The sinking of a ship is always a catastrophic disaster. There’s the loss of men, the loss of cargo, and the loss, of course, of a prized vessel. Strange treasures have been found at ancient sea wreaks, such as the Antikythera mechanism, which were lost because they were some sea-traveler’s private invention or part of some captain’s private collection. Who knows how history would have changed if such treasures had survived their voyage and been adapted wide-spread? An era of analog Roman computers may have been born!
I often find myself wondering just how many ancient texts and curiosities were lost from a sinking. Never copied by a monk or librarian - doomed by proxy of being a single production in some private library of some ill-fated captain. You often see these as set pieces for films and theatres that have scenes on a ship. My favorite was Captain Hook’s private chamber. But the captain’s chambers seen throughout Pirate’s of the Caribbean make some nice scenes too.
Of course, not everything is lost in a sinking. Some adventurer may happen upon the wreck and discover whatever survived, and many things float up to be collected by other captains, and sometimes something loosens and finds its way washed up upon the shore. Some things do survive, few as they are.
One of the tragic losses in older sinkings is the loss of the figurehead - that curious work of art placed at the bow. Often they are made by the best artists of whatever city cast the vessel out, and they are, more or less, universally lost when the ship goes down. The figurehead can be said to be something of an idol or icon that defines a ship’s spirit. Often they encapsulate the name of the vessel, or embody some part of its lore - and every ship acquires lore the longer it serves.
Figure heads are a curiosity to me. They are fairly universal across all sea-going peoples, and seems to be something deemed appropriate by every culture. Perhaps that is because humanity is cursed with an urge to make idols, who can say. Indeed, the loss of a figurehead can in many ways be viewed as the loss of the ship’s spirit - a new one would indicate a new soul, in the same way the raising of the cross over the shattered pagan statues heralded the change of Europe’s religion, and likewise the taking down of the cross for colorful flags and banners since the 1960’s represents the birth of this Civil Rights state religion of America today.
There exists in ancient discourse the concept of a Ship of State - the idea that the organizational capabilities, competency, hierarchy, order, etc, of a state can be likened unto that of a crew piloting a sea-going vessel. It’s a useful metaphor, but something more: For many ancient coastal societies, the beginning of a new city did not begin with planting a flag or stone at the site of its founding. Rather, it began on the ships used to get there. People do not emerge out of the æther onto a virgin plain to start a city. They must travel there. Along the way to their destination, through many weeks and months, they are not in a frozen state. They will interact. Before the city is ever founded, the friendships, adversaries, families, and hierarchies that will define it are formed in the bowels of the ship heading there. A city begins not at the site of founding, but along the way. The tapestry of relationships that form in that ship, like a baby in the womb, will form the cleavages and protrusions that define the body politic of the city when it is built. In this way, the Ship of State is more than an analogy. It is literal too. That ship is a womb for a new society, and it can very well become a tomb if the passengers fail to form a viable body politic.
I spoke somewhat of this in a previous article on Battlestar Galactica. America can best be thought of not solely through its founding colonies or peoples, but through the relationships formed by those people, while on the ships that brought us to these shores. The relationships the founding stocks formed on the way defined the hierarchies they formed when they built this land.
Let’s take an example from my home city, New York. It was founded by 30 Dutch families from Leyden - a city known for its newspapers and fashion. They were sponsored by the Dutch East India Company and arrived on a ship named New Netherlands, the same name as the colony itself, captained by Cornelis May. Only Twelve of these families would stay to settle, with 18 going on to Albany’s Fort Orange. According to Belgium historians, many of these families can be found on an earlier document, petitioning England to allow them to settle in the fertile Virginian. Their listed trades include: carpenter, sawyer, farmer, brass-founder, dyer, draper, brewer, weaver, printer, apothecary, surgeon, and a student of theology. Their journey to the New World proved eventful, passing by fishing vessels on their way to the New World, and one French colony ship. Like twins struggling in the womb, the two colony ships found themselves engaged in conflict. Think about that. The fate of New York - what language they would speak, what religion they would practice, and what laws they would live under - would be decided by that conflict. Rather than engage one on one, the Dutch did a very clever thing. They signaled to the far-off fishing vessels for aid. A ship by the name De Makereel signaled intent to help, and together they presented a tour de force and scared the French colonists off. The fate of Manhattan Island fell to the Dutch when those Frenchmen turned around.
