Nature Beyond Human Control

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Details: Written by: Richard_McKie; Parent Category: Home; Category: News; Published: 02 July 2026; Hits: 873

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Throughout Moby-Dick, nature refuses domestication.

Storms, oceans, whales, stars, winds, and seasons operate according to their own laws.

Human ambition repeatedly encounters forces vastly greater than itself.

Melville neither sentimentalises nor demonises nature.

The sea can nourish or destroy.

Whales can appear magnificent or terrifying.

Beauty and danger coexist.

This balanced vision distinguishes Melville from writers who portray nature merely as benevolent refuge or hostile enemy.

Nature simply exists beyond complete human control.

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Travel

USA - middle bits

In September and October 2017 Wendy and I took another trip to the United States where we wanted to see some of the 'middle bits'. Travel notes from earlier visits to the East coast and West Coast can also be found on this website.

For over six weeks we travelled through a dozen states and stayed for a night or more in 20 different cities, towns or locations. This involved six domestic flights for the longer legs; five car hires and many thousands of miles of driving on America's excellent National Highways and in between on many not so excellent local roads and streets.

We had decided to start in Chicago and 'head on down south' to New Orleans via: Tennessee; Georgia; Louisiana; and South Carolina. From there we would head west to: Texas; New Mexico; Arizona; Utah and Nevada; then to Los Angeles and home. That's only a dozen states - so there are still lots of 'middle bits' left to be seen.

During the trip, disaster, in the form of three hurricanes and a mass shooting, seemed to precede us by a couple of days.

The United States is a fascinating country that has so much history, culture and language in common with us that it's extremely accessible. So these notes have turned out to be long and could easily have been much longer.

Fiction, Recollections & News

DUNE

Last week I went to see ‘DUNE’, the movie.

It’s the second big-screen attempt to make a movie of the book, if you don’t count the first ‘Star Wars’, that borrows shamelessly from Frank Herbert’s Si-Fi classic.

Opinions and Philosophy

Losing my religion

In order to be elected every President of the United States must be a Christian†. Yet the present incumbent matches his predecessor in the ambiguities around his faith. According to The Holloverse, President Trump is reported to have been: 'a Catholic, a member of the Dutch Reformed Church, a Presbyterian and he married his third wife in an Episcopalian church.'

He is quoted as saying: "I’ve had a good relationship with the church over the years. I think religion is a wonderful thing. I think my religion is a wonderful religion..."

And whatever it is, it's the greatest.

Not like those Muslims: "There‘s a lot of hatred there that’s someplace. Now I don‘t know if that’s from the Koran. I don‘t know if that’s from someplace else but there‘s tremendous hatred out there that I’ve never seen anything like it."

And, as we've been told repeatedly during the recent campaign, both of President Obama's fathers were, at least nominally, Muslim. Is he a real Christian? He's done a bit of church hopping himself.

In 2009 one time United States President Jimmy Carter went out on a limb in an article titled: 'Losing my religion for equality' explaining why he had severed his ties with the Southern Baptist Convention after six decades, incensed by fundamentalist Christian teaching on the role of women in society

I had not seen this article at the time but it recently reappeared on Facebook and a friend sent me this link: Losing my religion for equality...

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