The Trickster and the Oil Rig

The trickster is a classic Jungian archetype, embodied in characters like Smeagol from Lord of the Rings. A trickster synchronicity usually reveals itself with a twisted humor or a wry irony that makes you feel like you’re the brunt of the universe’s joke. It appears that the explosion of the oil rig in the gulf has a trickster element to it.

As oil continues to spew in the gulf, more details are emerging about what happened.  A bubble of methane gas is now blamed for the explosion. It apparently escaped from the well, traveled up the drill column. As it traveled, it expanded and blew through seals and barriers before it exploded. These details have emerged from interviews with survivors.

Now here’s the trickster part of this story and it’s truly bizarre.  While the well was being converted from an exploration well to a production well, the process that enabled the methane bubble to travel up the drill column, BP execs were on the rig, toasting their safety record. They were injured but managed to get to the life boats and escape.

It was as if the trickster was saying, What? You’re toasting your safety record?  Well, we’ll see about that, boys.

Perhaps it’s time for the administration to read Carl Jung.

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16 Responses to The Trickster and the Oil Rig

  1. Trish and Rob MacGregor says:

    Ray – thanks for the link. All of this is truly criminal.

  2. Ray says:

    https://www.propublica.org/ion/blog/item/oil-gulf-mexico-offshore-drilling-plans-regulators-categorical-exemption

    27 exemptions to require environmental studies including one to BP have been issued since the BP rig exploded even while the fire was still burning.
    Ray

  3. Trish and Rob MacGregor says:

    Sansego – was this when you ended up a present job? If so, I'm thinking you should start offering unbridled appreciation for your present job. Otherwise, you might've ended up on a BP oil rig. Truly strange.

  4. Sansego says:

    This is one reason why I support "the corporate death penalty." A big disaster like this should automatically mean that the company is put out of existence and all money, assets, and such go to pay for the damages incurred to the environment.

    If I had a car, I would not buy gasoline from BP stations. I boycotted Exxon in the 1990s because of the Valdez disaster.

    Had I accepted the last job offer I received (in 2007), I would've worked as a contractor for BP on the North Slope of Alaska. Kind of glad I didn't accept that job.

  5. Trish and Rob MacGregor says:

    I'd read that about the company lawyers. They're shameless.

  6. Ray says:

    The trickster needs to get even with the company that built the rig. When the survivors were interviewed by company lawyers they were not allowed to go to their hotel rooms until they signed a statement saying they were not injured. That supposedly absolves the company of responsibility for any latent physical or psychological injuries.
    Hopefully karma will take care of the construction company.

    Ray

  7. Trish and Rob MacGregor says:

    Maybe the trickster's function is to balance out the the bunnies and fluff, as Hilary puts it. Great phrase.

  8. GYPSYWOMAN says:

    yes, indeed – that little thing called karma! what goes round comes round! the big boys were drilling down and up came the bubble!

  9. DJan says:

    The bad part is that THEY escaped while others died. I have read and appreciated Jung for years. The Trickster is a good image for this awful disaster.

  10. Hilary says:

    That's a really good reminder that synchronicity isn't all bunnies and fluff, isn't it?

  11. Natalie says:

    Can't like the trickster either. It is the one thing that shakes me. 🙁

  12. Sansego says:

    Didn't the builders claim that the Titanic was "unsinkable"?

    I hate the trickster…because the trickster tricked me into accepting the job offer to the worst place I've ever worked. I'm still trying to learn the lesson so I can move on.

  13. terripatrick says:

    I've known a few of these type incidents – having a few connections with commercial construction. Sure there were those five years accident free but – the accident always happens within days of an award for being accident-free.

    If I relate this to the Law of Attraction, in construction, there's almost a superstition energy among the crew about the longer you go injury free, the more likely something will happen, and the bigger it will be. So there's an expectation when that 5th award is posted that it will be the last and within days, boom.

    Disaster attracted.

    Then, afterward there's almost a relief they'll be accident free again.

  14. Trish and Rob MacGregor says:

    Maybe the trickster is the universe's immediate form of karma or something.

  15. Von says:

    Never ever it comes back to bite you almost immediately as these guys discovered.

  16. lakeviewer says:

    Yes, never tempt fate by patting yourself on the back.

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