…where you are not there by choice, you can’t get off, you don’t how long you have to travel, and you don’t know the destination!  Oh, and you can’t choose which class of cabin you were assigned when you (somehow) came aboard.  It’s a huge mystery.

You hear from fellow passengers any number of myths about what’s in the ocean depths beyond the ship, and equally about the destination.  Some are delivered in absolute certainty. And any number of people go about in uniforms claiming to be in charge, giving any number of explanations about how you all came to be there and where you are going. You may even grasp at one to make sense of it all.

Meantime, people die and are tossed overboard, into the unknown depths.  Again, all around you are myths of those depths, a distant and utopian Atlantis or a dystopian netherworld…

The problem in all of this:  You can choose to believe anything, but what can you really know?

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Obviously, this metaphor could be carried further.  But the point is the same:  We are not in control, and while we may believe anything, we know nothing.  The only certainty we actually have is all around us, our fellow passengers.  So, what does that suggest?