Moby Dickhead - Part Two

Part Two - "The Pecking Order"

One of the great ironies of work is that, being under the employ of another man, we must take orders from one who, under God, is no more than my equal. What of it, if some old codger orders me around, letting me know at which time I am permitted to arrive and depart, who I am able to talk to, and in what manner, or to make demands of how many agreements I am to geo-locate in a day's work? What does that indignity amount to, weighted, I mean, in the scales of the New Testament? Do you think the archangel Gabriel thinks anything the less of me, because I promptly and respectfully obey that old codger in that particular instance? Who ain't a slave? Tell me that. Well, then, however the old sea-captains may order me about -- however they may thump and punch me about, I have the satisfaction of knowing that it is all right; that everybody else is in one way or other served in much the same way -- either in a physical or metaphysical point of view, that is; and so the universal thump is passed around, and all hands should rub each other's shoulder blades and be content.

The other great irony is that the captain believes it truly is he who is guiding the rudder. As our ship cuts across the open seas, it is the deck hands who take to the fore while our exalted captain remains comfortably seated in the aft. For in the world of sailing, head winds are far more prevalent than winds from astern (that is, if you never violate the Pythagorean maxim), so for the most part the Commodore on the quarter-deck gets his atmosphere at a second hand from the sailors on the forecastle. He thinks he breathes it first, but not so. In much the same way do the common men lead their leaders in many other things, at the same time that the leaders little suspect it.

As according to Newton's laws of motion: for every force exists an equal and opposite force, so as the puppet master manipulates the strings, or so he thinks, the articulated joints of the marionette pull back with equal pressure. Tell me, then, who really runs the show? For without the common worker, what foundation would the leader then be able to build his empire; and for what reason, then, would he be able conceive of himself as any more of a man than the rest of us? This is why I am able to remain content as a worker, because it is truly the masses that wield the power. Without the common worker, the foundations of our society would crumble like a Jenga tower.

Yet, there is no greater tool to the boss man than one who aspires to, himself, become the boss; and likewise there is no man with less authority over his own destiny than one who holds the ambition to take command -- nor is there a greater enemy to his fellow man. For when we elect to serve under a particular leader, we do so because we are sentient of how to manipulate them to do our bidding. This is what separates the common man from the truly ambitious, for those who aspire to lead for themselves are unaware of the double-edged sword of power dynamics and are very easily tempted by the gravitational pull of corruption and greed that accompany self-elected authority. With such a tool, the boss can clear his own desk of work, vacating a space for him to prop his feet up and relax back in his over-sized, double-padded captain's chair while his peon enforces his bidding. The ambitious man may refer to his actions "taking initiative," but the boss man simply calls it "living the dream," or by our standards "getting paid vast sums of silver to sit on ass."

The ambitious man attains no more silver than his peers for taking on a larger volume of the workload. So what truly makes his peers resentful and keeps them in a state of unrest is the acquisition of a disproportionate chunk of a very important piece of real-estate: the boss man's ear. The ambitious man will freely volunteer information regarding his peers in his desperate grasp for more power or more coin, if only he can make himself look good in light of them and possibly divvy up their share of the spoils one less way -- by sending one off the plank to swim amongst the sharks.

Captain Ahab was such an ambitious man. Perhaps it has already become apparent to whomever may have stumbled this message in a bottle -- and whom is currently reading this memoir -- but the title of Captain is not an official rank bestowed upon Ahab, though rather an endearing term of resentment given to him by his fellow ship mates aboard the Pequod: the jolly band of scalleywags whom affectionately call themselves the Airlite 9.