Jerry Davich
How coldly ironic that the passengers of the Titan submersible vessel died near the spot where they’ve been fascinated about for most of their lives. Still, I wonder about the appropriate depths of our sympathy for them.
The U.S. Coast Guard confirmed what many of us feared or presumed: The missing submersible imploded near the wreckage of the Titanic, killing all five people on board. Debris found during the massive search for the 22-foot vessel is “consistent with a catastrophic implosion,” according to the Coast Guard.
OceanGate Expeditions, which operated the deep sea exploration vessel, said all five people “have sadly been lost.” I’m not sure if the word “lost” is a gentler way to say they died or that their bodies may be lost forever in the North Atlantic. Either way, I didn’t know these people existed until recently, and I didn’t have any interest in this voyage until now.
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This incident was simply off my radar despite the round-the-clock news cycles of live coverage. I understand I may be in the minority here.
The Titan’s 96-hour oxygen supply provided media outlets with the perfect marketing tool for a countdown clock to doom. Humans are gapers by nature. We’re partly curious, partly bored and partly desperate for The Next Major News Event.
As people around the world tuned in to every update, every expert prediction and every detail about our new favorite buzzword -- submersibles -- I shrugged with icy indifference. Let me see if I have this correct: A deep-sea tourism vessel the size of a Ford Expedition lost its way in the ocean off the coast of common sense?
Meh. I didn’t care until I needed to care, specifically for this column.
Maybe there should be a search-and-rescue mission for my compassion, but I grade my empathy on a curve using context, personal experiences and situational circumstances. It doesn’t mean I wasn’t concerned about those curious passengers or their doomed voyage. It just didn’t rank high in my priorities of concern for human life.
I’ve watched a woman with terminal cancer die in a hospice bed. I’ve attended the saddest of funerals for young kids killed by domestic violence. I’ve hugged sobbing mothers who just lost their child in combat for a war that made no sense. I’ve interviewed people who clung to life without doing anything to be in that fatal predicament.
I can give example after example of other people’s deaths that profoundly affected me. Forgive me for not equating those deaths with five people who willingly locked themselves inside a questionably designed contraption that was already submerged in doubt, criticism and capability.
The deceased from the Titan’s catastrophic implosion are company CEO Stockton Rush, Shahzada Dawood and Suleman Dawood (a father and teenage son from a prominent Pakistani business family), British explorer Hamish Harding and French Titanic expert Paul-Henri Nargeolet. The incredibly steep financial cost to be a passenger on this excursion turned out to be the steepest possible cost -- their lives.
My thoughts go out to their loved ones. Sincerely.
But how sad should we feel about their deaths? As sad as we do for the thousands of innocent people who get killed by gun violence in our country? As sad as we do for drug overdose victims who couldn’t kick their addiction? Or for cancer victims? Or car crash victims who just happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time? Like I said, I grade my judgment on a curve. And so do you.
It’s an admirable spiritual gesture to offer prayers for the victims and their families. And it’s part of the human condition to feel some sense of empathy for these people even if we didn’t know they existed until recently.
Yet I don’t feel the same sense of sympathy that I do for, say, the passengers aboard the Titanic ship, or for the millions (billions?) of other humans who’ve died from unavoidable causes of death.
All of us have a limited supply of oxygen in life. We choose on a daily basis what to do with this fleeting supply of air and which risky behaviors to pursue, whether it's operating a moving vehicle or overeating or drinking alcohol or sitting on a couch all night.
The adventurous pilot of that Titan submersible and those four daring passengers made their choice to board that vessel and dive deeply into their curiosity. They knew the potential risks and dangers. The OceanGate waiver they signed cites the word “death” three times on its first page.
They chose to join the voyage anyway. And I choose to not care as much as I probably should.
Davich writes for The Times of Northwest Indiana: Jerry.Davich@nwi.com. He is cohost of the "She Said, He Said" podcast.