Imagine the bond that sealed between the families on that ship. They fought and earned their birthright to found a new civilization. In fact, this appears to have had a powerful affect on the crew of East Indian Company men, who now viewed the settlers as comrades in arms. The journey’s captain, Cornelis May, was elected by the colonists to be their first colonial director - a sure sign of the bonds that had been made on their way. He would go on to build two forts on either side of the Hudson river’s bay with the aid of the faithful colonists.
There has always been that peculiar intersection between merchant and military in New York. The river connected West Point to Wall Street has seen countless heroes built. I’d wager to bet that is an echo of the kind of body politic forged in shooing off a French colony ship with clever tactics, and a bit of black powder.
Similar stories could likely be found in other contexts. Nearly all of America’s societal tapestry can be outlined in the relationships formed on these ships, from the slave ships to the treasure ships. Moreover, every single ship took an extortionate amount of time to get here. We all had more time to develop that tapestry of the body politic than any other society, along with other places like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada. This is a unique feature of these colonies. We all came off those boats will well-defined structures. We are all, in a sense, a result of an overdue pregnancy.
In the American context, one can find one of the earliest uses of the metaphor of the Ship of State in Roger William’s letter to his fellow colonists as they founded Providence Plantations - what would in time become the state of Rhode Island. The letter, in full, follows:
That ever I should speak or write a tittle, that tends to such an infinite liberty of conscience, is a mistake, and which I have ever disclaimed and abhorred. To prevent such mistakes, I shall at present only propose this case: There goes many a ship to sea, with many hundred souls in one ship, whose weal and woe is common, and is a true picture of a commonwealth, or a human combination or society. It hath fallen out sometimes, that both papists and protestants, Jews and Turks, may be embarked in one ship; upon which supposal I affirm, that all the liberty of conscience, that ever I pleaded for, turns upon these two hinges–that none of the papists, protestants, Jews, or Turks, be forced to come to the ship's prayers of worship, nor compelled from their own particular prayers or worship, if they practice any. I further add, that I never denied, that notwithstanding this liberty, the commander of this ship ought to command the ship's course, yea, and also command that justice, peace and sobriety, be kept and practiced, both among the seamen and all the passengers. If any of the seamen refuse to perform their services, or passengers to pay their freight; if any refuse to help, in person or purse, towards the common charges or defence; if any refuse to obey the common laws and orders of the ship, concerning their common peace or preservation; if any shall mutiny and rise up against their commanders and officers; if any should preach or write that there ought to be no commanders or officers, because all are equal in Christ, therefore no masters nor officers, no laws nor orders, nor corrections nor punishments;–I say, I never denied, but in such cases, whatever is pretended, the commander or commanders may judge, resist, compel and punish such transgressors, according to their deserts and merits. This if seriously and honestly minded, may, if it so please the Father of lights, let in some light to such as willingly shut not their eyes.
I remain studious of your common peace and liberty.
You see here how a colony ship is akin to an embryo of the society it will unleash upon landing, and the longer the journey, the more time they may form - or dissolve - a body politic - a fabric or tapestry of relationships. This wisdom goes back thousands of years. It’s truly ancient. Author Norma Thompson posits that in the Hellenic world, the first ideas of this can be found in Homer. Odysseus’s trials and tribulations at sea mirror Penelope’s witness of the decline of their polis, Ithaca. How these trials build each other up forms the foundation of a stronger and healthier society when they reunite to rule the city. The lessons learned at sea, and at home, directly translate into the Polis’ soul. More formally, the consensus is that Plato invented the metaphor in his Republic text. We also see it also used as a metaphor of the church and one’s faith in the Bible.
