Titan(ic)

I didn’t expect to hear humility from James Cameron, of all people, following the implosion of the Titan. He said this avoidable disaster showed that not everybody had learned the lesson of the Titanic: not to be so arrogant with nature.

 

My thoughts on the Titan are these: it was a horrible way to die that I hope was mercifully quick, and that it was a phenomenally stupid thing for everyone to do. They paid a quarter of a million dollars to take a tiny submarine, made of materials that had never been successfully used at the crushing depths of the bottom of the North Atlantic, made by a company that wasn’t bound by regulations and had previous safety questions, for which they signed a lengthy waiver that mentioned “death” as a possibility several times on the first page, and that was controlled by an X-Box joystick. You put your lives in the hands of a man who once said “At some point, safety is just pure waste.” They saw you comin’.

 

The people onboard were adventurer types and their families will probably say they “died doing what they loved” and I won’t criticize it if that’s your way of coping. Personally, I would rather just fall asleep in an easy chair in my old age while reading a book and not wake up, like a normal person. To be fair, reading is my favorite thing, so I guess I’d also die doing what I loved.

 

What struck me is an interview on the news with OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush, who described himself as a “maverick.” He said he had broken the rules to make Titan. “The carbon fiber and titanium—there’s a rule you don’t do that. Well, I did.” The rule this maverick broke wasn’t like some red tape from the bureaucrats in Washington; it was a rule of physics. The ocean doesn’t care that you have a gleam in your eye and smug smile. Rush quoted Gen. Douglas MacArthur as saying you’re “remembered for the rules you break.” At the risk of being insensitive on a blog only three people will ever read, I’d suggest that they might remember you if you break a rule and die needlessly, but that remembrance might not be positive.

 

One lesson we can take from this is to stop signing away our lives—metaphorically and literally—to someone just because he has a lot of money and a square jaw.