The Trip with the Gangsta Boys (Introduction)

Disclaimer: The following passage is not of my doing. It is the entire article written by a man I very much respect. Please do not be mistaken, for I have not so masterfully learnt the techniques of such intricate wordplay. I trust that you will enjoy the passage. The author is a captain of Four Friends, a man who in my opinion has seen more of the world than any of us can even dream of.

The Trip with the Gangsta Boys, (Capt.) Warren Blake
with some reflections on the coming Clash of Civilisations

My job involves taking groups of school kids out on adventure voyages in my Schooner to idyllic island groups in the tropic seas. We typically take 12 to 16 students, with one or two of their teachers, for five to seven day trips, in which I try to teach them everything I know about navigation, sailin, snorkeling, kayaking, rock-climbing, and, my life-long interest, the ecology of the sea, of coral reefs, and of the tropic jungle.

Over several decades I have sailed with thousands of these young people, with the result that not only do I feel younger and fitter, but that I also believe I have learned something about what it is to be a teenager. This story then is about two very different groups of youngsters that sailed with me just a few weeks apart, and about their contrasting attitudes to the world, with some tentative thoughts on what those differences imply for the future of Civilization.

This last may read like a pretentious, grandiose, leap into the sphere of the philosopher, but consider who these two grous of kids were:


The first was composed entirely of Singapore citizens, children of the 21st globalizing century, by virtue of their place of birth at the hub of Asian development, and heirs in part to the grand old Confucian tradition, by reason of their race, all were Chinese.

The second were all American citizens, heirs to the unbridled vigor of their young nation, and to the other, older, Ango-Saxon belief in the freedom of the individual. Thus might the stage be set for a weighing of Values, one of Neo-Confucian collectivism, the other of unrestrained individualism, one against the other.


The first group, 18 Singaporeans, came from a Junior College of high repute. They were all 15 to 16 years old, and included, as usual, more girls than boys. Their College had previously organized two trips in the Schooner, arranging all administration, passports, health records, travel, etc, etc, paying some small part of the expenses, and securing a sizeable Government subsidy for such an educational outdoors experience. In contrast, my subject group had heard about the earlier trips, and contacted me directly, saying, "Captain, we want to go too!" Without any help from teachers they organized their own bus ride overnight from Singapore to Kuala Kedah, and thence a ferry trip to Langkawi, where they met me and "Four Friends." This enthusiastic initiative endeared me to them immediately, and I tried my best to shave their school fees to a minimum.


The second group, 12 Americans, also 15 to 16, were required by their expensive international School in an Asian capital to choose from a comprehensive menu of annual adventure tris, and so were hardly "volunteers" in the same way that the Singapore kids were. They were also all boys, a danger signal, confirmed by their accompanying teacher's warning that "These are a rough bunch!" In hindsight, I suspect that one or two of the gang-leaders, forced to participate in some trip or other, chose a sailing trip because it may have seemed a chance to just lie around sunbathing while strapped into their i-pods. The rank and file "gangstas presumably followed like sheep, with the inevitable exclusion of any non-members or girls. Face to face with an abusive, raging old sea-Captain on a veritable slave-ship, some began quickly to regret their choice.