On the Sinking of States
The sinking of a ship is, by itself, a localized biological filter; a test of fitness. Who will get to the life boats, and who will go down with the ship? Who can swim, and who cannot? What cargo sinks, and what floats? However, it is also a memetic filter. I opened this article with examples, ranging from mechanical devices to books. In the ancient world, such things were not mass produced. They were unique works of skilled trades and crafts. What people choose to take with them is a rapid value assessment - an economy running in seconds rather than years. The economy of a sinking ship should be carefully considered, because it is one of the few instances we get to study an apocalypse in a controlled environment and see what people truly value. After all, whoever operated the Antikythera mechanism made a value assessment to leave it behind - if they survived. What we find in ship wrecks ultimately can be seen as equivalent to what we may find when societies sink as well.
Every couple of decades or centuries, a Ship of State does sinks. When it does, it is also a kind of biological filter, at the scale of nations. However, it is also a memetic filter of similar scales. Some will look for the escape paths, others will decide to test their swimming skills. Either way, that Ship of State will bring down with it all the values and luxuries a people possess. Whatever they decide isn’t worth taking with them, is going down with the ship. Who knows how many curiosities and tomes of elder lore are lost when nations sink. Who can say what floats up, and what sinks down - whose shores some parts wash up upon, and what will require deep-sea operations to recover - or if such things ought be recovered at all. Who writes of the things lost? Who can say what determines the fate of what was on that ship? It is a filter: Although we may draw value and scale of an itemized list, we only find out when we find what gets through it.
The felling of nations is always a filter. A test of what we actually value, and what was just a luxury we’d drop the second our lives are at risk.
Consider, for instance, that the Roman State began restricting civilian weapon ownership under Sulla, and by the imperial era it was more-or-less illegal to own a sword outside of military service. This status quo was strictly enforced, even as the Barbarian armies ransacked the empire. As the Empire increasingly left provinces to their own fate, and yet expected them to follow Roman law, a peculiar phenomenon occurred. Roman civilians elected usurpers because no legion would march to protect them. Rather than simply make their own swords, they joined the usurper’s army as a kind of pseudo-loyalty to Roman Law. Peculiar, isn’t it? Usurpers still enforcing the law, despite being in open rebellion. One imagines the reason was because it grew their usurper armies rather quickly. It was only when the Germanics took over that this aspect of Roman society was cast aside without question. They found the entire legal entanglement of this topic confusing and ridiculous. Once the Roman Ship of State sunk, that particular cargo not only sunk with the ship, it was scorned at and left to rot. The Germanics would henceforth expect every house to have a sword to serve with when called upon.
The last great Ship of State to sink was the Soviet Union. In the grand scale of history, its seven decades of existence was quite short. However, in that time it became a space-age civilization, a nuclear power, and a major world power. What survived this sinking, ultimately, was its intelligence and military institutions, and some of its scientific institutions. Most of the rest was lost. Even to this day, the mass of ownership rights surrounding its economy is still being recovered from the sunken wreck. As an example, consider the medicine Cerebrolysin. This was a peptide concoction developed in the Soviet Union to treat victims of a stroke. The peptides were derived from pig fetuses, whose brain development uses similar biochemistry to that of humans. By isolated these fetal peptides and delivering them to the bloodstream, victims of stroke saw moderate recovery from neurological damage. It’s only been the past few years the rights to this Soviet medicine have been resolved and a similar product entered European markets. That cargo of the soviet Ship of State spent nearly 40 years sunk before recovery. There are countless other inventions still ambiguously stuck in grey ownership, ranging from weapons like the TKB series, to various space-age wonders Musk would like to get the rights to.
Even though the Soviet Ship of State was only at sea for 70 years, it is likely cargo will be fetched from its wreck for decades longer to come. Even so, there is also cargo deemed worthless, left to the wreck to rot forever. The principles of Marxist economics - perhaps we can consider this the figurehead of the ship - still rests on the wreck. Nobody wants to fetch that worthless idol from the sea of nations. There it will lay, forever, to rot away. The idol of the Soviet Ship of State has become its tombstone. An orphaned god who’s native followers abandoned.
