The warning "Your end of the boat is sinking," has been a catch phrase within my and my wife's group of friends for a long time. I don't remember where we got it from. It is usually meant as an obvious satirical reference to the coming Malthusian catastrophe , but more specifically from an environmental collapse perspective, such as global warming. I altered "boat" to "ship" for the purpose of the parable.
The original version of the parable was posted to the Guest Book at the Ishmael website February 19, 2002. The present version has some changes that I think makes the point a little more clearly.
As discussed in Pieces of My Mind BACKGROUND , I had been trying to make an argument that "walking away" from the causes of catastrophy and trying to raise the consciousness of people about the problem were not enough. It was also necessary to try to keep the ship afloat while the primary effort of changing minds has time to take place. Many participants at the website seem to misinterpret a Daniel Quinn quote to mean that people should avoid "programs", rather than to mean that "programs" were not sufficient. The Quinn quote is from The Story of B. A brief discussion of the quote can be seen as Q&A 589 . Part of Quinn's answer to this question is the following.
I strongly recommend to you the speech entitled "The New Renaissance" (http://ishmael.org/Education/Writings/The_New_Renaissance.shtml) , which I’ve described as "a concise expression of the basic message of all my books."