The New Neo

I’ll start out by saying that I think the five people in the submersible are dead, and that even days ago I thought they probably had been dead from the moment the vehicle stopped communicating with the mother ship about an hour and forty-five minutes into its dive to see the wreck. And now there’s an announcement that a debris field has been found (see also this).

Sad news.

Apparently, there have been a lot of angry people on the left who, as Ace writes, are “in full psychopathic gloat mode, celebrating the deaths of five strangers who never did a single thing to them.”

That is one of those “shocking but not surprising” phenomena we’ve grown to know so well.

Ace quotes Ben Dreyfuss on the subject:

But one of the defining characteristics of normal people is that our empathy machines, fortunately for society, are not so singularly transactional. We care about people even when it isn’t immediately obvious that there is something in it for us.

The normal people on Monday did what the normal people do. But the abnormal people didn’t do that.

They heard the news, read the stories, took in all of the information that made you sad, and their first reaction was: anyone who can afford a $250k tourist trip deserves to die.

Very chilling, but a lot of things are chilling these days.

Which doesn’t mean that I think it’s wise to pay for adventures such as these; you couldn’t pay me enough money to do it, even before this event. But I don’t mountain-climb either, or do any number of risky things. I don’t get my thrills that way. But other people do, and I don’t condemn them.

What about the enormous expense, effort, and risk of the rescue efforts? Well, that’s what moral human being do for each other, and such rescue is not ordinarily predicated on the virtue of the victims however we might define virtue. Of course, there’s always the “what about Hitler?” question. There is obviously a line of evil – true evil, not mere lifestyle or political disagreements – beyond which the argument not to save that person (or even to kill that person) grows stronger. But that is almost never the actual situation, and it certainly doesn’t apply to those who pay tons of money for adventure excursions.

The subject comes up regularly in places such as New England, where there are mountains to climb and where people often get stranded. Those people are often foolish or even stupid in the manner in which they set out, failing to take proper precautions or gear or training. Just about every rescue mission is questioned, because they are both expensive and risky for the rescuers. However, I think it’s a mark of civilization that we are willing to bear that expense and assume that risk in order to rescue our fellow flawed humans.

Our own commenter “physics guy” mounts a milder version of this “fools” argument when he writes:

Anyone who would pay that amount of money and not thoroughly research the charlatan who put this piece of crap together is, and now was, a fool. The depth of the Titanic is a much more dangerous environment than going to space; not something to have a sightseeing trip…

What makes me mad is the millions of dollars spent to rescue fools. The Darwin award committee needs to be notified.

I don’t think physicsguy thinks they should have died. It’s just that he is angry that they put themselves in that position and that the rest of us have to pay for it. But “millions of dollars” are often “spent to rescue fools.” I would not have it otherwise – and my guess is that physicsguy might agree; he just wishes there were fewer fools. On that last subject, I will say that the impulse to do risky things for adventure is somewhat allied to the willingness to do risky things in general, and that such an impulse is part of what drives humankind to explore and to learn, including space exploration. If we eliminate that, we eliminate a great deal of good.

This is a scene from one of my favorite movies, “Starman.” I think it’s relevant:

And here’s a stanza from Adrienne Rich’s poem “Diving Into the Wreck”:

the thing I came for:
the wreck and not the story of the wreck
the thing itself and not the myth
the drowned face always staring
toward the sun
the evidence of damage
worn by salt and sway into this threadbare beauty
the ribs of the disaster
curving their assertion
among the tentative haunters.

And then there’s the last portion of Tennyson’s “Ulysses”:

There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark, broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil’d, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
‘T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I don’t mean to equate these people with Ulysses. But I see their impulse as a fragment of the same impulse. You might say that their motive is more narcissistic, and I will concede you may indeed be correct. But I still think it is somewhat allied with the motive that drives all human accomplishment, and without which we still would be chipping away at stone tools.