The scenario is well known, and the story still haunts the modern mind. The great ocean liner that was built as unsinkable struck an iceberg on April 14, 1912 and sank early the next morning, taking 1,517 of 2,223 lives on board. The RMS Titanic became a parable of modernity -- of the limits of technology and the hubris of humanity. It is also a subject of enduring fascination because of the stories of those who lived and died, known to us because of the fame and fortune of so many on the Titanic.
Less known to many is the sinking of the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed by a German U-boat on May 7, 1915, taking 1,198 of 1,959 lives on board. The sinking of the Lusitania was a major factor in bringing the United States into war against the German Empire in World War I, but it plays a much less prominent role in the American imagination -- largely thanks to Hollywood and its fascination with the Titanic.
But more is at play here, for the two sinkings were notably different in one crucial respect. The Titanic took hours to sink, leaving time for a remarkable human drama on board the sinking ship. The Lusitania sank in just eighteen minutes, leaving far less of a human trace in the imagination.
As it turns out, there was another crucial difference. A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences looks at the difference in the behavior of the men aboard the two sinking ships. The difference was remarkable. Aboard the Titanic, the men generally behaved with great concern for women and children, doing their best to get the women and children into the precious and insufficient seats in the lifeboats. Hundreds of men died with the Titanic, demonstrating a commitment to put the welfare and lives of women and children above their own.
Aboard the Lusitania, young males acted out of a selfish survival instinct, and women and children were cast aside, left to the waves. Aboard the Titanic, there was time for men to consider what was at stake and to call themselves to a higher morality. There was time for conscience to raise its voice and authority, and for men, young and old, to know and to do their duty.
A secular worldview has little at its disposal to explain all this, and is left with some argument based in evolutionary survival behaviors or socially constructed morality. The feminists are in even worse shape in this.
They call for a world like the Lusitania, but must hope against hope that the world is really more like the Titanic.
Women and children first. Civilization itself depends upon this kind of moral knowledge. Without it, the entire enterprise of human civilization is destined to sink beneath the waves.
“Women and children first!”
http://www.cbmw.org/Blog/Posts/Women-and-Children-First-A-Tale-of-Two-Ships
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