The Annotated Captain Barbossa

The captain’s advice to Miss Turner..

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

The annotated Captain Barbosa The broadcast annotates three of Captain Barbosa's most memorable utterances from the film Pirates of the Caribbean number one in which he addresses Miss Turner and also Jack Sparrow in number three. Number one. First, your return to shore was not part of our negotiations nor our agreement, so I must do nothing. And secondly, you must be a pirate for the pirates code to apply, and you're not. And thirdly, the code is more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules. This is a classic philosophical dilemma for the ages, whether to accord strict adherence to the rules in the most idealistic sense, or whether to select, albeit pragmatically, guidelines over those same rules, particularly when it is morally expedient to do so. In a world of waxing narcissism, nurtured by social media and unprincipled neophiliacs, the rules become signposts to be ignored at will. That is, if the individual even considers will to be important. Number two. Find it we did, and there be the chest, and inside be the gold. We took them all, spent them, traded them and fritted them away for drink and food and pleasurable company. But the more we get them away, the more we came to realize the drink would not satisfy. The food turned to ash in our mouths, and all the company in the world could not harm or slake our lust. We're cursed men, Miss Turner, compelled by greed we were, but now we're consumed by it. This is the parable of the European spirit. One should never attain the unattainable, as memorably illustrated in the literary works of both Henri Allan Pune and John Fowles. Its roots can be traced in the tradition of Amul Courtois, an idealist idealized form of love popular in the Middle Ages, when errant knights worship beautiful ladies from afar. Not much in currency these days, particularly since the advent of instant gratification. A footnote from the world of John Fowles' instructor possessing possesses. It is the possessor who is possessed. three. And then starve yourself to death. This is shades of the classic Pascalan wager Ilfo Badier Nepa Volontaire Vuzet Embarki, in which the protagonist faces only two choices. Choice and its attendant illusions is sometimes no choice, as even the illusion of choice is sometimes preferable to no choice at all. And to paraphrase Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita, refraining from choosing is not a passport to freedom from choosing. Fortunately, for Captain Jack Sparrow, a wily opportunity used to rolling the dice of life, none of this matters. It's all about what a man can do and what a man can do.