart of the Sea", man.
Mr. Hedges, you are the best and most radical speaker I've heard for a LONG while. Your ability to summarize, with passion, is deeply disturbing - and inspiring. Thank you so much for this!
Well done gentlemen . Thanks.
At 75 years, I can't get this novel
out of my head since high school.
What immortal hand could frame
this fearful symmetry?
So dark, the horror.
Excellent discussion, thank you for your work such as this interview; this keeps our minds open and exploring our circumstance, which is good.
Great conversation; love stuff like this that overlaps arts and politics, two things that are - at their peak - automatically political because they are about the human condition and the ways in which human beings can become perversions of themselves, betraying all that we know to be moral and ethical. At the other end of that spectrum, of course, is the work that reminds us of our deep-rooted communal and spiritual nature. Thanks to both Chris Hedges and to Nathaniel Philbrick and, of course, to The Real News Network for bringing us this. Excellent.
I want to teach Moby Dick to my seniors. This has really helped
Somewhere out there in modern discourse is the opposing view that "sometimes a whale is just a whale". *This was meant as satire*
@@crunchfootjim4936 Yeah, well, I think I would front load the lessons with the idea of allegory and extended metaphor to help the message along.
@@charliemcpherson6299 It might have been a senior avoiding work who originally proffered the notion. ;^)
Good thing you don't live in TexAss. CRT, don't you know, would prevent it.
Washington state listening. Thanks, Chris!
Arthur Koestler wrote that somewhere along our journey over the past many (tens) thousands of years of development. we became "hardwired" for something like self destruction as a race. Read this in the last few months, very disturbing, and trying to understand in more detail.
I'm going to run with the hero worship you're garnering! I'm bingeing on your content. Only saw you a week ago, first.
Thinking about "King Kong", which I watched yesterday, after a long while. Also, very prophetic story.
Your new fan, Roberta/ NYC
I just finished this book yesterday and raced to this video I have been eagerly chomping at. I am sure 80% of this book went over my head but what sunk in was really phenomenal. What really surprised me, having never read Melville's works before, was how funny the story is. To me, Moby Dick read like a Loony Toons episode as if it were written by the Coen Brothers. I am surprised the Coens never adapted this book into a film.
Billy Budd foreshadows Julian Assange
This discussion today was so powerful between you, and Nathaniel Phillbrick, illuminating the novel of Herman Melville, "Moby-Dick ". ONE OF OUR GREAT NOVELS. THE PARALLELS ARE ARTICULATE DEEP INSIDE OF HUMAN NATURE IN ALL OF US .AS IN Melville 's 17th century till now the 21st century. Physical, spiritual metaphor for life. THANK YOU, BOTH.❤️❤️
19th Century
Moby Dick is set in 19th cent., not the 17th...
This was fantastic. Thank you for sharing these political meanings and intimations in the novel. I have only read parts of it, and i have found those parts dense and disturbing, repellent almost, and now I understand why. They describe a earlier capitalist hellscape that we're still forced to traverse today.
This inspired me to get MD on audiobook and revisit it. It's very well written but in some parts it loses focus and goes off on tangents. The themes and moral lessons, however, are very poignant and still as relevant as ever
I'm reading moby dick, melville is incredibly poetic and at points reminds me of joyce (i dont read enough). I will definitely buy and read Philbrick's analysis of it, I really like what you both had to say. Thank you Chris Hedges, yet again. Light in the dark, man.
Interesting episode, sort of fun. Take good care of you, Chris, the guest, and TRNN.
"We are under the gross misconception that we are a good species going somewhere important and that at the last minute we'll correct our errors and God will smile on us. It is delusion." Farley Mowat
We all have our blindspots. And climate change is his. Still love and respect brother hedges.
When I was in high school I took humanities. One of the assigned books was Moby Dick. I can't remember who the teacher was, but I know I was turned off by it because the way symbolism was presented to me was or seemed irrelevant. Since that time I've never been a big fan of fiction. But I love reading philosophical texts and critical texts. I think if I had had a teacher like Chris hedges teaching literature or Humanity, I may have turned out differently as far as fiction goes. But I think it also might have something to do with the fact that I have a blind mind. In other words my brain does not create pictures or images. So I'm not sure. That said though I ended up a philosophy major and my love of philosophy is only grown over the years, the very first philosophy course I took the professor presented it in a very similar way as that Humanities class and I was completely turned off by it. I had to quit that semester but when I came back I had a different professor and it completely changed my world. But in any case this is a really great discussion about Moby Dick.
