"Ship of Fools" is a short story written by Ted Kaczynski in which various people, representing oppressed groups in American society, squabble about living conditions aboard a ship, in spite of the fact that its course towards the North Pole presents ever-increasing danger.[1] The cabin boy warns of their impending doom and calls for a few of them to charge the deck and oust the captains. However, he is dismissed as a violent, unrealistic fascist and ignored. The story concludes abruptly:
They pushed him away and went back to grumbling about wages, and about blankets for women, and about the right to suck cocks, and about how the dog was treated. The ship kept sailing north, and after a while it was crushed between two icebergs and everyone drowned.
The story could be interpreted as an allegory of Kaczynski's vision of how society is progressing as outlined in his manifesto entitled "Industrial Society and Its Future".
Prior to Kaczynski's "Ship of Fools", there was a moralistic poem written in 1494 by Sebastian Brant titled Das Narrenschiff (Ship of Fools), which in turn inspired a painting of the same name by Hieronymus Bosch, as well as a novel titled Ship of Fools by Katherine Anne Porter based on this earlier work, both of which employ characters who symbolize different vices upon a ship together.