ANALYSIS: When the submersible Titan imploded last month, instantly killing those on board, the Titanic added five to its death toll.
How the world reacted to the event as it learnt of the Titan’s predicament, waited for it to play out, and then observed its tragic end revealed a lot about our attitudes to fate, money and power, many of them relying on ancient beliefs.
The story of the Titanic was always framed as one of hubris – if you declare a ship to be unsinkable, then you are tempting fate to sink it.
We haven’t come very far in our understanding of how the universe works in the 111 years since the Titanic sank. Hubris is now being blamed for the more recent tragedy. If you can take a high-priced joyride four kilometres straight down to spend about three hours examining some rust through a window the size of an LP record, the thinking goes, you are also “tempting fate”.
This makes sense if you believe your future is decided by fate rather than good decisions, basic iceberg-avoidance or the quality of your high-pressure protective shield.
One school of thought had it that daring to ignore our limitations in this way flies in the face of nature. They may also be of the view that if we were meant to fly, we would have wings. There’s a name for those who carry this line of thinking to its logical conclusion – Amish.
The victims had also failed to pay due homage to the new gods of technology: frequent references were made to the fact that Titan was run by an Xbox controller.
This had nothing to do with its implosion. But it does tie in with a thread of condescension running through coverage that could be seen in the likes of the headline “Titanic sub’s cheap design may have sealed its fate”. There’s really no excuse for cutting corners.
Another, equally unreasonable, though more familiar, attitude can be summed up as: serves you right, you rich bastards who could afford US$250,000 to take the trip.
This was an appealing view to many in the context of another tragedy that week: the fate of more than 300 people who drowned when the boat carrying them from Libya to Italy capsized off the coast of Greece. While herculean efforts were made to save five lives, hardly any were made to save hundreds.
If you live in a subsistence economy, then any travel – including an attempt to escape to a better life in another country – is an expense beyond most people’s means.
If you live in a more affluent economy, then you prize and are willing to pay for experiences that are denied to others – like getting to the top of Mt Everest with minimal personal effort, or visiting the international space station, or leaving the Earth’s atmosphere and going “into space’ for a few minutes as billionaires are currently lining up to do.
So, the five people on board the Titan were following in a well-established tradition in which the wealthy buy themselves experiences that are out of reach for most of us. They just couldn’t buy their survival.
The Titan story gripped us because it was a great yarn that ticked lots of narrative boxes, taking the form of a suspenseful drama that had us on the edge of our seats wondering if the characters involved would survive their predicament.
And those characters were familiar types from fiction. There was the arrogant businessman taking the trip because he could afford it. The foolhardy company founder who put his passengers’ lives at risk. The innocent and nervous 19-year-old victim who had gone along to please his dad.
Because it is human nature, some observers lost all sense of perspective when considering the events.
One relative described the implosion as “the best outcome”. A more considered view might have been that a better outcome would have been to come back alive.
Billionaire victim Hamish Harding, of whom hardly anyone had ever heard before this, was described as a “living legend”. Another observer noted that he died doing what he loved, which can’t fail to recall the following old joke:
“He died doing what he loved.”
“What – dying?”
Then there was world-beating bunkum such as the official statement that “these men were true explorers who shared a distinct spirit of adventure, and a deep passion for exploring and protecting the world’s oceans”. Surely an insult to genuine explorers and ocean protectors everywhere.
Already, some pieces of the wrecked submersible have been brought up from the ocean floor and taken ashore in the hope of aiding the investigation into the tragedy and answering questions about the craft’s design and safety standards.
