LITERATURE + LECTURES

The Jung Center of Houston presents Hunting the Great Whale: Peak Oil, Moby Dick, and the Mythology of American Energy.  Robert Wagner explores how one of the great works of American literature uncannily prefigures our current conversation about energy.

The world burns in excess of 40 thousand gallons of oil per second today... and our consumption is still growing. What is it in the collective psyche that drives this all-consuming quest, which could result in serious consequences? In mythic terms, the rampant production and consumption of hydrocarbons that saturate our society today can be read like the story Herman Melville depicts in his famous novel, the tale of a whaling voyage at the peak of the whale oil era. At the time, the quest for a popular fuel was resulting in the exploitation of the whale resource at a critical rate. In this lecture, we will explore the mythic underpinnings of Moby-Dick, journeying into the underworld of the Judeo-Christian, Enlightenment psyche that has formed the American economic society of today.

Robert D. Wagner, Jr., PhD, has an MBA in finance from New York University and has been a New York investment banker for the past 40 years, focusing primarily on the oil and gas businesses of Texas. He recently received a PhD in Mythological Studies from Pacifica Graduate Institute in Santa Barbara, where his focus was on the diverse mythological images that are present in virtually all elements of our modern economic society.