A Good Profession For A Young Man In Turbulent Times — Piracy
English: Pirate
Chinese: 海盜 (hǎidào)
Russian: пират (pirat)
Greek: πειρατής (peiratís)
Arabic: القرصان (alqirsan)
You’ve seen them and have your visual representation of them. I’m sure you do. A peg leg and a parrot. A bearded man with an eye-patch yelling, “shiver me timbers.” A Captain Jack Sparrow looking character in pantaloons trying to remember where he buried his treasure. In the modern day it’s almost impossible to think of anything but this characterization. However, pirates were and are much more than this. They’re a piece of our society that has been with us since man set sail. Horribly enough, they’ll probably always be with us because human societies’ ills will never leave us.
They’re pirates. They’re predators whose hunting ground is the blue open oceans with little supervision. Their main prey, much like a land based predator, is any target of opportunity. In the middle of the ocean, there are no police or guards to call for. There is no law as well. For some, it’s just too much of a temptation. This is especially true when there’s little hope of making a future for one’s self. As you might surmise by looking the translations above, most cultures have their own word for pirate and their own problems…