The philosopher Thomas Carlyle spoke quite a lot on shipwrecks of state, primarily as a means of criticizing voting rights, arguing that the crew cannot be a substitute captain. A phantom captain’s ship will crash, he argue, because the crew is simply not trained to do the task. A rudder turned by ballot box is a recipe for disaster. However, he did point out something important. Ships of State, like real ships, have cargo. Cargo they prize, but which is not always truly valuable:
As experience in the river is indispensable to the ferryman, so is knowledge of his Parliament to the British Peel or Chatham…Where and how said river, whether Parliament with Wilkeses, or OEil-de-Boeuf with Pompadours, can be waded, boated, swum; how the miscellaneous cargoes, "measures" so called, can be got across it, according to their kinds, and landed alive on the hither side as facts:—we have all of us our ferries in this world; and must know the river and its ways, or get drowned some day! In that sense, practice in Parliament is indispensable to the British Statesman; but not in any other sense.
Cargo Cult(ure)
I’m going to make a rather ham-fisted extension of this metaphor, forgive me. In the sciences, we understand that whether something sinks or float stems from the principals of buoyancy. Objects lighter than water float, and objects heavier than water sink. The nature of the thing determines its fate at sea. I believe this scientific principal is applicable to abstractions. Some ideas will keep us afloat, others will leave us submōte.
A quick overview of that last word…
Submōtus - Latin for removed, dispelled, or banished. It’s the combination of the word mōtus with the prefix sub.
Mōtus - Latin for moved, stirred, disturbed, having been moved. aroused, excited, begun, inspired, having been aroused.
(Sub, as you may be able to guess, means beneath, below, or under.)
Quite a few philosophers have explored this term, with much work by Thomas Aquinas. In Thomistic thought, the motality of a thing is a question of motions. There is a principal that all objects in motion are a result of a motion being pushed upon it by another object in motion. This was used to prove there must be a first mover, aka God. However, it was also used to explore motions of the soul, not just physical objects. Thomistic thinkers applied this principal to the soul - you see, dear reader, I am not the first to hamfist this metaphor. The claim is that one cannot motivate themselves. They must have motivation pushed upon them by some word or deed of another. Even when people claim to have learned how to motivate themselves, it is because they were taught it from a book or teacher - there was some impartation of the vital spirit from one with, to one without. This chain of interaction ought to be traced back to God’s first words to man: Be fruitful and multiply. Men have amplified or reduced this Mōtus Operandi Adam received, to either fulfill or fail this command of God.
For most people today, they only come into contact with the word motality when discussing how lively sperm is. This word is usually brought up if a couple is struggling to have a child, or a man is getting a check up. It has been reduced to a fertility issue today. This is quite a sad demotion from the rich Thomistic dialogues centuries ago. Motality was a major philosophical question. Rather than describing how lively sperm are, it was used to describe how viable ideas were. Motal ideas were those that kept us going, submotal ideas were those that sunk us into deep depression and destroyed the will to go on.
This is applicable to the Ship of State metaphor. If we consider what cargo a Ship of State possesses, it is ultimately a question of value and buoyancy - and while this hyper-literal application may not seem valuable or buoyant right now, hold tight!
Value is placed upon the cargo by men, while buoyancy exists regardless of how men value the cargo. Value can basically be thought of in terms of perceived scale vs actual scale, and buoyancy in terms of what direction the cargo is taking the men who value, or don’t value, it. What the cargo does, it will do regardless of the value men place upon it. However, the value men place on it will determine their willingness to risk their lives carrying it away. As a visual diagram, we can think of it as follows:
With this, we actually have a fairly good technique to measure ideas and their consequences. If something is highly buoyant, and highly prized, it is conductive to civilization. If something is neither buoyant nor prized, it is a very bad idea and should be tossed overboard. However, if something is highly prized and not buoyant, then we have identified what cargo on the ship is dangerous but cannot yet be tossed over without some people jumping in to save it - many will seek to save it if the ship begins to sink, going down with it. In fact, it should be stayed clear of by wise men. Likewise, if something is not very prized, but very buoyant, we have identified what ideas to lift up to restore order on the ship before it sinks:
Using this, we can thus divide the cargo between what is Motal - that is, keeping men vital - and what is Submotal - that is, drowning them down towards death. We can evaluate it along a curve, to include less valuable cargo.