What symbolism was presented to you for Queequeg crawling into bed with Ishmael? I believe it is the most comedic scene written in US literature.
@@wadestanton I actually don't remember.. I glazed over over in that class.. though now I wish I wouldn't have
@@LauraKamienski They haven't burned it yet, have they?
@@wadestanton lol no. Not yet.
Just read the first chapter, it's free on the internet and won't take 10 minutes. Then just guess what the hell Melville is writing about, many people do it.
The whale was just trying to survive. It was the humans who were evil.
Cool show!
Interesting how Quakers in Ireland became the most astute businessmen and landowners.....not heavily burdened with religious guilt.
Like today's Christians.
Spread love n knowledge
It's like Ahab, after catching a glimpse of the ineffable unity of the world, was struck with such an intense feeling of alienation that he wished to destroy everything. People strike out at the world in blame when they feel alienated instead of looking at themselves. But there is nothing worse than that feeling of being separated from your true being and feeling you have to chase it outside of yourself. The separation is felt as a malice being visited on oneself from outside - the hate and malice being a reflection of one's own mind. People will do anything to get out of that feeling, and they will relentlessly chase the whale forever - like chasing an image in a mirror.
So Captain Ahab was a Type A personality? No wonder I never could make heads or tails of Moby Dick: I'm a Type B.
Thanks, Chris, for finally analyzing this story for me. It now makes sense.
5:20 So "terrorism" is the current white whale?
I dislike the attribution of all of the worst features of the human psyche to "human nature." It completely ignores the other side of human nature: altruism, compassion, empathy (34:14: "what makes us human") I am reminded of the Native American story, the one that says that we have two wolves inside: a violent one and a peaceful one, and the one that is uppermost is the one that you feed.
The problem with interpreting Moby Dick as an anticapitalist screed is that the evil Captain Ahab is not motivated by money at all. He's on a mission of vengeance, a personal vendetta against an animal. It's the "good guy," Starbuck, who says (in effect): "Look, skipper, we're not here to chase after just one whale. We're here to make money for ourselves and the owners of the ship by killing as many whales as we can."
This interpretation is very interesting ,. However , it ignores the class identity of society. That fact is precisely the bottom line ofvthe present incapacity of the working class to find not only a leadership but also the necessary allies we need to solve the urgency of uniting as a people. The class identity of the conflicting forces represented in the book are a dissolved force in a confusion of agents seen in the conflict. There is no common enemy but a fogged image of participants. Precisely the condition of both the right and the left in the political wilderness of the USA. The only relevant clear force finding a closed ranks condition is the established state of capitalism. The legal system is the executing political force with all its ominous discouraging power. Very American in its confusing condition. All ready to take sides in a war. Any war as long as it is led by the USA corporate class.
BTW, even the most iconic drum solo by supergroup "Led Zeppelin", was named " Moby Dick" by drummer John Bonham.
Was obsessed with Moby Dick the movie as a kid and have read the book twice as a teenager and adult. Fantastic book. A gteat analogy of our self-destructive impulses.
Amazing conversation, I never knew any of that.
After I dropped out of college, running as hard as I could from my dad's academic career, I still felt obligated to read Moby Dick.
And I did, hating every page. But I found it gave me strange memories. In the rear view mirror, it's a weird thing to recall.
I'm profoundly unequipped to think or opine about it, but I feel like there's a through line from Blake's mystic liberalism to Melville.
Can you be more concrete? Is there a particular poem or particular themes in Blake's poetry that reminds one of or seemingly connects with Moby Dick?
@@ClearOutSamskaras I wrote this HUGE essay, and then accidentally deleted it before replying. I'm a huge idiot.
I was trying to make a point about the Protestant tendency to mythologize political thinking. The Levelers, the Diggers, the Icarians, and the Paris commune; liberalism produced greatness that rests on a kind of religious thinking.
Bartelby lived in a world where Blake's angel in "America, a Prophecy" became an enslaved demiurge. Richard Linklater's slackers and Philip K. Dick's druggies and losers (and me, and you) live in that world.
