You might be right in thinking that no one is listening to your warnings about what you perceive to be some coming disaster. Of course, disasters are relative, ranging from kids gone wrong to countries gone wrong and from leaky roofs to erupting volcanoes. Regardless of the seriousness of the coming disaster and its immediacy to those in its path, in being ignored, you aren’t alone. You are just one more in the long history of minor and major prophets whose voiced concerns were dismissed as silly worries. You might, however, be the next in line to see warnings become realities and doubters become believers. “We should have listened.” Getting through to adults is, you find, as difficult as getting through to sophomoric teenagers.
We have many examples of “We should have listened” and “They should have listened.” People still build and live beside dormant and active volcanoes whose explosive eruptions are inevitable. Think Naples, Seattle, and Kagoshima, and Antigua Guatemala, where residents no doubt justify their choice of geography and of complacency with “It won’t happen in my lifetime” or with the question, “Really, how bad could it be?” Think of those who died on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens, one Harry Truman in particular. Harry, if you recall, was the irascible old guy who scoffed at the seismologists’ warnings before dying in the eruption. And he wasn’t the only one who failed to heed the geologic prophecy.
Of course, there are degrees of regret over ignored prophesies, all dependent on the nature and intensity of the prophesized phenomena. And there are degrees of consequences for the sundry ignored prophets. As everyone knows, prophets often have a hard time convincing anyone, and their rejected prophecies have led to exile and even, sometimes, to death. A good example comes from British naval history. In her popular and entertaining book Longitude, Dava Sobel recounts the destruction of the British fleet on the rocks of the Scilly Isles because the admiralty dismissed the warnings of a bright, but ordinary sailor. * Since the seaman wasn’t an officer, he had overstepped his station in predicting a potential shipwreck because of faulty navigation. Such an act was considered mutinous, even though he was trying to save the fleet, and Admiral Shovell had him hanged. Shortly thereafter, on October 22, 1707, the fleet—off course as the sailor had predicted—hit the rocks, and 2,000 British soldiers and sailors died along with, I might add, their captains and admirals.
And here you are more than three centuries later warning others about society, economics, or politics, all that you are prophesizing falling on deaf ears. You might not be an official navigator like that unfortunate British sailor, but you see that the fleet is headed in the wrong direction. And like that British sailor, you have good intentions. But those in command are like those in command of the ill-fated British fleet. Ill-fated? Is it silly to use the term with regard to the destruction on the Scillies? That’s exactly what prophets try to avoid, disastrous fates. The British admiralty had the choice to listen and to “alter fate.” They chose not to, to their own peril. To say they had no choice is to yield to fatalism in its worst form: Tragic destiny. Prophets of every stripe prophesy on one fundamental assumption: If people fail to listen, they choose tragic fate over mitigating alternatives. The prophet cries, “If they will only listen….” The doomed say, “We are modern Caesars.”
Take the warnings of a number of people about a country’s trending toward socialism, the economic and eventually tyrannical system that destroys individual freedom, impoverishes whole populations, and, in all instances so far, imprisons and often kills dissenters. From the twentieth century the ghosts of 148 million dead, those killed by socialist governments, rise as unheeded prophets.
Apparently, the ship of state has sailed, and its fate is sealed. It doesn’t matter to the admiralty that the well-intentioned, but ordinary citizen might prophesy a disaster in the making. Always, those in command know they know better. Always, like the admirals of the British fleet, they rely only on precedent authority and judgment steeped in arrogance. And what choice do the seamen have in this? Mutiny? Risk being hanged at worst and ostracized at best? Making polite pleas? That eighteenth-century British sailor deferentially called the officers’ attention to their potential doom.
But if only a few among the entire fleet of sailors recognize that rocks lie ahead and those at the helm won’t listen to their warnings, won’t those prophetic dissenting voices, no matter how loud, be lost among the louder sounds of crashing waves? Most prophets’ voices have been drowned out, so to speak, and the prophets, like those they warned, eventually drowned.
Don’t be surprised if no one listens.
*Sobel, Dava. 1995. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York. Penguin Books. Pp. 11-13.
We have many examples of “We should have listened” and “They should have listened.” People still build and live beside dormant and active volcanoes whose explosive eruptions are inevitable. Think Naples, Seattle, and Kagoshima, and Antigua Guatemala, where residents no doubt justify their choice of geography and of complacency with “It won’t happen in my lifetime” or with the question, “Really, how bad could it be?” Think of those who died on the flanks of Mt. St. Helens, one Harry Truman in particular. Harry, if you recall, was the irascible old guy who scoffed at the seismologists’ warnings before dying in the eruption. And he wasn’t the only one who failed to heed the geologic prophecy.
Of course, there are degrees of regret over ignored prophesies, all dependent on the nature and intensity of the prophesized phenomena. And there are degrees of consequences for the sundry ignored prophets. As everyone knows, prophets often have a hard time convincing anyone, and their rejected prophecies have led to exile and even, sometimes, to death. A good example comes from British naval history. In her popular and entertaining book Longitude, Dava Sobel recounts the destruction of the British fleet on the rocks of the Scilly Isles because the admiralty dismissed the warnings of a bright, but ordinary sailor. * Since the seaman wasn’t an officer, he had overstepped his station in predicting a potential shipwreck because of faulty navigation. Such an act was considered mutinous, even though he was trying to save the fleet, and Admiral Shovell had him hanged. Shortly thereafter, on October 22, 1707, the fleet—off course as the sailor had predicted—hit the rocks, and 2,000 British soldiers and sailors died along with, I might add, their captains and admirals.
And here you are more than three centuries later warning others about society, economics, or politics, all that you are prophesizing falling on deaf ears. You might not be an official navigator like that unfortunate British sailor, but you see that the fleet is headed in the wrong direction. And like that British sailor, you have good intentions. But those in command are like those in command of the ill-fated British fleet. Ill-fated? Is it silly to use the term with regard to the destruction on the Scillies? That’s exactly what prophets try to avoid, disastrous fates. The British admiralty had the choice to listen and to “alter fate.” They chose not to, to their own peril. To say they had no choice is to yield to fatalism in its worst form: Tragic destiny. Prophets of every stripe prophesy on one fundamental assumption: If people fail to listen, they choose tragic fate over mitigating alternatives. The prophet cries, “If they will only listen….” The doomed say, “We are modern Caesars.”
Take the warnings of a number of people about a country’s trending toward socialism, the economic and eventually tyrannical system that destroys individual freedom, impoverishes whole populations, and, in all instances so far, imprisons and often kills dissenters. From the twentieth century the ghosts of 148 million dead, those killed by socialist governments, rise as unheeded prophets.
Apparently, the ship of state has sailed, and its fate is sealed. It doesn’t matter to the admiralty that the well-intentioned, but ordinary citizen might prophesy a disaster in the making. Always, those in command know they know better. Always, like the admirals of the British fleet, they rely only on precedent authority and judgment steeped in arrogance. And what choice do the seamen have in this? Mutiny? Risk being hanged at worst and ostracized at best? Making polite pleas? That eighteenth-century British sailor deferentially called the officers’ attention to their potential doom.
But if only a few among the entire fleet of sailors recognize that rocks lie ahead and those at the helm won’t listen to their warnings, won’t those prophetic dissenting voices, no matter how loud, be lost among the louder sounds of crashing waves? Most prophets’ voices have been drowned out, so to speak, and the prophets, like those they warned, eventually drowned.
Don’t be surprised if no one listens.
*Sobel, Dava. 1995. Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time. New York. Penguin Books. Pp. 11-13.
RSS Feed