A Motality Curve:
In general, any given Ship of State will host both memetically motal and memetically submotal cargo. The tendency is to divide cargo up between valuable cargo for its friends and institutions, and unvaluable cargo for its enemies and their institutions. There will be an intuition to assume valuable cargo is motal cargo, and unvaluable cargo is submotal cargo. Indeed, you may imagine that it is the submotal cargo that is left behind when a Ship of State sinks, and the motal cargo that people try to snatch as they flee. However, this isn’t always true - previous examples need not repeating. It’s important to keep value and motility detached here. They are not always aligned.
As an example, near the end of the Roman Imperial Era, even as Gaul was regularly raided by barbarians, no legion ever marched to protect the border. However, when the Gauls periodically elected usurpers to defend themselves because Rome wasn’t, then the legions marched. Not to defend the border, nor to fight the invaders, but rather to fight the usurpers. Sinking Ships of State will often seek to protect seemingly submotal cargo, not because they want that which destroys them, but because they value it. There is, no doubt, here some underlining understanding that, that which keeps one’s enemies demoralized and submissive, has value.
Gaul was a land with few assets owned by Italy’s landed elite - it was one of the few regions where assets and institutions remained owned by the local population. Rome had no monied interest in protecting these things, but they had a huge interest in using the German invasions as a form of biological warfare against their domestic competitors in Gaul. If Gaul was allowed to burn, they could come in and buy the smoldering ruins, rebuild it under their ownership, and tax whatever they rebuilt for themselves. Defending the border may be a buoyant principal, but it has lost value. Thus, the Romans let Gaul sink with its motal cargo. Letting Gaul burn was a submotal principal. However, the actions of the Imperial Government demonstrate that, even in the final hours, some people on that Ship of State thought they could carry off the wealth of a province for their personal gain. They went down with the ship in the end, chasing submotal good: low buoyancy, high value.
A Ship of State stays afloat by the correct alignment of value and buoyancy. A sensible young pirate ought to learn what cargo has buoyancy, and snatch it as a sinking Ship of State flutters.
You see those events echo today in the United States. Even as our Ship of State begins to tilt and the decks begin to fill with water, members of our government seem eager to fund foreign governments, let crime go free, and scream at phantom threats. It’s easy to hand-wave this as madness, but the true motivator is likely profit incentive in a misaligned Ship of State. They see the rampant crime of cities as a way to devalue properties, buy them up, and then fix the problem as heroes. They see declining quality of goods and services as an investment opportunity for them to course correct, only after they have control. They are seeking profits by risking our republic. This is a submotal cargo they are trying to sneak off the sinking ship. It will likely pull them down with it instead.
There are ideas that keep men afloat that have practically no value to the Ship of State at times. Consider religion or philosophy in a secular Ship of State, for instance - casually ignored, easily taken, and often used to course-correct a sinking ship. There are also ideas which are dead weight, yet highly valued. They do nothing but reduce the buoyancy of a Ship of State, and yet men would seek to carry them away if they could, should the ship sink. Consider, for instance, bread and circuses in ancient Rome, or their addiction to mercenary soldiers, or even the title of emperor itself. That men still sought the title of Roman Emperor long after the Roman Ship of State sunk says quite a lot about its value, even though the title always left its holder worse off - it was a millstone, all to often.
Why men value what they do can be asked through many questions: Does it serve a purpose for the existing status quo? Can it help or hinder a new status quo? Does it provide the public with a sense of safety and/or pleasure? The questions as to why it is valuable are less important than the fact it is valuable, although asking these questions can help you correctly align your civilization’s cargo, and hold onto what is motal.