I have never noticed gnostic imagery in Melville, but there is an evil Old Testament god in Blake who needs to be overthrown. Both authors are on the dark side of Romanticism versus the innocence of the naiive transcendentalists, though I believe Whitman had no problem subjugating the natives--some transcendentalist.
Hodges's is, to put it simply, out of his mind. This analysis of Mony Dick is ludicrous.
Historical not all societies were deemed violent
As a writer I am conscious that it is the story picked to tell that makes all the difference. Of Melville's books it is the one of the man without a country that I could read, was open to reading. I've been happier since touching my vision with my idea of a nation of airports. The vision is not of any one thing but I had one vision. I touched the vision. It said it was good. Well I am working on it. I wrote a passport and the passport or just the idea of the passport is what will live beyond my life.
DAMN Chris, thought I thought it was bout fishin trip.
Monsterquest do have
White Whale and
Octopus Giganteus..
Very important under English language literature especially USA
Hedges 2024 PLEASE GOD PLEASE
Salute Chris Hedges.🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋🙋
Old H. Bruce Franklin, the Maoist Melville scholar, may also have an interesting take on Moby Dick.
I just read Moby Dick for the first time. I'm an oldster and it was never required reading for me. It was great as an adventuresome thing. The deep meanings... weren't apparent to me, but y'know I like me some Chris Hedges! And Pip... poor Pip...
Awesome book, very sad it didn't find more success during the author's life
I will now be referring to Starbucks as Ahab's. They clearly stole the wrong monicker.
What a terrible interpretation of moby dick. Talk about being lost in modern narratives. This novel is in no way protectionist, one of the main signs that ahab had gone insane was that he wasnt interested in killing whales anymore, only one specific whale. Also, Melville directly adresses the idea that whales could be hunted to extinction in the novel, coming to the conclusion that it could never happen and he does that through the voice of Ishmael, if he was trying at satire he would have had ahab voice it. Also, the "people of color" who are "taken advantage of" all make more money and outrank Ishmael, a white guy. When i hear educated people interpret art this way, it really terrifies me in how it makes me realize how much each generation is really wrapped up in their own narratives that they are taught to see everywhere. Makes me wonder to what extent i suffer from the same affliction.
"Terrorized" by Willie King and the Liberators is the theme song.
Everyone has a personality. Every nation has a personality. Once understood, one can predict what it will do eventually
I feel exactly the same way even tho I'm older than Chris. Because a father is (ideally) the person you mist respect, and TRUST.
Jed McKenna dedicated one of his books to interpreting Moby Dick from a spiritual point of view. Highly recommend.
Fascinating discussion! Thank you!
It's ironic that Moby Dick and Walden were published just 3 years apart and take place less then 100 miles from each other.
Humans mostly fail to realize liberty comes from serving. Not a lot of Americans want to live with a servant’s heart.
Hedges' work should more greatly inform general education and discussion. Thank you, Messr. Hedges.
Moby Dick is without a doubt the greatest American novel, the story of a demented sea captain who will willingly do the greatest evil to exact vengeance on the White Whale, no matter what the cost.
I grew up with Story of
Moby Dick..
Well, I can't agree that Melville loved whales. In one chapter he argues that whalers shouldn't worry about depleting the species, since the whalers were less efficient in their killing than the bison hunters of the west who were obviously exterminating that species. He also argued that whales were mere fish and not mammals. But he did describe the killings of some whales emotionally, as though he regretted taking their lives.
1:18 Chris: "We are consumed with EGO Not Self..." The Self is pure. The ego is vile.
Well, in Jungian thought, as far as I understand, there's an ego-Self axis that needs to be in balance. The ego presides over the conscious mind and can overtake, become a blind authoritarian, if lacking healthy communication with the Self, with our unconscious, our deeper instincts and self-knowledge.
"As infants, we embody an original wholeness, or Self-hood, out of which ego (a sense of “I”) gradually emerges. The connection to the Self may be damaged if the ego believes itself the sole source of identity and life or if the ego has been depleted through trauma. In either case, reconnection to the Self is essential to life vitality. A living relationship with the Self can be sought through work with the unconscious: we can attend to our dreams, develop self-reflective capacity, and learn to see meaning and magic in everyday occurrences."
I asked my mother🤓who has a masters in depth psych, she wrote: "If you want something brief and clear to the novice, I'd say the ego is at the center of the conscious mind and the deep Self at the center of the unconscious. We need to try to build the axis between the two by bringing more to consciousness. So much gets tied up in our complexes in the unconscious and we need to break that up to bring material to consciousness in ways like noticing what triggers us and looking for source, facing our shadow, doing dream work, etc..."