We can go fully literal here and recognize something: Objects heavier than water will pull a ship down, but objects lighter than water do not pull it up. Literal, and yet still applicable to the Ship of State. The fact of the matter is, we have been discussing the cargo, not the ship itself. The buoyant cargo does not keep it afloat. The hull does. We can imagine that greater nations can therefore carry more dead weight. Thus, we often find the wealthiest nations host the most ridiculous ideas - ideas that would sink a less buoyant ship. Indeed, if these ships offload their cargo onto those ships, they sink first. Should some pirate ship capture the cargo thinking it makes them wealthy, they may find themselves sunk before they get to market.
Cargo, by its nature, is mobile. Rarely is it bolted down to a ship. It is not part of it. A ship, by definition, is at the threshold of water and sky. Therefore, any given weight will reduce its connection to that threshold, but objects lighter than water bare no benefit to the ship until it is already sinking. Consider the difference between a submarine and a ship. A submarine must have its buoyancy integrated into the ship structure, or else it cannot rise. A ship has some buoyancy, but only enough to bare the weight of its cargo. The cargo that is lighter than water is itself above the water line. It can’t actually keep the ship afloat.
We’ve murdered this metaphor with far too much literal analogies, and yet you hopefully see it still works. Curious.
On that, we ought to consider what sort of cargo is on our own Ship of State. Can ours continue to bear the weight? What’s going to float if we sink, and what’s going down with the ship? Can we identify prized cargo that we will leave to the aquatic graves when our ship goes? Or, is there prized cargo we will take with us to the lifeboats, or attempt to swim with? Will it keep us afloat, or will it leave us submōte?
If I had to give an assessment, I’d say a lot of modern life is submotal. People are unhappier, families are more broken, and everyone keeps talking about their rights while they carefreely take them from their neighbors. I can imagine as this titanic sinks, many fleeing to the life boats may attempt to carry on valuable progressive cargo, but will find themselves being taken down with it. While those who have held onto good cargo - families, friends, faith - will find they can just hold to that and skip the fighting for the life boats. Someone will scoop them up, eventually. They may already have been cast overboard with that cargo, and may already be on a better ship by now.
We don’t have a lot of motal cargo left to loot. One wonders what worth is there in bothering to take any of it with you at all. And what will they find is our figurehead when they find our wreck? Will they see a prized golden bow worthy to take up? Or a rotting monument to the Great Society? Perhaps they’ll view it as a tombstone too, as the Russians view the figurehead on the wreck of their old Soviet Ship of State.
Regardless, it’s worth considering one final comment on the concept of a Ship of State. It comes from the British comedy show “Yes, Minister”:
The Ship of State is the only vessel which leaks from the top…
Sir Humphrey Appleby
"There is a principal that all objects in motion are a result of a motion being pushed upon it by another object in motion. This was used to prove there must be a first mover, aka God."
When St Thomas speaks about this movement in the Summa, he's not speaking about physical objects hitting each other. This would be called an accidental causal chain, which is a chain of what is called Secondary Causality, or creatures acting on each other.
He's speaking about the relation such as how matter constitutes a body, or an essentially ordered chain. This ultimately is God's causality of the universe (as the Epistle to the Hebrews says, when it says in the first three verses that Christ upholds all things). This is called Primary Causality, which is God's causal relationship with creatures.
"The claim is that one cannot motivate themselves. "
He also, along with Aristotle, will also say that Humanity is actually noted for their ability to move themselves to action without any exterior mover in the sense of accidentally ordered chains. They are, however, moved by God according primary causality
The Restoration Bureau produces Soviet style artwork on modern and post-liberal themes. They just did one on "The Ship of State": https://restorationbureau.substack.com/p/the-ship-of-state-2c0
It's worth noting that Plato's ship of state metaphor was actually a fairly biting critique of democracy. To paraphrase, democracy is a strong captain who is overpowered by a half-drunk and reckless crew, each of whom insist on the right to steer even though none have ever learned the art of navigation. Plato would be surprised we've lasted as long as we have.