@@noelliebtsie I will reply later; 'bout ten hours from now....
@@noelliebtsie IMHO We have a conscious mind, a subconscious mind, an unconscious mind both personal and tribal, and a censor. The censor directs conscious material to the unconscious when the conscious mind is overwhelmed with unacceptable (id est, trauma) material. What this means, is that the unconscious only contains material that was once conscious and suppressed. The collective unconscious is tribal and not ecumenical. Which means, while we each share the same ability to reach the unconscious, we don't share the same content. The content of the collective unconscious will be personal-tribal. This position refutes Carl Jung's position which stated that the collective unconscious is universal. For example, as someone born of the Abrahamic-Jewish faith, I had to spend over a decade of effort to integrate the teachings of Jesus the Nazerite. Why? In my personal collective unconscious was: Jew: The Christ Killer. Christians would not have this problem.
The subconscious mind has a relationship with our conscious mind. The unconscious mind is separated off from both, the subconscious and conscious mind, for once the material of the unconscious mind is revealed and integrated, it ceases to exist in the unconscious mind. How we doing this far? Eventually, the unconscious mind, both personal and tribal (collective), ceases to exist. The censor remains, but its function changes toward integration.
@@noelliebtsie Next, let us speak to the products of the mind, which is thought. We have rational, nonrational, and irrational thoughts. The opposite of rational thought is nonrational, and not irrational. Thus, irrational thought is separated out from both, rational and nonrational thought, as similar as the unconscious is distinct from our conscious and subconscious minds. In our conscious mind we receive two (2) different voices based upon two (2) different choices: love or fear, from two (2) distinct domains. Which means, these two different voices reflecting two different choices: love or fear, do not reside in consciousness, but are received into consciousness. One voice is our conscience, and the other voice is our ego. Our consort or conscience speaks always of love, and our ego always speaks from fear: doubt, and uncertainty. Our little self chooses: love or fear. The conscience or the ego. The ego is fear based thinking, and our consort or conscience is love- based thought. One question I have to your mother is this: "When there is no material left in the unconscious, what remains of the deep Self?
Timely metaphor...timeless story. 😎🤙
What "Moby Dick" describes is what happens when a people give themselves wholly over to worshipping Satan while rejecting the teachings of Jesus Christ os LOVE & Forgiveness and our refusal to treat others as we ourselves would want to be treated.
Herman Melville great grandson is a corporate lawyer. He is one of the handsomest kindness men.
Wow I'm shook. I never thought of Moby Dick that way. I hated having to read it in Jr high. Never thought of it on this scale though.
Homo sapiens - an oxymoron if ever I heard one. . . .
I love the take on this. I originally read moby dick because of the existentialism take Hubert Dryfus talked about in his classes and book, All things shinning.
The world doesn't need CIA.
In a way we are a group of male chimps on a raid to destroy a neighboring group of chimps at all costs. When we aren’t raiding there is the false impression that all is well in the jungle and that we can sleep safely in our night nests in the tropical trees. In these chimp observances we humans feel safe and complacent assuming that we aren’t like those lower species of creatures which we observe unawares all the while denying our base impulses. Melville understood these analogies while sticking to his leviathan storyline.
Better to look toward the bonobos, our closest primate relative. They're much more matriarchal and thus more joyous and loving.
Great interview.
9/11 was to us what captain Ahab's first meeting with Moby Dick was to him.
“Calls for prudence”-there is a we/us making those calls, the humans making the calls, including Chris Hedges, are not ignoring them. We are all human, we all screw up, we have stuff we rationalize about-but that is not what Chris Hedges is doing here and we who are listening aren’t doing it either, at least we are trying not to, some percentage of us, and trying counts. We do not all ignore all calls for prudence-there is a struggle to get heard and understood so we can have big, positive changes in society for generations to come and for all Earth.
Chris, hit the Pipe, calm down mate we love you
"Moby Dick the Whale" is often cited as the greatest American novel; about blind hate &/rage & revenge, and the whaling industry. A few movies were made on this novel..but read the book instead!
How tragically true does this synopsis of the classic story ring in relation to the events that America, Isreal and the West find themselves now...😭